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.

by McKay Jenkins
Random House, 2011
Reviewed by Andrew C. Gottlieb

McKay Jenkins new book is the Fast Food Nation of the toxic chemical world, and he’s written an eye-opening, scary, and potentially impactful text. He’s broken the book into chapters with titles including The Body, The Home, The Tap, The Lawn, and The Big Box Store, and this is a clue to the content: Jenkins is educating readers about chemical dangers lurking in the most common of places: your basement, your kitchen, your water, your green lawn, your favorite mall.

Importantly, Jenkins reveals that the chemicals corporations have been developing and selling in past decades—polyvinyl chloride (PVC), petrochemicals (think: thousands of consumer products like plastics, cosmetics, food storage containers) flame retardents, pesticides and herbicides (think: 2,4-D or 2,4-dicholorphenoxyacetic acid)—hundreds of which are unregulated and commonly in use today,  have the ability to migrate into our bodies, accumulating in potentially disruptive, carcinogenic, and/or lethal amounts.

Jenkins worries not about the single exposure to a chemical but a lifetime’s accumulation, and his research points out potential links to increases in cancer, autism and other diseases. As Jenkins indicates in his prologue: “most of the tens of thousands of chemicals used commercially have been around…far too short a time for researchers to figure out…what impact they might have on our health.”

Jenkins’s own health scare prompted this book. Doctors cut a benign tumor out of his hip. Prior to surgery, he was asked all kinds of questions about his prior chemical exposure, making him realize that we have only a vague understanding of the links between most toxic chemicals and the health consequences.

The political ramifications are that change only occurs at the corporate level when populations of people get scared about what’s in their or their children’s bodies. Thyroid & hormone disruption, autism, cancer: a sixty year old may shrug, but when a mid-thirties new mother finds out that her breast milk may contain flame retardants, lead, phthalates, or other toxic chemicals, all of which may have the potential to disrupt a child’s hormonal, reproductive or other bodily system, she listens. And can adjust spending habits, spending money on organic or other products free from toxic chemicals. As Jenkins points out, corporations worry less about federal regulations: for many chemicals, regulation is nonexistant, and lobbyists in Washington can deter most changes. But losing consumers and revenue is a different story.

This is a scary book, but not without optimism and suggestions for change. After Sweden prohibited PBDE’s (polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or flame retardant compounds) in late 1999, levels in Swedish breast milk dropped 30 percent in immediate years following. The book’s appendix is a solid resource of ideas, how-tos, and names or URLs to companies selling healthy non-toxic products. Change is possible, Jenkins tells us.

Jenkins’s research is impressive: the notes alone for the book are a healthy 50+ pages. My only quibble is the text could use an indicator to tell the reader when to refer to a reference in the notes section. None exist in this edition.

It’s a small quibble. If you have any interest in your body, your house, your physical enviroment, and the potential for toxic chemicals moving between the two, get a copy of this book now.

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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.)

I was able to catch up with Simmons on the last day of the conference to talk with him about AWP 2011. Here are some audio clips of our conversation.

Terrain.org was sharing a booth (one of over 500) with Hawk and Handsaw. The old-fashioned form of face-to-face social networking is alive and well:

On working the Terrain.org booth with a marketing mindset:

Making connections with other environmental publications and poets published by Salmon Poetry:

Simmons presented for the panel: “Who Makes the Best Student? How to Grow Your Program With Non-traditional Majors.”

His second presentation, “Environmental Writing in the Age of Global Climate Change,” is a heavy topic. How can humor help?

What is the best way to handle information overload?

Any advice for those concerned about the environment, but not sure where to start?

Invited to the Irish Embassy by his publisher, Salmon Poetry, Simmons talks about the evening, and Guinness:

At the Salmon Poetry reading, featuring a wide range of poets:

And for the last day at the conference:

I asked Simmons if he had any final thoughts for Terrain.org’s blog community, to which he replied, “Wish you were here!” Maybe next year. In the meantime, stay tuned for details about AWP’s 2012 conference which will be held in Chicago.

In the North Atlantic Ocean, scientists from the Sea Education Association recently concluded a twenty-year study examining plastic debris. By dragging nets through the water and across the surface more than 6,000 times, they collected plastic and marine debris. More than half of the expeditions collected plastic, much of it in small pieces from low-density products such as plastic bags.

At the Midway Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, more than 2,000 miles from the nearest continent, photographer Chris Jordan started documenting the effects of plastic debris on the albatross. This photo illustrates the amount of plastic consumed by the birds, evident in carcasses on the atoll:

In a short video, Jordan says, “Beaches of the future will be made of plastic.” He demonstrates how every wave that comes to shore brings with it thousands of pieces of plastic debris, much of it as small as a grain of sand.

Public media station KQED recently produced a news story about ocean plastic and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In the video, Charles Moore reports that his lab analysis concluded “that the small bits of plastic outweighed the naturally occurring zooplankton six to one, plastic to plankton. More trash than life.”

The story contains footage of the ocean, blue as far as the eye can see, and small confetti-like pieces of plastic glimmering under the surface. The ten-minute segment is worth watching:

For current research by the 5 Gyres Institute, read Ocean Plastic: Part One – 5 Gyres Institute.

In 2002, the PBS program, American Experience, produced a documentary film about his life and work. Born in San Francisco in 1902, Adams was hyperactive and drawn to nature at a young age. His pursuit of music became a substitute for formal education. Relying on a photographic memory, he taught himself piano at age twelve and trained to be a concert pianist.

On a family trip at age fourteen, Adams was strongly influenced by the magnificent beauty of the Yosemite Valley. He later wrote, “From that day, my life has been colored and modulated by the great earth gesture of the Sierra.”

His editor and assistant, Andrea Gray Stillman, recalled, “He always said he was formed by those early landscape experiences and where he was living… I mean, once you’ve lived a while in San Francisco, you can feel …that fog kind of tiptoeing in, where it changes the sounds and kind of gets in to your bones. Or when there’s a glorious clear day…it’s just breathtakingly beautiful. And that was just part and parcel of Ansel.”

Conservationist, environmentalist, Sierra Club member, Adams’ inspirational work elevated the craft of photography to fine art. On the process of creating photographs, Adams said, “I’m interested in expressing something which is built up from within, rather than just extracted from without.” He talked about seeking something in the landscape that did not actually exist. An image filtered by perspective. A work of art to inspire a nation.

Consider the man working with his glass plates, moving the camera into position to “make” a picture, creating something new in the space where his mind intersected with the environment around him. Adams again, “Only when the photographer grows into perception and creative impulse does the term make define a condition of empathy between the external and the internal events.”

Today, Adams’ archives are managed by the Center for Creative Photography, located in Tucson at the University of Arizona. Free to the public, more than 2,600 photographs are available for viewing online.

In geographical terms, gyre refers to a rotating system of ocean currents. It is here that floating debris accumulates. The research efforts aim to document plastic pollution in each of the five, global gyres located in the North and South Pacific Ocean, the North and South Atlantic Ocean, and the Indian Ocean.

Anna Cummins, co-founder of the 5 Gyre Institute, warns that the scourge is not confined to a single, mythical “Texas-size garbage patch.” She insists that no ocean is free of plastic pollution.

Part of the research effort will focus on whether or not humans are being affected by eating fish that have ingested plastic debris contaminated with pollutants such as DDT and PCBs.

5 Gyres’ Rio-to-Cape Town voyage will be aboard Pangaea Explorations’ racing sloop, Sea Dragon. The Sea Dragon crew will communicate via blogs with more than 1,850 Los Angeles school children through AMRF’s Ship-2-Shore Education program. Charles Moore, AMRF’s founder, was the first put the Great Pacific Garbage Patch on the map.

The expedition leaves on November 8. For updates, follow the Sea Dragon blog or the 5 Gyres blog.

Photo courtesy of Sanjay Acharya/Wikimedia

The University of California, Davis, has unveiled a teaching and research facility designed to integrate food and beverage production with the scientific study of nutrition and health. The 34,000 square foot complex cost $20 million and was funded with private donations.

The facility integrates academic research, technological advances (including the first wireless wine fermentation system), and environmentally sustainable design. Administrators hope the facility will serve as a model for production systems across the nation and around the world. It has also been designed to meet the international standards for LEED Platinum certification.

LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum certification is the highest rating for buildings meeting criteria established by the U.S. Green Building Council. The certification system utilizes third-party verification for structures or communities that, according to the USGBC, were “designed and built using strategies aimed at improving performance across all the metrics that matter most: energy savings, water efficiency, CO₂ emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts.”

Located at the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science on the UC Davis campus, and managed by the Department of Viticulture and Enology, the facility will serve as a laboratory for production methods that conserve resources. The facility itself is designed to be self-sustainable in terms of energy and water usage. Environmentally friendly features include the use of photovoltaic cells to generate solar power, rainwater capture for landscaping and toilets, recycled glass for flooring, and sustainably harvested lumber.

Ongoing plans for the facility include capturing carbon emissions from production processes to reduce any impact on global warming, resulting in a carbon zero footprint.

And the products? Everything produced at the facility – from wine, beer and dairy products – will meet state and federal mandates for human consumption. It might not be the next wine tasting stop on the drive from Sacramento to the Napa Valley, but the facility is sure to bolster the international reputation of UC Davis as a leading educational resource for food science and production.

President Barack Obama’s first year in office has been a good news/bad news story for the environment, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

Overall, the Center for Biological Diversity gives the president’s environmental record so far a “C.” Take a look at Obama’s first-year report card and share it with other people who care about wildlife. You can also read the Center’s press release for more details.

Obama’s record, while much better than Bush’s, is disappointing so far. He has not lived up to his campaign promises by a long shot. Luckily, there’s still time to get him back on track: We have to show him America cares.

So the Center will be keeping up the pressure with scientific studies, legal action, grassroots organizing, and media work — and I’m counting on your help this year to get the word out to your networks, make calls to decision-makers, and send emails on breaking endangered-species issues.

Here’s to a better year in 2010 and great improvements in how Obama protects endangered species, wild places, and our degrading climate.

Winter clouds over Saguaro National Park east of Tucson. Photo by Simmons Buntin.

11 Climate-Related Dangers in Parks in AK, AZ, CA, CO, FL, ID, IN, MD, MT, NJ, NY, ME, NV, NM, NC, ND, TN, TX, UT, VA, WA, and WY.

Editor’s note: Video is available at: http://www.vimeo.com/nrdcbroadcast/videos

Denver and New York (October 1, 2009) — Climate change from human activity is the leading threat to wildlife, plants, water and ice in 25 of America’s national parks, according to a new report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Rocky Mountain Climate Organization (RMCO).

The report, National Parks in Peril, comes on the heels of the introduction of clean energy and climate legislation in the U.S. Senate, as well as Ken Burns’ national parks series on PBS, which has put parks in the center of America’s national conscience.

The RMCO/NRDC report outlines 11 climate-related threats and the needed remedies for the following national parks (in alphabetical order):  Acadia National Park; Assateague Island National Seashore; Bandelier National Monument; Biscayne National Park; Cape Hatteras National Seashore; Colonial National Historical Park; Denali National Park and Preserve; Dry Tortugas National Park; Ellis Island National Monument; Everglades National Park; Glacier National Park; Great Smoky Mountains National Park; Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore; Joshua Tree National Park; Lake Mead National Recreation Area; Mesa Verde National Park; Mount Rainier National Park; Padre Island National Seashore; Rocky Mountain National Park; Saguaro National Park; Theodore Roosevelt National Park; Virgin Islands National Park/Virgin Islands Coral Reef National Monument; Yellowstone National Park;Yosemite National Park; and Zion National Park.

“As a country, we need to ensure that our parks have a future that is as promising as their past,” said Theo Spencer, senior advocate for the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Clean energy legislation is now moving in Congress that would help preserve our national treasures, while creating more jobs, economic growth and national security.”

The report outlines climate-related threats in 25 parks spanning 22 states. The top risks include: loss of snow and water, rising seas, more extreme weather, loss of plants and wildlife, and more pollution.

“Climate disruption is the greatest threat ever to our national parks. We could lose entire national parks for the first time, as Everglades, Ellis Island, and other parks could be submerged by rising seas,” said Stephen Saunders, president of the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and the report’s principal author. “To preserve our parks, we need to reduce the heat-trapping gases that are threatening them, and begin managing the parks to protect resources at risk.”   

Remedies, which are outlined in the report, include enacting comprehensive clean energy legislation, including reducing carbon pollution by at least 20 percent below current levels by 2020; increasing investment in energy efficiency; and accelerating the development of clean energy technologies. The National Parks Service also needs to prioritize this issue by enacting policies to mitigate the impacts of global warming; and should have more funding for research and to reduce the effects of climate change.

Bill Wade, chair of the executive council of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees (CNPSR) and former superintendent of Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, said: “National parks are often referred to as the ‘canaries in the mine shafts’ when it comes to climate change. By their very characteristics and locations, impacts and effects of climate change are noticed in national parks first and are a forewarning about what will happen elsewhere. That’s why this report is particularly important.”

For the full report, including the list of the National Parks, go to:  www.rockymountainclimate.org

The report and more information about national parks and global warming is also at: http://www.nrdc.org/land/parksinperil/

Among many other outstanding contributions, it includes “Culture and the Environment — A Conversation in Five Essays:” Scott Russell Sanders (Simplicity and Sanity), Reg Saner (Sweet Reason, Global Swarming), David Gessner (Against Simplicity), Lauret Savoy (Pieces toward a Just Whole), and Alison Hawthorne Deming (Culture, Biology, and Emergence).

From The Georgia Review editor Stephen Corey’s introduction:

The keynote work, Scott Russell Sanders’s “Simplicity and Sanity,” puts forward a wide-ranging examination of humankind’s relationship to the natural world and argues for its radical overhaul.

Reg Saner’s “Sweet Reason, Global Swarming” embraces Sanders’ fears for the literal survival of the human race but gives the argument a different center — one that conjures a dark figure from all of our high school history classes, Thomas Malthus, whose lone claim to renown is a theory we have let slip into the background while confronting myriad more immediate-seeming dangers.

David Gessner then confronts Sanders with “Against Simplicity: A Few Words for Complexity, Slippiness and Joy,” claiming that his sometime-mentor/idol may be entering the fray with the wrong weapon in hand.

Lauret Edith Savoy, in “Pieces toward a Just Whole,” initially lauds Sanders’ position but concentrates the bulk of her essay on certain racial and economic factors that she believes are being overlooked in virtually all discussions of environmental catastrophe.

Alison Hawthorne Deming’s “Culture, Biology, Emergence,” the most sweeping of the five essays in this conjured five-way conversation, moves across eons of time and many disciplines of study to reach a conclusion that is, paradoxically, more desparate and more hopeful than those presented by her four compatriots.

If you are familiar with The Georgia Review (which has no relation to Terrain.org though many of the contributors mentioned above appear in our online pages), then you know that its contributions are of the highest quality. With this environmentally focused issue, the journal clarifies the focus by some of our foremost thinkers and writers, literary or otherwise.

We encourage you to check it out.