Here’s a book that might appeal to a tree-hugger: American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree by Susan Freinkel. The book details the chestnut blight that destroyed what some considered America’s most magnificent tree and the century-long fight to bring it back.
Personally, I have never seen a chestnut that I’m aware of, at least partly because their native range was essentially the Eastern seaboard extending to the Western slopes of the Appalachian Mountains. One intriguing fact is that one of the last surviving stands of chestnut is in East Salem Wisconsin – probably planted by a Civil War soldier who carried nuts home from the South.
It’s also noteworthy that the same debates are still going on about the emerald ash borer, gypsy moth, etc., and the same – ineffective – methods are still used to fight them. We haven’t learned much in 100 years, apparently.
Unfortunately, the book destroyed more trees than needful – it’s a relatively short story told in too many words for any but a real chest-nut.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
What we're reading now
On a cold, rainy night, the D&R Society gathered in front of the fire at the Laurel Tavern. In typical independent fashion, since we couldn’t exactly choose a book this month, we read six among the six of us. The Book of Yaak, The Lost Grizzlies and The Ninemile Wolves, all by Rick Bass. Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert; Coyote’s Canyon; and An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field, all by Terry Tempest Williams.
I think we all agreed that Rick Bass has a more consistent voice and one we are all more comfortable with, but a bit too strident, political and polemical when it comes to protecting his beloved Yaak valley. I suppose we would all feel the same way about our own chosen homes. His stories of wolves prompted a story by Harry and David about watching a pack of nine wolves on a kill in Yellowstone – the kind of sight that would have been unheard of anywhere a decade ago, even for skilled naturalists in the wild. This pack had an audience of RV-bound wolf-watchers sitting comfortably in lawn chairs at the side of the road.
It’s harder to say what any of us thought about Terry Tempest Williams. Doug loved the descriptions of the land and recommended his book (Unspoken Hunger?) to daughter Josie. David almost didn’t finish Red and Harry was a bit put off by it also. I thought Coyote’s Canyon lived on the mystical plane – which is OK if you want religious or religio-cultural experiences, but it invites the danger of making the land, animals and even people into mythology and thus separating them from the real things. That’s how we got into our current mess – by objectifying the world and believing that God gave us all these things to do with as we wish. Sure, the Navajo myths don’t have the same outcome, but there’s nothing fundamentally different about the process of objectification that’s going on, is there?
We also lamented that Aldo Leopold remains virtually unknown outside of Wisconsin. I looked him up. Google has 833 individual references, but many of them are closely related. If you search for land ethic, Leopold is the first reference.
Next meeting date Wednesday, Dec. 19. Book TBD.
I think we all agreed that Rick Bass has a more consistent voice and one we are all more comfortable with, but a bit too strident, political and polemical when it comes to protecting his beloved Yaak valley. I suppose we would all feel the same way about our own chosen homes. His stories of wolves prompted a story by Harry and David about watching a pack of nine wolves on a kill in Yellowstone – the kind of sight that would have been unheard of anywhere a decade ago, even for skilled naturalists in the wild. This pack had an audience of RV-bound wolf-watchers sitting comfortably in lawn chairs at the side of the road.
It’s harder to say what any of us thought about Terry Tempest Williams. Doug loved the descriptions of the land and recommended his book (Unspoken Hunger?) to daughter Josie. David almost didn’t finish Red and Harry was a bit put off by it also. I thought Coyote’s Canyon lived on the mystical plane – which is OK if you want religious or religio-cultural experiences, but it invites the danger of making the land, animals and even people into mythology and thus separating them from the real things. That’s how we got into our current mess – by objectifying the world and believing that God gave us all these things to do with as we wish. Sure, the Navajo myths don’t have the same outcome, but there’s nothing fundamentally different about the process of objectification that’s going on, is there?
We also lamented that Aldo Leopold remains virtually unknown outside of Wisconsin. I looked him up. Google has 833 individual references, but many of them are closely related. If you search for land ethic, Leopold is the first reference.
Next meeting date Wednesday, Dec. 19. Book TBD.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Biloxi ain't what it used to be
and it never will be again.
That's just my conclusion, of course, after spending a week working to restore homes that were damaged 2+ years ago by Katrina. There were 50 volunteers in our group from Wisconsin, Illinois and Connecticut. That's a pretty typical week for the Back Bay Mission that we were working with. There are other agencies with volunteers as well. So far, they have barely scratched the surface. It may take 10-15 years for the Gulf coast to recover from Katrina and when it does, it will be totally changed. Before the storm, much of the Gulf coast looked like a (very poor) version of Wisconsin Dells, with 100 miles of homes, restaurants, small hotels and T-shirt shops lining the white sand beach for 100 miles. Now it looks like Atlantic City with a few 30-story casinos standing along the beachfront separated by vast areas of -- nothing. Blocks and blocks of slabs and concrete steps. Debris still hanging 20 feet up in the trees.
Part of the problem is that federal aid is being diverted. (See last week's NY Times story at: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/16/us/16mississippi.html). Part is FEMA's total incompetence. What you get when you elect politicians who believe government is the problem. Part of it is that Mississippi has so few public service agencies that they can't manage the reconstruction. Part is speculation by landowners who hope to make fat profits selling out to casinos or condo developers. Part is the fact that flood insurance has increased by 2000 percent so homeowners and mom & pop businesses can't afford it. The result is that maybe 100,000 homes are still missing or unlivable.
The people we are helping are incredibly grateful. I never heard so many people say "thank you" in my life. But many are not even on the list to get help yet. They are living in toxic FEMA trailers or with relatives. I don't know what any of this has to do with books about nature - although nature sure asserted herself here. It's just as much about human nature.
In the photo: Pat Tucker, Eagle River; myself; Phil Haslanger and Dave Michaels, Madison.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Western voices
The blog will be silent for the next week while I travel with a group to Biloxi to help rebuild houses damaged by Katrina. In the meantime, here are some thoughts on two of our alternative books for November: The Ninemile Wolves, by Rick Bass and Coyote’s Canyon by Terry Tempest Williams. I can’t imagine how these two could have occupied the same stage at the book festival. Other than sharing a love for the Western landscape, they seem to see with different eyes and speak with different voices.
Rick Bass clearly sees the wolves of Ninemile Valley as his blood brothers, magically able to slip the bonds of civilization like smoke and shadows, yet tragically drawn into the pulsing magnetic field thrown off by the domestic way of life, by ranches and roads, cattle and property lines. The Western dilemma. We can’t live like wolves. In these days and even in this place, even the wolves can’t live like wolves. Yet, he can’t bring himself to shuck his Western mindset enough to come out and actually say right out that he too is trapped like them. Rather, like a professor in a cowboy bar, he adopts a too-gruff tone of voice and reminds us that he too carries a gun and can kill. It’s not persuasive and it’s not meant to be. In fact, his very ambivalence is eloquence and reveals his emotional tie with the land and the wild.
Terry Tempest Williams doesn’t try to disguise anything. Reading her is like listening to an old hippie who has been wandering in the desert since 1969. She sees the spirit in all things, even to the point of not seeing – or willing not to see – the physical and just plain animal side. I was surprised to learn that she is a naturalist because her stories dwell so much in myth and mystical meaning that nature seems like only the pale backdrop for her dramas of the heart.
Listen:
When traveling to southern Utah for the first time, it is fair to ask if the redrocks were cut would they bleed. And when traveling to Utah's desert for the second or third time, it is fair to assume that they do, that the blood of the rocks gives life to the country.
Oral tradition reminds one of community and community in the native American sense encompasses all life forms, people, land and creatures. Landscape shapes culture. Aldo Leopold states, ”the rich diversity of the world’s cultures reflects the corresponding diversity in the wilds that gave them birth.” Perhaps we can begin to find the origins of our cultural inheritance in the land. Not just backward, but forward to understand the profound interconnectedness of all living things. As Gregory Bateson says, if the world be connected, then thinking in terms of stories must be shared by all mind or minds whether ours, or those of redwood forests or sea anemones.
Rick Bass clearly sees the wolves of Ninemile Valley as his blood brothers, magically able to slip the bonds of civilization like smoke and shadows, yet tragically drawn into the pulsing magnetic field thrown off by the domestic way of life, by ranches and roads, cattle and property lines. The Western dilemma. We can’t live like wolves. In these days and even in this place, even the wolves can’t live like wolves. Yet, he can’t bring himself to shuck his Western mindset enough to come out and actually say right out that he too is trapped like them. Rather, like a professor in a cowboy bar, he adopts a too-gruff tone of voice and reminds us that he too carries a gun and can kill. It’s not persuasive and it’s not meant to be. In fact, his very ambivalence is eloquence and reveals his emotional tie with the land and the wild.
Terry Tempest Williams doesn’t try to disguise anything. Reading her is like listening to an old hippie who has been wandering in the desert since 1969. She sees the spirit in all things, even to the point of not seeing – or willing not to see – the physical and just plain animal side. I was surprised to learn that she is a naturalist because her stories dwell so much in myth and mystical meaning that nature seems like only the pale backdrop for her dramas of the heart.
Listen:
When traveling to southern Utah for the first time, it is fair to ask if the redrocks were cut would they bleed. And when traveling to Utah's desert for the second or third time, it is fair to assume that they do, that the blood of the rocks gives life to the country.
Oral tradition reminds one of community and community in the native American sense encompasses all life forms, people, land and creatures. Landscape shapes culture. Aldo Leopold states, ”the rich diversity of the world’s cultures reflects the corresponding diversity in the wilds that gave them birth.” Perhaps we can begin to find the origins of our cultural inheritance in the land. Not just backward, but forward to understand the profound interconnectedness of all living things. As Gregory Bateson says, if the world be connected, then thinking in terms of stories must be shared by all mind or minds whether ours, or those of redwood forests or sea anemones.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Returning the wolf to Yellowstone
Harry sent this review from New West media in Missoula and thought you all would enjoy it. Having just finished The Ninemile Wolves by Rick Bass, this is like the next chapter in the story. There’s a link to New West at the end.
Reviewed by Allen M. Jones, 6-12-05
For all the bad news that comes with living in the Rocky Mountain West (high land values, low wages, xenophobia, myopic county commissioners), the good news still mostly tips the scales down hard.
Hunting and fishing, skiing, a few ranchers for a dollop of local color. For the politically minded, you also have an available portfolio of endless, personal jihads. Running through the issues, you can find a flag to be raised for damn near any political taste. Coalbed-methane? Got you covered. Brucellosis and buffalo? Step right up. Heap-Leach Mining? Walk this way. Then you’ve got your Yellowstone wolves. Mention it in a certain kind of bar and it’s like turning on the propane, striking a match. A hot button, emotionalized topic start to finish, it’s been the western equivalent of stem cell research, abortion rights. Everybody has an opinion, and everybody’s an expert. Since the reintroduction ten years ago, when thirty-one wolves were released into the park (they’ve since burgeoned into a population of around three hundred), at least thirty wolves have been killed illegally.
Only a few weeks ago, a collared wolf was found dead and poisoned in Idaho’s Frank Church Wilderness. And yet, take a drive through Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley at dusk and try to count the hundreds of wolf watchers clustered above the highway with spotting scopes and binoculars, each of them hoping for even the briefest glimpse of some vestigial wildness. This is the polarization of the west in microcosm. Stirred into this roiling stew of outfitters versus biologists, locals versus tourists, comes the newest bone, Decade of the Wolf: Returning the Wild to Yellowstone. Co-authored by biologist Douglas W. Smith, current head of the Yellowstone Wolf Recovery Project, and award-winning nature writer Gary Ferguson, it is, more than anything else, a soothing, well-considered exercise in scientific moderation and narrative description. Taking us from the first raising of an acclimation pen gate through to the final, wildly successful dispersal of wolves into seventeen distinct packs, there is little in this thoroughly well written, even-handed account for even the harshest critic to take issue with.
Start with the statistics, with the incidental facts and trivia. “People are often surprised to learn that the average age of wolves in Yellowstone at time of death...is only 3.4 years...Their lives unfold against great risk “ from having their skulls kicked in and limbs and teeth broken, to death at the hands of rival packs." The numbers make for great cocktail conversations. “Over the past hundred years in all of North America there have been less than twenty cases of wolves attacking humans, not one of which has resulted in a fatality." (Howard’s note: There was a documented fatal attack in Saskatchewan last year, apparently by wolves who had become acclimated to humans and had previously attacked dogs.)
In introducing the Lamar Valley (a center of wolf activity), the authors write, “It was here that the last wolf disappeared from Yellowstone, killed in 1926. And here that three groups of reintroduced wolves would in 1995 once more walk into the life of the wild, taking their pack names from natural features laid down on maps long before: Crystal Creek, Rose Creek, and Soda Butte."
Later, in one of the “portrait of a wolf" chapters, it’s mentioned that out of the original thirty-one wolves released, only a few played pivotal roles in the success of the project. “Genetic studies done in 1999 showed that 79 percent of all wolves in Yellowstone...were related to the outstanding alpha female Number 9." Separately, both Gary Ferguson and Doug Smith have written on the wolf recovery project, but this is apparently the first time they have worked together. And while Ferguson is listed as a co-author, the narrative is told from the point of view of Doug Smith. Given the depth of Smith’s experience (he was present when the first wolf was released), he has to be considered one of the foremost authorities. It can be assumed, however, that like most scientists, his writing style might lean toward the antiseptic, the dry, failures certainly not shared by Ferguson.
And so it is here, with this pairing of legitimacy and narrative skill, the vivid retelling of anecdote and the near novelistic recapturing of certain crucial moments in the development of the wolf recovery project, that the most obvious value of the book lies. Whether it’s in the descriptions of what it’s like to lean out of a helicopter with a dart gun, or to track a radio collar signal, or to recapture a wolf with nets (“In that face, grizzled and gray with age, was the look of a beautifully fierce and resolute animal. The only wolf skull I have in my office in Mammoth is that of 27 “ a reminder of her incorrigible, incorruptible spirit."), you leave the pages feeling that you’ve been given privileged insight, that you know some sort of secret.
For instance, the moment the recovery project might be said to have truly begun came when Carter Niemeyer, “sent up north to kindle the collaring operation that will eventually land wolves in Yellowstone," tries to win the trust of an independent trapper by participating in a skinning contest, slipping the skin from a previously trapped wolf on the man’s living room carpet. The arguments for wolf reintroduction are manifest. At one point, the authors discuss the surprising benefits to the park's ecology: “[The elk are] moving away from certain feeding areas along park streams and rivers that have poor visibility.
Preliminary research suggests that such movements are allowing willow, cottonwood shoots, and other vegetation to be 'released,' flourishing where they haven’t for decades. With the return of such plants come beaver, and with the construction of beaver dams, a loose toss of...muskrat, amphibians, fish, waterfowl, even songbirds..."
But the strongest argument, at least for my money, comes with the opportunity for unprecedented, observational research. The authors compare releasing the wolves into this unpopulated habitat to astronauts landing on an untouched planet. “This reintroduction has brought with it the prospect of learning how wolves settle landscapes, kill prey, deal with interpack skirmishes, socialize, mate, raise their pups, even fend off grizzly bears...Some researchers claim that what they learn in a given year in this national park would in other places take a decade.” of course, by its very definition, wildness is inaccessible.
Even now, it’s a rare thing to see a Yellowstone wolf. That’s as it should be. Were they readily available, they would certainly no longer be quite what we imagine them to be, what we in some measure need them to be. Fortunately, we have emissaries as talented and conscientious as Smith and Ferguson who are willing to make the trip back from the wilderness to happily describe what they’ve seen.
http://www.newwest.net/book-reviews/
New West is a next-generation media company dedicated to the culture, economy, politics, environment and lifestyle of the Rocky Mountain West. Our core mission is to serve the Rockies with innovative, participatory journalism and to promote conversation that helps us understand and make the most of the dramatic changes sweeping our region. New West Publishing LLC, headquartered in Missoula, Montana, was founded in 2005 by Jonathan Weber.
Reviewed by Allen M. Jones, 6-12-05
For all the bad news that comes with living in the Rocky Mountain West (high land values, low wages, xenophobia, myopic county commissioners), the good news still mostly tips the scales down hard.
Hunting and fishing, skiing, a few ranchers for a dollop of local color. For the politically minded, you also have an available portfolio of endless, personal jihads. Running through the issues, you can find a flag to be raised for damn near any political taste. Coalbed-methane? Got you covered. Brucellosis and buffalo? Step right up. Heap-Leach Mining? Walk this way. Then you’ve got your Yellowstone wolves. Mention it in a certain kind of bar and it’s like turning on the propane, striking a match. A hot button, emotionalized topic start to finish, it’s been the western equivalent of stem cell research, abortion rights. Everybody has an opinion, and everybody’s an expert. Since the reintroduction ten years ago, when thirty-one wolves were released into the park (they’ve since burgeoned into a population of around three hundred), at least thirty wolves have been killed illegally.
Only a few weeks ago, a collared wolf was found dead and poisoned in Idaho’s Frank Church Wilderness. And yet, take a drive through Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley at dusk and try to count the hundreds of wolf watchers clustered above the highway with spotting scopes and binoculars, each of them hoping for even the briefest glimpse of some vestigial wildness. This is the polarization of the west in microcosm. Stirred into this roiling stew of outfitters versus biologists, locals versus tourists, comes the newest bone, Decade of the Wolf: Returning the Wild to Yellowstone. Co-authored by biologist Douglas W. Smith, current head of the Yellowstone Wolf Recovery Project, and award-winning nature writer Gary Ferguson, it is, more than anything else, a soothing, well-considered exercise in scientific moderation and narrative description. Taking us from the first raising of an acclimation pen gate through to the final, wildly successful dispersal of wolves into seventeen distinct packs, there is little in this thoroughly well written, even-handed account for even the harshest critic to take issue with.
Start with the statistics, with the incidental facts and trivia. “People are often surprised to learn that the average age of wolves in Yellowstone at time of death...is only 3.4 years...Their lives unfold against great risk “ from having their skulls kicked in and limbs and teeth broken, to death at the hands of rival packs." The numbers make for great cocktail conversations. “Over the past hundred years in all of North America there have been less than twenty cases of wolves attacking humans, not one of which has resulted in a fatality." (Howard’s note: There was a documented fatal attack in Saskatchewan last year, apparently by wolves who had become acclimated to humans and had previously attacked dogs.)
In introducing the Lamar Valley (a center of wolf activity), the authors write, “It was here that the last wolf disappeared from Yellowstone, killed in 1926. And here that three groups of reintroduced wolves would in 1995 once more walk into the life of the wild, taking their pack names from natural features laid down on maps long before: Crystal Creek, Rose Creek, and Soda Butte."
Later, in one of the “portrait of a wolf" chapters, it’s mentioned that out of the original thirty-one wolves released, only a few played pivotal roles in the success of the project. “Genetic studies done in 1999 showed that 79 percent of all wolves in Yellowstone...were related to the outstanding alpha female Number 9." Separately, both Gary Ferguson and Doug Smith have written on the wolf recovery project, but this is apparently the first time they have worked together. And while Ferguson is listed as a co-author, the narrative is told from the point of view of Doug Smith. Given the depth of Smith’s experience (he was present when the first wolf was released), he has to be considered one of the foremost authorities. It can be assumed, however, that like most scientists, his writing style might lean toward the antiseptic, the dry, failures certainly not shared by Ferguson.
And so it is here, with this pairing of legitimacy and narrative skill, the vivid retelling of anecdote and the near novelistic recapturing of certain crucial moments in the development of the wolf recovery project, that the most obvious value of the book lies. Whether it’s in the descriptions of what it’s like to lean out of a helicopter with a dart gun, or to track a radio collar signal, or to recapture a wolf with nets (“In that face, grizzled and gray with age, was the look of a beautifully fierce and resolute animal. The only wolf skull I have in my office in Mammoth is that of 27 “ a reminder of her incorrigible, incorruptible spirit."), you leave the pages feeling that you’ve been given privileged insight, that you know some sort of secret.
For instance, the moment the recovery project might be said to have truly begun came when Carter Niemeyer, “sent up north to kindle the collaring operation that will eventually land wolves in Yellowstone," tries to win the trust of an independent trapper by participating in a skinning contest, slipping the skin from a previously trapped wolf on the man’s living room carpet. The arguments for wolf reintroduction are manifest. At one point, the authors discuss the surprising benefits to the park's ecology: “[The elk are] moving away from certain feeding areas along park streams and rivers that have poor visibility.
Preliminary research suggests that such movements are allowing willow, cottonwood shoots, and other vegetation to be 'released,' flourishing where they haven’t for decades. With the return of such plants come beaver, and with the construction of beaver dams, a loose toss of...muskrat, amphibians, fish, waterfowl, even songbirds..."
But the strongest argument, at least for my money, comes with the opportunity for unprecedented, observational research. The authors compare releasing the wolves into this unpopulated habitat to astronauts landing on an untouched planet. “This reintroduction has brought with it the prospect of learning how wolves settle landscapes, kill prey, deal with interpack skirmishes, socialize, mate, raise their pups, even fend off grizzly bears...Some researchers claim that what they learn in a given year in this national park would in other places take a decade.” of course, by its very definition, wildness is inaccessible.
Even now, it’s a rare thing to see a Yellowstone wolf. That’s as it should be. Were they readily available, they would certainly no longer be quite what we imagine them to be, what we in some measure need them to be. Fortunately, we have emissaries as talented and conscientious as Smith and Ferguson who are willing to make the trip back from the wilderness to happily describe what they’ve seen.
http://www.newwest.net/book-reviews/
New West is a next-generation media company dedicated to the culture, economy, politics, environment and lifestyle of the Rocky Mountain West. Our core mission is to serve the Rockies with innovative, participatory journalism and to promote conversation that helps us understand and make the most of the dramatic changes sweeping our region. New West Publishing LLC, headquartered in Missoula, Montana, was founded in 2005 by Jonathan Weber.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
A death in the family
We are sad to say that our wonderful Doberman, Aoife, died yesterday from a heart condition. I don’t mean to insult anyone’s pet, but Aoife was the most beautiful dog in the world (and knew it) and she knew more words and grammar than any dog we have ever known. In the Ulster Cycle of Gaelic mythology, Aoife is a warrior princess, but with us she was just our princess. We all miss her terribly.
If you're a fan of Gaelic mythology, you can find the story of Aoife and Cuchulainn at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cúchulainn
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