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By Simmons Buntin, January 26, 2012 11:59 am

Well, okay, not a personal letter really, but I just received this email and thought I’d post it here to help get the word out:

Dear Simmons,

Last September, millions of you joined us for 24 Hours of Reality, when we connected the dots between the reality of the climate crisis and the extreme weather events happening with greater frequency all over the world. Together, we saw that most of us don’t need to travel far to see the impacts of climate change. We are already feeling those impacts close to home — with bigger downpours of rain (and snow), bigger floods, and simultaneously longer and deeper droughts. Stronger wind storms have also taken a toll.

Yet the climate crisis is also causing momentous changes in remote regions far from major population centers, in places like Antarctica, Greenland, and the North Polar Ice Cap. Consider that Antarctica, the massive continent at the southern tip of our planet that is about the size of the United States and Mexico combined, holds 90% of all the ice in the world. In fact, it is covered in ice that, at some points, is two miles thick. As global warming increases the melting of that ice — and the movement of vast ice sheets from the continent into the ocean — what happens to the rest of the world?

To better understand the changes taking place near the South Pole and the impacts those changes will have around the world, I will be returning to Antarctica this month with The Climate Reality Project. A large number of civic and business leaders, activists and concerned citizens from many countries will join me during this voyage with many of the world’s leading climate scientists and Antarctica experts to see firsthand and in real time how the climate crisis is unfolding in Antarctica.

Learn more about Antarctica and our other expeditions to discover the reality of the climate crisis. Take a look at our Expedition Headquarters now:

http://climaterealityproject.org/thin-ice/

I first traveled to Antarctica in 1988. At the time, it was already clear that our southernmost continent stood at the frontier of the global climate crisis. Scientists expected that as climate change accelerated, Antarctica would be one of the fastest warming areas of the planet. This prediction has proven true: Today, the West Antarctic Peninsula is warming about four times faster than the global average. In many ways, it is the biggest “canary in the coal mine,” signaling one of the largest impacts of climate change for the entire world.

Even though Antarctica is thousands of miles distant from the rest of the world, the melting ice on this continent should be of paramount concern to all of us. As our planet’s ice melts, sea levels are rising steadily. This increases the risk of storm surges, coastal floods, diminished supplies of drinking water for billions of people, salination of agricultural land near low-lying coastal areas, and hundreds of millions of climate refugees — many of whom will cross borders and may carry with them an increased risk of political instability in the nations to which they move.

To better understand these impacts, we are encouraging our partners and supporters to organize their own “expeditions” close to home. Over the next few weeks, members of The Climate Reality Project will document how the melting of the world’s ice is having an impact on people from Brooklyn to Bangladesh and from the Arctic to Ecuador.

I hope you will join me and The Climate Reality Project as we explore how changes on the most remote continent of the world have become a part of our shared climate reality. And I hope you’ll take the time to explore the impacts climate change is having on your own community.

Learn more about how we are all “living on thin ice.” Take a look at our Expedition Headquarters, and check back again in a few days as we begin to report back about what are learning:

http://climaterealityproject.org/thin-ice/

Thanks for all you do,

Al Gore
Founder and Chairman
The Climate Reality Project

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By Andrew Gottlieb, January 21, 2012 9:31 pm

Oak: One Tree, Three Years, Fifty Paintings

By Stephen Taylor

Princeton Architectural Press, 2012

Reviewed by Andrew C. Gottlieb

There’s something comforting about the ability of an artist to focus solely on one object, and then to work to render that object over time in as many ways as necessary, perhaps until the need to render that object dissolves, whether that brings to the artist relief or depression. In Stephen Taylor’s new book, Oak: One Tree, Three Years, Fifty Paintings, an art book of 112 pages, plates and text, we have the privilege of peering into the world of a British artist who’s done just that.

Oak is a look at Stephen Taylor’s life over the course of about three years as he painted—in varying weathers, distances, lights, times of day—one oak tree. Thus, this book isn’t about trees, per se, nor paintings of trees, nor is it about oaks, in general. It is about Stephen Taylor’s methods—and the ways in which he studies color and uses technology are informative and interesting—it is about his painting, and it is also about his life history: all of this is the story of Stephen Taylor and his work. And it’s about one tree. But even more fascinating is that the book is really about Taylor’s ability to paint that one tree, over and over. And again.

Perhaps the most attractive quality of this book is simply that: insight into the meditative nature of Taylor’s work as an artist. Meditation, in the many traditions of Buddhism for which it plays a part, often recommends—to quiet the mind—closing one’s eyes and focusing on one imagined object. That object might be a candle flame, a spot of color, anything, really, that the practitioner chooses. Once past the freedom to choose an object, one quickly learns it’s remarkably difficult to prevent the mind from straying.

Outside a practice of meditation, one need not be reminded how difficult it is in today’s society to focus on anything, let alone the artistic recreation of one physical object. Writers and artists throw up their hands trying to find time to make art amid the needs of a job, a family, a life. Technology distracts; prescriptions—Ritalin—abound.

Focus like this is a rarity. Even for poets like Denise Levertov, who had an object like Mount Rainier as a talisman, the poems aren’t all about Rainier. How did Stephen Taylor get to a place where he could hike out into the same field for three years to look at and paint one oak tree? There are philosophies of art and objects that aren’t concerned with the backstory. Objects for object’s sake, authorial irrelevance. It’s possible to view, judge, and value these paintings of an oak tree by themselves, in a vacuum. If we do this, we lose the richness of Taylor’s life and work, the lesson of this artist. His story makes him human, and in the 20-page introduction, Taylor provides, succinctly though descriptively, a short history of his life up to The Tree. The critical point: in his late thirties, both his mother and a women he loved died of a brain tumor, the same disease. Shortly after, his father had a stroke and died.

There is grief here, but not sentimentality. Taylor tells us, “I found myself sitting in my childhood home, not quite knowing where I was.” This is about as emotional as Taylor gets. He keeps us linked to the art. “I grew up surrounded by oak trees,” he begins. He takes us through his university studies, early portraits, still lives. Then, following the tragic deaths he’d experienced, an invitation from friends to come and live on a farm in North Essex. Taylor spends the next seven years on this farm.

The plates are gorgeous and the text informative. Some of the work is impressionistic and some realistic, almost like a photograph. I read Oak in one sitting of several hours and spent some of the time showing various plates to my wife—who thought some photographs. The plates alone are vivid, often visibly textured, and enjoyable. The variation in lights and weathers provides a spectacular range of work about this one tree. I found myself flipping pages to compare. One of Taylor’s first realizations was that differences forced him to consider similarities: “I had not expected to see that, when placed next to each other, each oak study would look so distinct that they appeared to be different trees. They made me think about the ways in which there were the same tree.” (Italics his.)

There is science here. Taylor explains crop rotations in the field, soil nutrients, how oak trees replace limbs and prioritize leaf growth. He talks about the technology of his work, how he uses software to deconstruct elements of a photo to understand color variation, how he sees yellows across a plane, greens in a night sky, reds in a dusky blue sky. And he talks about his goals and aims, the more ineffable but crucial parts of any the artist’s drive. “I wanted to make an oak tree that felt both observed and imagined: an emblem embedded in vision.”

The book concludes with a 10-page instructional section. Putting this at the end of the book is a great choice, preventing the book from feeling didactic, and yet offering details on the process to educate the reader, making this more than a pretty coffee table book. Taylor, who teaches, explains about the use of a pochade box and how he approached learning how to paint swallows.

There is one thing I want to improve about this book and that’s its size. I want it larger. Almost a perfect square, about 11 inches to a side, Oak has content to justify a book twice its size. A glossy wrap, large plates. It feels too small now for its content. I want this to be a giant, a book that guests can slowly flip through, admiring the work, taking in the text.

The overarching fascination of the book and work is Taylor’s ability to paint one tree for three years. It’s similar to the focus of the late Roman Opalka’s mission to paint all the numbers, one by one, white on white, from 1 to infinity. One can only call this kind of focus admirable, refreshing, relieving, and for an artist, desirable, when considering the speed and chaos of the world’s information.

Taylor’s in-flight crows and swallows appear alive. One learns to see the red in Taylor’s blue skies. One becomes familiar with one North Essex oak tree, and one asks oneself, Could I focus this much, on one thing? Taylor shows us that in art, as in life, mantra as material can be exceptionally rewarding.

~~~

Andrew C. Gottlieb is the Reviews Editor for Terrain.org. His work can be found online, in many print journals, and in his poetry chapbook, Halflives, (New Michigan Press.) Find him at www.andrewcgottlieb.com.

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By Simmons Buntin, January 19, 2012 3:31 pm

In partnership with state, tribal, and federal agency partners, the Obama Administration today released the first draft national strategy to help decision makers and resource managers prepare for and help reduce the impacts of climate change on species, ecosystems, and the people and economies that depend on them

The draft National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy, available for public review and comment through March 5, 2012, can be found on the web at www.wildlifeadaptationstrategy.gov.

The strategy represents a draft framework for unified action to safeguard fish, wildlife, and plants, as well as the important benefits and services the natural world provides the nation every day, including jobs, food, clean water, clean air, building materials, storm protection, and recreation.

“The impacts of climate change are already here and those who manage our landscapes are already dealing with them,” said Deputy Secretary of the Interior David J. Hayes. “The reality is that rising sea levels, warmer temperatures, loss of sea ice and changing precipitation patterns – trends scientists have definitively connected to climate change – are already affecting the species we care about, the services we value, and the places we call home. A national strategy will help us prepare and adapt.”

Congress called for a national, government-wide strategy in 2010, directing the President’s Council on Environmental Quality and the Department of the Interior to develop it. CEQ and Interior responded by assembling an unprecedented partnership of federal, state and tribal fish and wildlife conservation agencies to draft the strategy. More than 100 diverse researchers and managers from across the country participated in the drafting for the partnership.

The partnership is co-led by Interior’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, representing state fish and wildlife agencies.

The strategy will guide the nation’s efforts during the next five years to respond to current and future climate change impacts such as changing species distributions and migration patterns, the spread of wildlife diseases and invasive species, the inundation of coastal habitats with rising sea levels, and changes in freshwater availability with shifting precipitation and habitat types. The strategy does not prescribe mandatory activities that agencies must take nor suggest regulatory actions; rather, it provides a roadmap for decision makers and resource managers to use in considering climate change implications to their ongoing wildlife and habitat management activities.

Elements of the draft strategy include:

• Descriptions of current and projected impacts of climate change on the eight major ecosystems of the United States, the fish, wildlife and plant species those ecosystems support and the vital ecosystem services they provide;

• Goals, strategies, and actions to reduce the vulnerability and increase the resilience of fish, wildlife, plants and the communities that depend on them in the face of climate change;

• Collaborative strategies and actions that agriculture, energy, transportation and other sectors can take to promote adaptation of fish, wildlife and plants, and utilize the adaptive benefits of natural resources in their climate adaptation efforts; and

• A framework for coordinated implementation of the strategy among government and non-governmental entities from national to local scales.

“For more than a century, state fish and wildlife agencies have been entrusted by the public to be good stewards of their natural resources. To do that, we constantly are called upon to address threats to our natural resources,” said Patricia Riexinger, Director of the Division of Fish, Wildlife and Marine Resources for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. “Today’s pressures on fish and wildlife and their habitats are exacerbated by climate change and together they emphasize the need for increased conservation and science-based management. The strategy is our nation’s insurance for managing healthy and robust ecosystems in uncertain future conditions.”

“This strategy provides a framework for safeguarding America’s fish, wildlife and plant resources and the valuable services they provide over the long-term,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “NOAA is committed to working with federal, state, tribal and local government agencies, non-government organizations and the public in this process because we all have important roles to play in preparing all regions of our nation in a changing climate.”

Leading the development of the strategy is a Steering Committee that includes government representatives from 16 federal agencies, five state fish and wildlife agencies and two inter-tribal commissions. The Steering Committee includes representatives from the California, Washington, Wisconsin, New York and North Carolina fish and wildlife agencies to ensure that all 50 states’ fish and wildlife concerns are considered. The Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies is providing staff support for developing the strategy.

Public comments can be submitted online through the strategy website via a special link. Written comments may be submitted via the U.S. mail to the Office of the Science Advisor, Attn: National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 4401 N. Fairfax Drive Suite 222, Arlington, VA 22203. In addition, there will be five public information sessions in various locations around the country and two webinars to provide details and encourage dialogue on the strategy and its development. To register for these meetings and for more information on the public comment process, visit http://www.wildlifeadaptationstrategy.gov/public-comments.php.

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By Simmons Buntin, January 17, 2012 3:22 pm

A Pavilion resident shows water contaminated by fracking.

Pavillion Area Concerned Citizens (PACC) today denounced attacks from the oil and gas industry and the state of Wyoming in a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency regarding its investigation of contaminated drinking water wells in Pavillion, Wyoming. EPA test results show that hazardous chemicals, commonly used in oil and gas development, contaminated the wells.

Powder River Basin Resource Council and Earthworks’ Oil and Gas Accountability Project applauded PACC for its letter and today launched a national sign on letter campaign urging the EPA to continue with its rigorous investigation and to identify the cause of the contamination.

In December 2011 the EPA released the draft report of its scientific investigation into the connection between oil and gas development and contamination of drinking water wells. After initial testing in August 2010, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) urged residents not to drink their water or use it for cooking. If EPA’s draft is finalized with its current conclusions, it will definitively refute the oil and gas industry’s claim that hydraulic fracturing has never contaminated drinking water wells.

“Pavillion residents made continual requests for help from the state of Wyoming and industry before seeking assistance from EPA to address the contamination issues. For over ten years the state refused to help us. That’s when we went to the EPA. Now it appears the state is joining the industry in fighting this study tooth and nail,” said John Fenton, Powder River Basin Resource Council Board Member and Chair of Pavillion Area Concerned Citizens.

EnCana Oil & Gas USA, which owns and operates over 200 gas wells in the Pavillion area, denies that drilling is to blame for the contamination, stating that many of the toxins “occur naturally.” On January 6, 2012, EnCana sent a letter demanding that the EPA suspend the public comment period on the report claiming that the agency didn’t give the company copies of all the data it used to compile the report. Also last week, the Petroleum Association of Wyoming and Wyoming Water Development Commission accused the EPA of not following its own water-testing protocols by holding several water well samples two days too long before conducting tests.

Pavillion Area Concerned Citizens, Powder River Basin Resource Council, and Earthworks’ Oil & Gas Accountability Project have long fought to require the regulation of fracking and full and public disclosure of the chemicals used in drilling operations.

“These accusations are a political ploy to cover up the results and bring a halt to the study,” said Gwen Lachelt, director of Earthworks’ OGAP. “We’ve seen this time and again with industry shirking responsibility and the government turning its back on the people who bear the impact of energy development in our country,” Lachelt stated.

“The EPA is conducting a scientifically sound investigation of the contamination in the Pavillion area,” said Wilma Subra, chemist, president of Subra Company, and board member of the State Review of Oil & Natural Gas Environmental Regulations (STRONGER). “Holding the samples for a longer time did not compromise the results. If anything, longer hold times make the results less likely to indicate contamination,” Subra stated.

“The American public needs to see this for what it is: a planned assault to undermine the Pavillion study and smear the EPA.” said Deb Thomas with Powder River Basin Resource Council, “EnCana did get one thing right.  The state of Wyoming should hold their own testing events to the same standards they’re demanding from EPA.  The state’s test results should publicly release all critical information, including all the Report-related raw data. That would allow all parties and citizens to understand what regulated and non-regulated chemicals are being found in our drinking water and aquifers.  ”

The area under investigation just east of Pavillion is home to about 160 residents in the middle of the Wind River Indian Reservation, 150 miles east of Grand Teton National Park. Residents share their farming operations with over 200 oil and gas wells that surround their homes. Toxic chemicals were found in nearly nine out of every ten wells sampled. In monitor wells drilled by EPA, benzene, a cancer-causing chemical, was found at 50 times the limit safe for human health along with numerous other toxic chemicals including 2-BE, a chemical used in fracking operations. Through the years contamination has been suspected, EnCana supplied and halted drinking water service to residents. In 2011 EnCana tried to sell its entire Pavillion/Muddy Ridge gas field to Legacy Oil & Gas out of Midland, Texas. Legacy backed out of the sale in late November.

For more information:

• PACC letter to the EPA
• EPA announcement of Pavillion draft results
• EPA Pavillion study page:
• PRBRC website
• PACC website
• Earthworks: Community Survey Reveals Health Impacts in Pavillion, WY Gas-field

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By Simmons Buntin, January 10, 2012 10:08 pm

Terrain.org is pleased to present, with Sky Island Alliance, Writing Down the Jaguar: Writing Workshops in El Aribabi, Sonora, Mexico from March 23-26, 2011.

jaguar.terrain.org

Offered at Rancho El Aribabi in the beautiful Sierra Azul Mountains of northern Sonora, Mexico, Writing Down the Jaguar is a three-day workshop of classes, lectures, readings, and discussions on the craft and techniques of fine writing about the natural world.

Writing Down the Jaguar is for writers who want to improve and market their outdoor, natural history, and environmental writing, as well as environmental educators and activists who want to improve their writing skills for their work. The morning and afternoon workshops and evening sessions will benefit both professional writers as well as those with a personal interest in writing poetry, essays, journalism, screenplays, or fiction that relates to the themes of nature and environment.

Writing Down the Jaguar provides an intimate group experience for writers — with just four participants plus the instructor per workshop!

Participants will select one of the faculty members with whom they will work on writing, reading, and shared critiques.

• Elemental Poetry, led by Simmons B. Buntin
• Focused on Writing: Combining Words and Images, led by Scott Calhoun
• The Full-Throttle Narrative, led by Ken Lamberton
• Write What You See: Screenwriting, led by Dawn Sellers

The rest of the day offers a range of readings and discussions, with ample time to write and socialize. The teaching faculty is composed of professional writers and editors distinguished in their fields, noted for their teaching abilities, and dedicated to helping participants improve their skills. The cost for the workshop, including travel from Tucson, food, and lodging, is $450 per participant.

Come write down the jaguar with us in the rugged, wondrous Sierra Azul!

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By Simmons Buntin, January 4, 2012 10:32 am

By Erik Hoffner

I recently did an assignment for Yale Environment 360 reporting on Sweden’s forestry industry. I was excited to see the country, where “my people” are from, and which is regarded as the greenest in the world. For these reasons I already felt proud, but my purpose there would turn out to give me pause.

The trip made it clear that the country’s forestry model, which Sweden likes to say is the most sustainable forestry system in the world, does not work. Federal regulations on logging were replaced in 1993 by an act requiring that every logging operation balance production with conservation, allowing companies to be their own bosses and operate under a “freedom with responsibility” framework.

Earlier this summer the Swedish Forest Agency revealed that over a third of all the recent cutting activities, 37%, violated the tenets of the model by prioritizing production over conservation. That is perhaps not surprising: voluntary programs like this rarely work, no matter what country you’re from.

Swedes identify strongly with nature and polls show that they prioritize conservation and recreation over logging by a long shot. However, there’s a big disconnect between sentiment and action and between the built and natural environments, exacerbated by the great distance between the country’s main population centers in the south and the logging tracts of the north.

One sunny afternoon in Stockholm I asked Dr. Ulf Swenson about this. We sat on a bench outside his lab at the Swedish Museum of Natural History where he works as a senior research scientist and had a buoyant conversation, but his face clouded when the talk turned to the logging in the north. A recent visit there left him “terrified by how little forest was left.”

That’s a pity, because this is where most of the country’s oldest and richest natural forests are, and where much of Europe’s biodiversity calls home. In order to meet their production goals, though, forestry companies are pushing aggressively into these areas and the loss of biodiversity is increasing. Perhaps the Swedes’ high level of trust in each other, which has been extended to these companies via the forestry model, is being betrayed when it comes to the trees.

While there I also joined an excursion of “biodiversity hunters,” folks with varying biology backgrounds from Ph.D.s to students, who search for rare species of plants and animals whose presence can keep forestlands from being logged. Several of them were from Helsinki, interestingly. They told me that they’d given up on preventing the loss of Finland’s forests and instead work here, where there is still a chance to save a significant portion of the region’s natural boreal forests and intact biodiversity.

I go into much more detail on the specific problems in the Yale piece (which was subsequently picked up by National Geographic), which is also resplendent with damning quotes not only from conservationists but also logging company reps and official sources, one of which is a high official in the country’s version of the EPA, who calls the Swedish forestry model hopelessly naïve.

But you’ll perhaps get an even better feel for the issues and the landscape by watching this quick video interview with two conservationists in the northern county of Jamtland, and from the images I’ve collected on my website:

It was great to see where my people come from, even if it was to break a rather unpleasant story. But it’s a huge question: if the so-called greenest country in the world can’t do forestry sustainably, who can?

~~~

Erik Hoffner is a freelance photojournalist and Outreach Coordinator for the award-winning magazine, Orion. His work appears in Earth Island Journal, Grist, and The Sun. He is also an editorial board member of Terrain.org.

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By Andrew Gottlieb, January 1, 2012 11:21 am

The Way of the Woods: Journeys Through American Forests

By Linda Underhill

Oregon State University Press, 2009

Reviewed by Derek Sheffield

In The Way of the Woods, Linda Underhill is an engaging, widely informed guide who leads us through various American forests from Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains to Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula. As we follow her through old-growth hemlock and sequoia, she enlarges our journey by drawing on poetry (Dickinson, Keats, Neruda, Basho, cummings), philosophy and religion (Buddha, Odin, Chief Seattle, Thich Nhat Hanh, Plato, Christianity, Lao Tzu, Druid), history (Native Americans, colonists, explorers), and science and natural history (Thoreau, Leopold, Carson, Muir).

All this lore becomes part of Underhill’s invitation to get your legs out from under the desk and into the woods. In a style that is accessible and, at times, lyrical, the spiritual walks hand in hand with the pragmatic. In “Ode to Autumn,” for example, she waxes poetic about the colors and scents of leaves, but also takes a realistic look at the problem of deer over-browsing our forests where hunting is part of the solution. Just as we learn that trees were sacred to Odin, we become acquainted with some wonderful ecological terms such as subnivian space and scuzz.

As we follow Underhill from forest to forest, meeting some lively, modern-day druids along the way, we hear the stories of some of our nation’s iconic trees. They are stories of sweetness, and they are stories of struggle. In one essay, we are persuaded that, like wine grapes, the sugar maples and their delicious sap possess their own terroir, and then, in the next, we learn of the decimation of old-growth eastern hemlock due to its susceptibility to the invasive woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae). Other stories include the western red cedar, Sitka spruce, and sequoia.

One question that Underhill poses is, Do we need a new story? After all, the Quinault and Sumerians had stories and beliefs that underscored the sacred importance of their respective cedar trees. If we had such a mythology, would we act to preserve rather than destroy? Maybe science will give us this story.

One question I have is, Where is Big Pharma on the eco-front? Underhill tells us that these companies have recently “gone to the forests of Madagascar to study the rosy periwinkle, a tropical shrub that produces two substances found to be effective in treating Hodgkin’s disease and childhood leukemia.” Shouldn’t Pfizer and other pharmaceutical corporations be the superfund for preservation efforts? Wouldn’t that make their industry sustainable? Their profit, like people and just about everything else, depends on the diversity of flora in our forests.

Maybe what I appreciate most in this marvelous collection is Underhill’s ability to write about the spiritual without sounding sappy (sorry, couldn’t help it) or too detached. This collection is an ode to being in the woods. When she’s in the woods, she says she’s “connected to the joy of being alive” and she feels as if she’s “inside the mind of the universe.” I know exactly what she means. It’s “like being in love.” Truly trees are our first and last cathedrals. Underhill has been inside some of the anthropogenic ones—Notre Dame, St. Peter’s Basilica, and St. Paul’s—but she says that “none of them compares with the beauty and majesty of a forest, where the trees are alive and reaching for the sky, where the light is always changing, where wind, rain, fire, and ice are all celebrants in the daily liturgy of life on planet Earth.”

Amen to that.

~~~

Derek Sheffield’s A Revised Account of the West (2008) won the Hazel Lipa Environmental Chapbook Award. His poems have appeared in Orion, Wilderness, Poetry, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, and The Georgia Review. He lives on the east slope of the Cascade Mountains in Washington and teaches writing and literature at Wenatchee Valley College, including Northwest Nature Writing, a team-taught learning community that blends biology and writing.

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By Andrew Gottlieb, December 18, 2011 11:30 pm

The Way of Natural History

Edited by Thomas Lowe Fleischner

Trinity University Press, 2011

Reviewed by Andrew C. Gottlieb

Thomas Lowe Fleischner has delivered a gem of a little book in this collection of 21 essays and one poem. It’s a slim, well-designed book, even a pleasure to look at, and the cover photo — a pond, a pathway of large, worn stones, leading from the bottom of the photo to the top, the stones partially submerged in the algae-covered water and leading to land — much in the way of a peaceful Zen garden, suggests the focus of much of the content: mindful walking, contemplation of the wild and its inhabitants, the long generous path that nature and natural history offers when one’s eyes and mind are open.

I once asked a poet friend, a woman who’s a naturalist by day-job, how she got to be that way. In the sense of, I’d like to be a naturalist, too, and she simply said, with only the slightest wry humor, I think you just go outside and look at stuff.

So how did Natural History come to seem so complicated? Or dry and boring, the idea of dusty log books, text books, scientists sitting in the woods or in boring laboratories staring at plant cells through microscopes? Maybe it’s the word History. We don’t call it Natural Science but Natural History. In the engineering wing, we say Computer Science, but in the field, staring at a grasshopper or a hummingbird or a weasel, we call it Natural History.

Strange. The title Naturalist seems much more alive, and that’s what this book is filled with: essays by authors with varying backgrounds—ecologists, professors, poets, activists, biologists, conservationists, even a musician—all of whom are naturalists in the true sense of the word. And that’s what their writing addresses: what is natural history? What does it mean to be a Naturalist? And why is this more crucial now than ever before?

What makes this book a pleasure to read is that it’s not simply a collection of pieces telling stories about experiences in the woods. The coyote I saw. The forest I visited. These writers take it a step further, linking the natural world to important elements of humanity, to what we gain or lose — patience, peacefulness, connection, relatedness — via the process. I looked forward to reading Jane Hirshfield’s essay: but her’s is the poem that opens the collection. “The Supple Deer” sets the stage. Jane watches a deer leap between the pales of a tall fence. Her jealously is the focal point of the poem—not of the deer, but of the fence. “To be that porous, to have such largeness pass through me.”

This is the experience of the world the naturalist is lucky to get. To be surrounded by the natural world, to feel submersed in a pool of awe, to feel joy, to gain understanding of something larger than us. Fleischner’s own introductory essay links Natural History to Buddhism and meditation, setting the stage for the revelation that meditation and the practice of a naturalist are kin. “Natural history is a practice of intentional, focused attentiveness and receptivity to the more-than-human world, guided by honesty and accuracy,” he tells us. “Our attention is precious, and what we choose to focus it on has enormous consequences.” What Fleischner’s getting at is that natural history is not just valuable but crucial. The more our society becomes urban-dense, over-populated, economically-strained and technology-focused, the less we can see the wild around us. Fleischner’s book is about the third or fourth book I’ve read in the last six months or so discussing students and their disassociation with nature. Fleischner cites Richard Louv’s term “nature deficit disorder” and recalls Thich Nhat Hanh’s point that we “become the bad television programs that we watch.” We are what we watch.

These writers watch the wild. John Tallmedge’s piece of memoir takes a historical look at how he became a naturalist, someone his daughter claims is “crazy about nature.” He cites Darwin, Muir, Thoreau, Robinson Jeffers. It’s a good essay early in the collection putting natural history in context of its development, its forefathers. Robert McFarlane takes a fascinating overnight hike into the frigid winter cold in England’s Cumbrian mountains. At the end of the cold, solitary trip, we see that the “…sun was now full in the eastern sky, and in the west was the ghost of the moon, so that they lay opposed to each other above the white mountains: the sun burning orange, the moon its cold copy.” McFarlane too reminds us that “we have begun a turning away from a felt relationship with the natural world.”

Yet natural history doesn’t have to happen in the woods but can be found in one’s backyard. Charles Goodrich takes us to his garden to see aphids, mantises, ladybugs. Goodrich echoes other writers in showing that natural history can teach us the relatedness of all beings, understanding our link to the ecology of our world. Laura Sewall deepens this, in her essay showing how and what we watch determines our understanding of the world and the way we live. “Unless we commonly perceive the interdependent reality within which we are all embedded, we will never get ourselves out of the ecological mess we are in,” she says. Our attention leads to pattern recognition in the world, the realization of interdependence.

What these writers are pointing to are the patterns and relatedness underlying all things; for example, a predator-prey relationship: if we remove all the wolves, the deer over-populate and eat and make extinct certain kinds of flora. Kathleen Dean Moore makes us aware of bears in Alaska, her ability to live safely but warily among them. Cristina Eisenberg takes us close to wolves and her study of their effect on their territory in Glacier National Park.

Three of these essays derive from the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, and the Long Term Ecological Research project happening there co-led by the previously-mentioned writers, Charles Goodrich and Kathleen Dean Moore. A project bringing writers to the woods to log their observations, the scope is 200 years, and observation is the key element. Alison Hawthorne Deming and Scott Russell Sanders show us northern spotted owls, rotting logs, shelf fungi, Douglas firs, all while they contemplate the place and consequences of humans in the world.

As with any collection, there are stronger and weaker pieces. Paul Dayton’s essay feels more unfocused, and is lazy with the words ‘as’ and ‘eventually,’ overused here as attempted indicators of time or simultaneity. This is a weakness of grammatical structure and variety, though, not one of his understanding of the worlds of ecology or natural history. Richard Thompson’s piece feels randomly added-in, the simplest in terms of message or contribution.  

There is both a real intelligence and peacefulness to this collection. It brings together concrete visions and stories from the natural world by a variety of ecological leaders, while examining the reasoning behind the critical nature of the process of what we call Natural History. It will make a reader want to get up and go for a hike or simply sit and look at some aspect of the natural world. For those who continue reading, delaying their hike, the essays will explain and deepen an understanding of why the process of natural history not only feels so good, but is important to our lives as humans in the world. As R. Edward Grumbine writes, “Natural history is a supreme antidote to abstraction; what we choose to pay attention to makes all the difference in the world.”

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Andrew C. Gottlieb is the Reviews Editor for Terrain.org. His work can be found online, in many print journals, and in his poetry chapbook, Halflives, (New Michigan Press.) Find him at www.andrewcgottlieb.com.

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By Megan Kimble, December 12, 2011 9:49 am

A mature buffelgrass plant pokes out of rocky terrain (photo courtesy of Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum)

Buffelgrass is like the cockroach of the Sonoran desert. This invasive species, introduced from the African savannah, has gained a foothold in southern Arizona, crowding out native plants and threatening native wildlife populations. Dense buffelgrass stands compete with native plants for precious desert water, crowd out germinating seeds with their deep roots, and spread wildfires through an ecosystem ill-adapted to fire.

But since 2005, a group of dedicated volunteers have been working to eradicate buffelgrass from disturbed public lands. Volunteers from the Arizona Native Plant Society, the Arizona Sierra Club, Tucson Audubon Society, Sonoran Desert Weedwackers, and University of Arizona Soil, Water, and Environment Club have worked to dig up buffelgrass stands and prevent future invasions by planting native species. On December 3, 48 volunteers worked in an area of severely disturbed Bureau of Land Management (BLM) public lands at the base of the Waterman Mountains in the Ironwood Forest National Monument northwest of Tucson.

In the mid-2000s, this site had one of most severe infestations of buffelgrass in the entire Tucson Basin. Starting in 2005, the Arizona Sierra Club organized volunteers to manually remove buffelgrass on these BLM-managed lands. Since 2008, a core group of Arizona Native Plant Society volunteers has worked to regularly apply herbicide to emerging buffelgrass, plant native trees, and install water catchment areas to encourage desert restoration. Over 66 native plant species and thousands of planted native trees have taken hold across the site. Though invasive buffelgrass on this site is now under control, the soil remains charged with seed, so maintenance is constantly required.

Though hardly a new phenomenon—think Christopher Columbus and smallpox—globalization has opened the gates for the introduction of non-native species into ecosystems throughout the world. Invasive species are estimated to cost about $138 billion in environmental damage and losses each year, and are estimated to affect 1.7 million acres of U.S. wildlife habitat each year. Other examples of invasive non-native species wreaking havoc on ecosystems include yellow starthistle, which now dominates almost 10 million acres of once-productive grazing land in northern California, and, in the animal world, the carrier pigeon, which, having spread through cities across the country, is estimated to cost over $1 billion annually in property damage.

Although many non-native species aren’t invasive and don’t disrupt their new environments, problematic disruptions arise when non-native species, freed from the pressures of co-evolved natural predators, thrive at the cost of native plants and animals. After habitat destruction, invasive species are considered to be the greatest threat to ecosystem biodiversity.

To help with future buffelgrass projects in Arizona, contact volunteer coordinator John Scheuring at jfscheuring@hotmail.com.

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By Andrew Gottlieb, December 8, 2011 10:09 pm

Learning the Valley: Excursions into the Shenandoah Valley
By John Leland

University of South Carolina Press, 2010

Reviewed by Rachel Furey

In the preface to John Leland’s collection of essays Learning the Valley, the author states the book is “intended primarily” for his thirteen-year-old son, Edward, a dedication to the adventures the two have shared together exploring the natural wonders in Rockbridge County, Virginia, and a means through which, in coming years, his son can discover Leland’s own memories and insights to their escapades. Leland also hopes that other readers benefit from the collection, particularly that they “learn the land they live in” and come to recognize the nature that exists in their very own yards.

Given the preface, readers may expect several father and son moments to appear throughout these twenty-five short essays. However, Edward makes only rare appearances in the text and often for not more than a few lines at a time. But while those readers expecting a memoir recounting family moments may be disappointed, nearly every reader is likely to find at least one essay of interest. Leland’s book covers a wide range of topics, including natural wonders such as rock castles, man-made reminders of earlier times like rock walls, and frustrating outdoor pests, including mosquitoes. In “Flying Frass”—frass means insect poop—he urges readers to connect with the natural world in a unique manner. He suggests they try “aphid poop,” writing, “Pop it in your mouth and lick—you’re eating star spit, the sweat of gods.” Readers wouldn’t be the only ones to eat these secretions; ants feast on it as well.

None of the essays are longer than six pages, making the book a manageable read. Each essay is a tightly packed section of prose offering readers the lyrics of a memoir combined with the facts and insights of a nature or travel guide, as well as a hint of history that weighs more heavily in some essays than others. In “Poison Ivy,” readers learn how scientists have tested the plant on lab animals, that Thomas Jefferson grew poison ivy in his garden, and why some patients consumed poison ivy, making for a story that will shed new light on a plant familiar to the majority of readers.

Leland proves a patient writer, taking the same care with each sentence as he does with his son when cutting a Christmas tree: the end result has to be just right. Combining a careful eye for detail and an ear for sound, he’s able to construct vivid lines such as the one he uses to describe cedar apple rust fungus in “Cedars”: the fungus “looks like a purplish brown misshapen golf ball glued to a branch for the two years it takes to mature.”  Leland also shows adeptness for incorporating metaphor. In “Forest Communities,” he writes, “ten thousand generations of foraging squirrels, burying and forgetting their harvest, can move, if not mountains, then trees up mountains, and it is they who are thought to have wrought this slow miracle of reclothing the Appalachian Mountains.”

Although beautiful and lyrical sentences frequent the book, Leland doesn’t entirely shy away from humor. In “Sassafras,” he writes about sassafras tea and states, “What I teach my son might just poison him in ways undreamt of by the FDA.” Moments of humor include Leland’s son, such as in “Vegetable Armature”: “When he was younger, Edward and I picked the thorns off the younger locusts and licked and applied them to our foreheads, becoming rhinoceri.” And in “Flying Frass,” he writes, “while most caterpillars are content to let their loads drop where they will, one heaves its frass into the air…They call it scatapulting.” Leland captures the beauty of the valley. He also doesn’t hesitate to capture the less-than-beautiful attributes of some of the creatures that inhabit that valley.

As evidenced by his lengthy notes section, Leland’s research is thorough, serving as a sort of ballast around which to weave his sentences. Essays such as “The Natural Bridge,” in which quotes frequently appear, including the last line of the essay, may rely too heavily on research at the sacrifice of Leland’s lyrical voice; and sometimes, as a result of the amount of material packed into an essay, the ending feels strained as he tries to tie too much together at once. What often keeps the book from turning into a science lesson laced with history are Leland’s brief, and yet strategically placed, references to his son, as well as his willingness to humbly incorporate some very human moments of his own. In “Massanutten,” he mentions that he plays war games with his son, then adds, “I keep them from my cadets and colleagues, who think such daydreams inappropriate for English teachers.” In “Caves,” Leland shows a similar self-awareness combined with enthusiasm when he writes, “Every now and then I have to crawl through passages narrow enough to fool me into thinking I’m trapped, but which release me with a scrape and a twist.” His enthusiasm for the material shines particularly bright in moments such as these, moments in which the author admits to scraping through mud in order to investigate a cave, moments many readers may like to see more of.  

Ultimately, Leland’s title does begin with Learning, a clue to the layering of history and facts that he works into each of his essays, and while his own experiences with the valley are sometimes overshadowed by the rich history incorporated into the essays, he does allow readers to experience vivid moments with him, such as when he finds himself among migrating Monarchs, writing, “Looking left and right, I count one, two…and on and on and on, until I tire of being cerebral and run with the wind and the waves of butterflies and flap my arms and would fly south with them.” While readers may not so eagerly fly with each of Leland’s essays, given the wide range of topics and slight shifts in tone, most readers are bound to find at least a few essays in the collection that make them feel something like being surrounded by migrating monarchs and wanting to take flight, riding the lyrics of the prose to essay’s end.

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Rachel Furey is currently a Ph.D. student at Texas Tech. She is a winner of Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize for Fiction and Crab Orchard Review’s Charles Johnson Student Fiction Award. Her work has also appeared in Women’s Basketball Magazine, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Waccamaw Journal, Hunger Mountain, The Prose Poem Project, Sweet, and elsewhere.