Trust Busting for Book Lovers

Another step out of my reading box recently took me to the biography shelf, where I grabbed Commodore: The Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. My reasoning: stacks of books about natural destruction and heroes & heroines who fight against it haven’t solved enough environmental problems, so maybe a villain’s biography would reveal some answers. At least it would be a refreshing change from Muir’s exuberant, expansive asceticsm in My First Summer in the Sierra to learn about a man who “Commodore” author Edward Renehan describes as a grim, stingy, near-illiterate who founded the greatest personal fortune in history.

Renehan wisely lets contemporary voices delineate Vanderbilt’s character whenever possible. Attorney George Templeton Strong begrudged him respect as an instinctive genius of the most cold-hearted, avaricious kind: “He is like some rudimentary but deadly and swift beast who knows not what he knows, but knows enough—through nature—to endure and thrive on the meat of lesser animals, of which the woods are full. . . . . He is a breed apart: evolved for the sole purpose of money-getting. Either that or his is the dumbest of dumb luck lubricated—I should admit—by a great deal of elbow grease. The beast is never lazy.” That titanic energy was focused single-mindedly toward acquiring money, principally through steamships and railroads, but incidentally through any means, fair or foul.

Vanderbilt’s ruthless greed didn’t surprise me, and it failed to fascinate me enough to read every word of this detailed (and undeniably lively) account of every merger, swindle, collapse, and reorganization that characterized his colossal success. But I was riveted by passages discussing a cynical ethos pervading the business world and much of society the early 1800s. “Sadly,” writes Renehan, “in his fundamental lack of charity, young Vanderbilt was not unlike the bulk of the successful, middle-class businessmen of his day. In point of fact, the first few decades of the nineteenth century were a largely cynical and callous time in American history—a period of institutionalized harshness.” Even formerly generous benefactors succumbed to a view that only about 10% of the poor were “deserving,” and helping the other “degenerates” merely encouraged more to sink into dependency and profligacy—and undermined the prosperity of the rest of society. Writes Renehan, “Like many other young entrepreneurs then and now, he worked conspicuously and diligently for his own personal profit, but never, so far as existing records and contemporary accounts show, for any greater good. Vanderbilt gave no alms to the poor, subscribed not a penny for the support of hospitals or foundling homes, and gave not a nickel to such organizations as the New York Humane Society (which at that time existed to serve the needs of destitute humans rather than stray dogs and cats).”

Self-centered cynic that he was, Vanderbilt can still serve as an object lesson today. His case supports Aldo Leopold’s contention that values are the key to respectful relationships with the natural world. The Commodore knew plenty about the waters and lands traversed by his transportation empire, but somehow he failed to care about them. Yet that even a Vanderbilt can learn to care is apparent at Biltmore, the French chateau-styled home of Cornelius’ grandson George. The younger magnate hired Central Park’s landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, to design Biltmore’s grounds, and perhaps more significantly, the nation's first scientifically-trained forester, Gifford Pinchot, to devise a scientific management plan for the forests. Pinchot’s wise-use approach when he headed the US Forest Service was the germinal idea that grew, through Leopold’s experience as a young forester, wildlife ecologist, and landowner, into the truly wise land ethic. A page devoted to philanthropy on the Biltmore site promises ongoing support for “the legacy of self-sufficiency, environmental stewardship of our natural resources, protection of the integrity of our mountains, and commitment to ensuring our community remains a model for living well and living purposefully.” I like to think scornful old Cornelius is rolling over in his Romanesque granite masoleum.

Deep Blue Battleground

Heads up to anyone who cares about water resources, especially during May, EPA's designated American Wetlands Month. NPR's Science Friday today featured an hour-long discussion of water issues confronting the 8 states and 2 Canadian provinces bordering the Great Lakes. Guests included Peter Annin, author of The Great Lakes Water Wars. Annin read movingly from his book, describing the many conflicting values and interests he can vividly imagine while gazing over the vast freshwater seas he cherishes. The program site includes a clip from a new documentary about the Great Lakes and curriculum connections for teachers (and others). Wisconsin, of course, is one the states directly involved in the building conflicts, so as I listened I kept in mind that protecting the Great Lakes means protecting Leopold country.

Wildness Incarnate

To Aldo Leopold and me, spring means sandhill cranes. Leopold characterized their noisy annual arrival as “bugling the defeat of the retreating winter.” A few March’s ago, I got to hear their cries in person on a trip to Nebraska, where a half-million of the migrating birds gather at a mid-continental pit stop in wetlands along the Platte River. Though I can’t go again this year, I’ll tune in to hear and see them on National Geographic’s Crane Cam. For the fifth year, “craniacs” like me can watch live video each evening as the birds settle down to rest in the safety of Audubon’s Rowe Sanctuary and each morning as they take flight to feed in the surrounding corn fields. Best viewing, ‘til April 6, is 7:30-9:30 am and 8-10 pm, EST. Tune in often to increase your chances of seeing diverse species of ducks and the occasional whooping crane among the sandhills.

For the best reading about North America’s two members of the Grus genus, look for Paul Johnsgard’s Crane Music: A Natural History of American Cranes. The author follows the gregarious birds through an eventful year of long-distance migration, ecstatic courtship dancing, and the rearing of ungainly young (Why are crane chicks called colts? Leopold said, “On some dewy June morning watch them gambol over their ancestral pastures at the heels of the roan mare, and you will see for yourself.”).



For a globe-trotting introduction to all fifteen of the world’s crane species, read Peter Matthiessen’s The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes. Matthiessen has been called our “Nature Laureate” for his lyrical writing about snow leopards, shorebirds, tropical jungles, Antarctica, and more. Heaven isn’t my favorite Matthiessen book, and I agree with reviewer Jason Roberts who calls it “a series of imperfect quests”. Matthiessen undertook the expeditions over several years, resulting in an overly-long travel chronicle with a sometimes-uneven tone. But if you stick with it, you’ll find evocative passages such as this:

The larger cranes, over five feet tall, with broad strong wings eight feet in span, appear well capable of bearing aloft a wispy old-time sage. The cranes are the greatest of the flying birds and, to my mind, the most stirring, not less so because the horn notes of their voices, like clarion calls out of the farthest skies, summon our attention to our own swift passage on this precious earth. Perhaps more than any other living creatures, they evoke retreating wilderness, the vanishing horizons of clean water, earth, and air upon which their species—and ours, too, though we learn it very late—must ultimately depend for survival.


Though symbols of sagacity and longevity, cranes have an irresistible, sometimes goofy, appeal to kids. My offspring are especially drawn to the dramatic tale of whooping cranes’ ongoing rescue from near-extinction, so it’s not surprising that they love Eileen Spinelli’s Song for the Whooping Cranes. It’s a gentle, rhymed tribute to the endangered birds, greatly enhanced with watercolor illustrations of both close-up behavior and panoramic habitat. Newberry winner Jean Craighead George also has a crane picture book, called Luck. The hero is a migrating sandhill crane, named Luck by a girl who rescues him from a plastic six-pack ring. Wendell Minor’s paintings illuminate Luck’s momentous journey. And kids who crave a wealth of facts about all kinds of cranes will enjoy North American Cranes, by Lesley DuTemple. One of Carolrhoda Books’ popular Nature Watch series, the book pairs high quality photos with clear descriptions of crane biology, behavior, and ecology for upper elementary students.


Kids, teachers, and everyone else enamored with cranes will also want to visit the website of the International Crane Foundation. ICF’s site offers news on the latest research around the world, a field guide to all 15 species, activity packets for kids, and field trip ideas for teachers lucky enough to live near the Foundation near Baraboo, Wisconsin. Through the online shop, you can even acquire your own craniac tshirt or a copy of Birds of Heaven. I was a bit disappointed not to see A Sand County Almanac for sale there, for “Marshland Elegy” must rank among the most beautiful paeans to cranes. Even though I’m half a continent away from the Platte River, I think of Leopold’s words, as I listen to the Crane Cam, and feel freed—“The ultimate value of these marshes is wildness, and the crane is wildness incarnate.”

Rainy Summer Reading

Much needed summer rain is falling, and I’m trapped inside waiting for a repair guy, so here are some gatherings from around the blogosphere that I’ve enjoyed lately. . . .

Anyone interested in environmental education will want to visit the fifth edition of Learning in the Great Outdoors, a carnival hosted this month by Miss Rumphius Effect. Miss R, aka Tricia, blogs often and well about children’s literature, and her carnival edition includes links to posts recommending books to enrich a homeschool garden lesson, instructions on making a nature journal, and thoughts on using a classic, early 20th century environmental education volume, Handbook of Nature Study, by Anna Botsford Comstock, also for homeschooling. Has anyone else observed that homeschoolers seem to be at the forefront of outdoor ed & getting kids outside these days?

Our friends at 10,000 Birds have posted another item after PAS’s heart, “Keep Every Cog and Wheel.” Mike’s essay is a plea for saving parts of the natural world not currently recognized as commercially valuable, e.g., spotted owls. He likens our natural commons to a precarious Jenga game tower, with spotted owls as vital, if unappreciated, building blocks. Then he turns to Aldo Leopold for his game playing philosophy, quoting from A Sand County Almanac, “The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: “What good is it?” If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.” I suspect that if we all played by Aldo Leopold’s rules, we’d all win.

There’s an ecstatic review of Richard Louv’s book, Last Child in the Woods over at Natural Patriot, calling it “a seminal work in environmentalism”. Also check out Natural Patriot’s Essential Reading list. A Sand County Almanac’s on it, so NP is going on my blogroll today.

Another intriguing list of green books can be found at Ideal Bite. I have mixed feelings about this site, which sends out daily emails if you subscribe, with tips on “light green” living. Many are useful and fun, but many more seem to be pushing products--$150 designer handbags that happen to be made of hemp, $40 bamboo tshirts, etc. But I like this book list, especially if you can get the titles at the library. I hadn’t heard of Ignition, described as “a collection of personal essays by writers, scholars, and activists who have worked to stop global warming.” And I haven’t yet read Plenty, “a memoir about what happens when two people decide to eat only food produced within a 100-mile radius for a year.” But I can second the nomination of Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a book that has literally changed my family’s eating life.

Wishing you some refreshing rain so you can enjoy a day of late summer reading.

Shame on No Impact Man

No, I’m not joining in the fray over whether or not No Impact Man should be soliciting donations for himself on his blog. I only know about it because I’ve been reading the comments under his recent post, Kant’s Views on No Impact Living. How cool that Colin’s readers are postulating what Kant, Wittgenstein, Bentham, and other philosophers might think of the No Impact experiment. I couldn’t resist mentioning Aldo Leopold’s land ethic and the Foundation dedicated to spreading his ideas. I even quoted Leopold’s “ecological imperative,” a succinct summary of his philosophy: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

Much to my chagrin, NIM replied that he’s never read any of Leopold’s writings. At least he’s heard of Leopold, via a book I haven’t read--Ethics for a Finite World by Herchel Elliot. I’d been thinking that Leopold was hot news this week, with his son Carl’s interview featured in the always green-hot environmental news & commentary e-zine, Grist. Editors and readers posed questions to Dr. Leopold about contemporary culture & nature as well as on his memories of The Shack and his father. Want to know what environmental offense most infuriates Leopold’s son, about Aldo Leopold’s religious beliefs, or how Carl Leopold thinks we can attract more people into the environmental fold? Curious about what the son of the Almanac’s author is reading lately? Please check out these just-posted comments by a living participant in Leopold’s half-century-old low-impact experiment. I hope Colin of the NIM does, too.

On second thought, maybe I should weigh in on No Impact Man’s request for donations. Instead of money, I think that we should each send him a copy of A Sand County Almanac.

Leopold's Colors: Evanescent and Durable

When Aldo Leopold had his druthers, June found him fly fishing. On the Alder Fork of the Wisconsin River, he might don chest waders and wait for hours in a trout-cold stream, or climb the bank, bushwack “neck deep in jewelweed and nettles,” then re-immerse in a deeper, quieter pool, all for a chance to set hard on a great fish.

Yet as anyone who has read A Sand County Almanac knows, Leopold wasn’t just fishing for trout. An avid hunter, birdwatcher, hiker, and angler since childhood, he believed in outdoor experience as a universal human need, a vital means not just of knowing the natural world but of appreciating it. No essay expresses this better than “The Green Pasture.”

Leopold begins:

Some paintings become famous because, being durable, they are viewed by successive generations, in each of which are likely to be found a few appreciative eyes.
I know a painting so evanescent that it is seldom viewed at all, except by some wandering deer. It is a river who wields the brush, and it is the same river who, before I can bring my friends to view his work, erases it forever from human view.


Because Leopold knew the Wisconsin so well, he noticed when the river dipped its brush in silt and painted it on a sandbar. He watched colors begin to appear—goldfinches bathing in blue pools, “great white fleets” of clouds overhead, and, especially, the verdant rush, Eleocharis. Just three weeks later, Leopold writes,

The artist has now laid his colors, and sprayed them with dew. The Eleocharis sod, greener than ever, is now spangled with the blue mimulus, pink dragon-head, and the milk-white blooms of Sagitarria. Here and there a cardinal flower thrusts a red spear skyward. . . .And if you have come quietly and humbly, as you should to any spot that can be beautiful only once, you may surprise a fox-red deer, standing knee-high in the garden of his delight.

Vacillations in the river’s course and level soon erase the painting except from Leopold’s memory. And while he hopes to witness it again, the scene’s ephemeral nature is part of its value to him. Any tourist, he observed, could spot the timeless grandeur of a scenic overlook—yet few step out of the car longer than it takes to snap a few photos. Joni Kinsey in a critical essay on Leopold’s “Land Esthetics,” says, “He even suggests that humble sites are more rewarding than the conventionally beautiful, if only because they require more effort to see fully.”

In June, and in every month, Leopold urged us to venture outside again and again, to seek out the colors, shapes, and textures in nearby nature that bind us to our own land and help develop our aesthetic perception of nature. He didn’t expect everyone to shiver in a trout stream or thrash through nettles, but rather to find a nearby green pasture, where beauty builds with time and repeated visits, beyond the pretty “to values as yet uncaptured by language.” Often, a half-wild patch in your own back forty, unreachable by car, can do more to enhance perception than a motor trek to a distant wilderness. Leopold closes his Almanac with the words, “Recreational development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind.”

Many thanks to Ophis for the lovely shot of Canada geese breakfasting on their own green pasture of Eleocharis.

Joni Kinsey's essay, "Land Esthetics" can be found in The Essential Aldo Leopold: Quotations and Commentaries, Curt Meine and Richard Knight, eds. University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.

Rachel Carson's Silver Spring

Eco-pilgrims from near and far made their way on Saturday to a rare Open House at Rachel Carson’s home in Silver Spring, Maryland. Carson lived in several houses in the DC area while working as an editor for the Fish and Wildlife Service, but this house is special. In that suburban rancher, she wrote Silent Spring. When she felt well enough she typed drafts in a paneled study, illuminated with natural light from broad windows. But when cancer confined her to bed, her assistant read the manuscript aloud so that Carson could edit though too ill to write.

The Open House was part of many centenary celebrations for Carson, born in Springdale, Pennsylvania in 1907. Visitors must have come for many reasons, perhaps to hear speakers such as Mark Hamilton Lytle, author of a new volume on Carson’s life and impact, The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement, or Mitch Baker, a horticulturist who gave advice on gardening without artificial chemicals. Judging by the throngs around the snack trays, some people came for the free bruchetta. But others mostly wandered around the yard, stood on her front porch, and looked out her windows. My daughter and I stepped into her study, now crammed with papers, computers, and other detris of the Rachel Carson Council, a non-profit which promotes alternatives to chemical pesticides. I don’t know how she got anything done besides watching birds in her tangled backyard, but we tried to imagine where she sat, which books she stacked around her, how often she escaped to the kitchen or played with the cats instead of writing. While such musings cannot unlock the mystery of her achievement, it helped me feel closer to it and to the struggle that made it possible.
Except in letters, Carson recorded little about her personal life. To get a feeling for her experiences at house, I turned to Linda Lear’s definitive biography, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature. Lear says that Carson house-hunted for months in 1957 before choosing a wooded corner lot to build a contemporary brick ranch “with large picture windows and lots of light.” Though focusing on Carson’s research and writing, Lear offers glimpses into her daily life: relations with friends and colleagues, searches for domestic help, forays into community activism, Christmas shopping for her grandnephew, and too many illnesses. Despite poor health and heavy workload, Carson welcomed houseguests, telling one, “We can promise you the song of mockingbirds and cardinals, and by mid-March we might even manage the beginning of our frog chorus.” I felt especially close to Carson, having just looked up through the branches of her trees, when I re-read a passage from a letter Lear quotes about the night Rachel’s mother died, “. . . occasionally I slipped away into the dark living room, to look out of the picture window at the trees and sky. Orion stood in all his glory just above the horizon of our woods, and several other stars blazed more highly than I can remember ever seeing them.” Even in the darkest moments of her life, Carson found comfort in nature.

My daughter and I also joined Saturday’s Carson celebrations at the National Wildlife Visitor Center. There, festivities included an electric tram ride through the refuge past painted turtles, tree swallows, a great blue heron, beaver lodges, wood ducks and acres of spring blooming woods. Indoors, kids dissected owl pellets and listened to storytellers, but Sarah was riveted by a captive bald eagle, symbolic of Carson’s role in the ban on DDT use that allowed populations of raptors to recover from mid-20th century lows. We missed most of the speeches, by such notables as Senator Sarbanes and Governor O’Malley. But we heard the last minutes of a talk by Jim Fowler, long-time television naturalist of Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom fame. Fowler charmed the audience with low key recountings of decades of outdoor adventures and, especially, with an admission that while lions and anacondas cause him no distress, he fears a little spider that scuttles around caves in the Philippines.
Fowler spoke in the Visitor Center’s Aldo Leopold Auditorium, and his firm message but folksy delivery reminded me more of Leopold than the poetic Carson. In “The Ecological Conscience,” Leopold laments the slow pace of conservation progress in the face of a century of effort. He says, “The usual answer to this dilemma is ‘more conservation education.’ No one will debate this, but is it certain that only the volumeof education needs stepping up? Is something lacking in content as well?” As Fowler puts it, “We need to distinguish between education and information. It’s one of the reasons we’re in the fix we’re in. ” When you sit on a hot stove, he says, you get information up your backside that tells you to get off. But when you get an education, you don’t get on the stove in the first place. To give children that education, we need to get children outside, experiencing and appreciating wildlife and wild places that will vanish without all of our active concern.

Carson, of course, would have agreed with Fowler and Leopold, perhaps adding, “If facts are the seeds that produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.” I think that celebrations like Carson’s centenary are part of how we help children make that emotional connection. I’m so glad that Sarah came with me on Saturday, and I’m planning to take her and her siblings outdoors again on May 27, Carson’s actual birthday. We’ll celebrate Carson’s birthday again, not at her house, but in the natural world where she felt most at home.

Returning to Roost

Well, Andrew Blechman's Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World’s Most Revered and Reviled Bird did turn out to be a good traveling book. Its casual writing style and uncomplicated reporting made it easy to follow even when air turbulence kept me from holding the book steady. But I can’t say that I’d recommend the book under all circumstances. It has quirky characters and insights into worlds where few travel (pigeon racing, pigeon showing, pigeon shooting, etc.), but for my taste, Blechman talks too much about people (will he or won’t he get an interview with famous fancier Mike Tyson?) and not enough about pigeon biology, ecology, or behavior. Anyone interested in learning more about pigeons as living creatures, rather than as objects of human obsessions, would probably learn more from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website Project PigeonWatch .

Or maybe I’m just miffed that Blechman doesn’t mention Aldo Leopold when he had the perfect chance. In my favorite section, a synopsis of passenger pigeon history, he quotes John Muir (who describes world’s then-most abundant birds as “a mighty river in the sky”) and Audubon (who spent three days in 1813 observing a flock’s progress, saying, “the light of noonday was obscured as by an eclipse”). But there’s nothing from Leopold’s splendid essay, “On a Monument to a Pigeon.” Leopold eloquently mourns the extinction of birds he calls “feathered lightning,” lamenting that “no living man will see again the onrushing phalanx of victorious birds, sweeping a path for spring across the March skies, chasing the defeated winter from all the woods and prairies of Wisconsin.”

The essay, in A Sand County Almanac, is a poignant reminder to me that, while I believe words can be mighty weapons in the fight for environmental protection, even the finest nature books are poor substitutes for nature herself. As Leopold writes, “There will always be pigeons in books and in museums, but these are effigies and images, dead to all hardships and to all delights. . . . They know no urge of seasons; they feel no kiss of sun, no lash of wind and weather. They live forever by not living at all.” If we don’t want nature books to be mere monuments to past glories, we need to use them in diverse, creative ways to protect—and restore—the future.

Such musings have put me in the perfect mood for my next book, recommended by a thoughtful reader: Return to Wild America, by Scott Weidensaul. In 2003, Weidensaul retraced a famous 1953 cross-country trek across North America by Roger Tory Peterson and British naturalist James Fisher. What will be left, 50 years after their big adventure? Stay tuned (& keep reading). . . .

Our Pines Now Paper

My love for Aldo Leopold's pine trees may seem absurd to some. After all, I've never seen them, and they are, some would say, just trees. The fact that Leopold and his family planted them as part of their personal campaign to rehabilitate a patch of farmed-out Wisconsin may not impress my detractors, either. But I like to think that any reader, tree-philic or not, would value those particular trees after reading Leopold's reflections in his essay, "Pines Above the Snow." Since reading those passages in A Sand County Almanac, I have known just what Leopold means when he says, "I love all trees, but I am in love with pines."

So it was with trepidation that I read the cover article in the latest newsletter of The Aldo Leopold Foundation, "Printed on Pine: A Special Edition of A Sand County Almanac." Managers of Leopold's land decided that the pine stand needed thinning "to promote the health and longevity of the strongest trees," and the felled trees have been crafted into beams for the new Aldo Leopold Legacy Center, opening April 22 in Baraboo. Wood pulp from the harvest has also been processed into paper to print a unique edition of Leopold's Almanac.

The paper was processed with an experimental technique without chlorine or sulfer treatments, then mixed with pulp from other types of trees to create archival quality paper. And money from the limited edition hardcover, priced tentatively at $750, will benefit the Foundation's educational and land stewardship efforts. I think that Leopold, who advocated sustained use, not naive preservation, would approve of this thoughtful step toward sustaining his land and legacy. And with his fine, philosphical mind, honed by many strokes of his ax, he could even have watched the careful harvest. But while I'd love to own one of those special books, I'm glad I was too far away to see those pine trees fall.

Pines Above Snow's Hero

Aldo Leopold's Odyssey: Rediscovering the Author of A Sand County Almanac
by Julianne Lutz Newton, 2006, Island Press

Somehow it seems wrong to post about a book I haven't read yet, especially for just my second entry. But I'm so excited tonight to learn about a new book about Aldo Leopold, author of the essay, "Pines above the Snow," that lends its name to this very blog. Reviewers are calling it an "intellectual history" of Leopold, as opposed to a biography. That means it doesn't step on the literary toes of historian Curt Meine's authoritative bio of Leopold or conflict with writer Marybeth Lorbiecki's accessible, popular volume (A Fierce Green Fire). Thank goodness. Those are great books.

Instead, Newton approaches Leopold as a fellow ecologist, examining his ecological thinking in relation to his contemporaries and to our current understanding of humanity's place in nature. Most important, Newton asks, according to Amy Wildermuth's review in Orion magazine (March/April 2007,pp. 68-69) , "Have we begun to see the land as a whole instead of its parts? Have we examined broader measures to determine land health? Have we adequately confronted our profit-driven culture?"

I can't wait to read Newton's assessment of these fundamental questions that Leopold posed. Reading A Sand County Almanac in grad school was the beginning of my personal odyssey as an environmentalist, and Aldo Leopold's thinking had guided me all along the way.

Reviews of Aldo Leopold's Odyssey can be found at Orion and Audubon