The World is Blue

For the past five weeks, oil has been spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, and chemical dispersants have rained down upon the ocean’s surface. Judging by the news this morning, the massive oil leak may have been stopped — but for how long, only time will tell.

What of the ocean, and waters most of us will never see? Thankfully, there are many, many books that can take you there, and lead you to new levels of understanding and appreciation. The Land Library has many volumes warning of the degradation of the seas (such as Sylvia Earle’s book pictured above), plus many more that celebrate, with word and image, the startling blue world in our midst. Such a book is one of our latest additions: Fishes of the Open Ocean, a thickly illustrated resource to the world of the open sea, ranging from tiny drift fish to plankton-straining whale-sharks, and streamlined predators such as tuna, marlin, and sailfish. This book, along with Sylvia Earle’s inspiring call to arms, helps us appreciate the oceanic web of life, and how fragile something so vast actually is.

pictured above: The World is Blue: How our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One by Sylvia A. Earle, Fishes of the Open Ocean: A Natural History & Illustrated Guide by Julian Pepperell & Guy Harvey

We hope to post a small upcoming piece on exactly why the Rocky Mountain Land Library has so many books on the marine environment, but for now, here’s just a few books from our shelves — each one can be an enormous help as we all experience the unprecedented disaster in the Gulf:

Voyage of the Turtle by Carl Safina, The Whale by Philip Hoare, The Open Sea, Volume I: The World of Plankton by Alister Hardy (a wonderful work that we’ve treasured since our early days as readers!), The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson

And, it’s hard to think of a collection of books on marine life without the words & images of Richard Ellis. He has a entire shelf to himself, and we can definitely recommend these three excellent titles:

Three by Richard Ellis: Singing Whales and Flying Squids: The Discovery of Marine Life, Tuna: A Love Story, Encyclopedia of the Sea

For more on the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill, please visit our two earlier posts:

– Lessons from Prince William Sound, Alaska

–The Natural History of the Gulf Coast

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Crickets and Katydids, Concerts and Solos

We who are preeminently creatures of vision instinctively appreciate most the world of light; we must learn to savor the full range of nature’s world of sound. — Vincent Dethier

In 1993 entomologist Vincent Dethier won the John Burroughs Medal for distinguished nature writing for his book Crickets and Katydids, Concerts and Solos, a beautifully written natural history of the common crickets, locust and grasshoppers of the northeast — with a special emphasis on their songs. From Mount Washington to the salt marshes of Cape Cod, Dethier’s ear was bent toward meadow grasshopper, marsh locust, sphagnum and snowy tree cricket. No simple task, as Dethier reports: “The singing insects are wary, alert, clever in the art of concealment, and as deceptive as the most skilled ventriloquists.”

This is a wonderful book, full of insights that could only have come from a patient naturalist such as Vincent Dethier. As an added bonus, this book is graced throughout by exceptionally fine insect drawings by Abigail Rorer.

and here’s a few more related books from the Land Library’s entomology collection!

Field Guide to Grasshoppers, Katydids, and Crickets of the United States by John L. Capinera, Ralph D. Scott, & Thomas J. Walker, Guide to Night-Singing Insects of the Northeast (with CD) by John Himmelman, and The Songs of Insects (with CD) by Lang Elliott & Wil Hershberger

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Trying to get it Right After 500 Years

In the very first case to come before the United States Supreme Court involving a significant Native American issue, Chief Justice John Marshall ominously described the American judicial system as “the courts of the conqueror.” — Walter Echo-Hawk

Native Americans have been especially impacted by the decisions of our Judicial system, especially at the level of the U.S. Supreme Court. Often times these decisions were made with all the prevailing prejudices, blind spots, and assumptions of the society at large. Distinguished author and lawyer Walter Echo-Hawk has written a new book, In the Courts of the Conqueror: The 10 Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided, that chronicles the sad pursuit of a legal justification for the denial of human rights, the appropriation of property, and actions that would be described as genocide today.

Echo-Hawk is unflinching in his analysis of past judicial wrongs, but he is also remarkably balanced and forgiving: “Americans are fundamentally fair….They can be relied upon to confront injustice and do the right thing, once educated about pressing indigenous needs.” And he sees great hope in an enlightened judiciary: “The function of the law is to serve a changing society and uphold its values, not to hold it prisoner to an unjust past.”

Walter Echo-Hawk has been a staff attorney for the Native American Rights Fund for over 35 years, with a special emphasis on religious freedoms, and the repatriation of Native American remains. In addition to litigation, Echo-Hawk worked on major legislation such as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and federal religious freedom legislation. He serves as an Associate Justice for the Supreme Court of the Pawnee Nation. Walter Echo-Hawk is also the creator and chairman of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation.

Here are a few more books from the Land Library’s shelves on Native Americans and the legal system:

Conquest by Law: How the Discovery of America Dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of Their Lands by Lindsay Robertson, Braid of Feathers: American Indian Law and Contemporary Tribal Life by Frank Pommersheim, along with Pommersheim’s most recent book, Broken Landscape: Indians, Indian Tribes, and the Constitution (not pictured), How the Indians Lost Their Land: Law and Power on the American Frontier by Stuart Banner, Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations by Charles Wilkinson

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By the Light of a Coleman Lantern: The Alaskan Field Sketches of William D. Berry

How much do we love this book? Well, every time we stumble across a copy of William D. Berry’s Alaskan Field Sketches in a second-hand bookstore, we let out a yelp, and then dutifully, and without question, purchase yet another copy for future generations of Land Library readers, visiting naturalists, and artists.

William D. Berry: 1954-1956 Alaskan Field Sketches (edited by Elizabeth Berry) preserves over 200 pages of Berry’s meticulous and faithful drawings from nature. A wide variety of Alaska’s wildlife is fully rendered by Berry, among them: beaver, lemming, moose, wolverine, Dall sheep, Willow ptarmigan, Arctic tern, Snowshoe hare, wolf, walrus, lynx, Arctic ground squirrel, Snow bunting — along with twenty-four pages devoted to caribou, that most iconic of arctic animals.

Elizabeth Berry (William’s wife) provides commentary throughout, and we especially loved this insight into the artist as a young boy: “Bill completed his first book — on slugs — when he was five.”

William Berry (1929-1979) left relatively few finished works, but we should be satisfied with this classic collection containing a wealth of materials from his field sketches, notebooks, and letters.

Two treasured volumes at the Land Library’s Waterton Canyon Kids Library are William Berry’s wonderful prairie book, Buffalo Land, and Deneki: An Alaskan Moose (pictured above). Plus, you guessed it, one of those used bookstore “eureka-finds” of William D. Berry: 1954-1956 Alaskan Field Sketches!

Grizzly Bear Ursus arctos (2 of 11 pages devoted to Alaska’s bears).

Bill’s field sketches were his record of what he saw. They were done in the field, but often finished hours later in the cabin, sometimes by the light of a Coleman lantern. — Elizabeth Berry

Red Fox Vulpes vulpes

Bill’s fascination, and sometimes obsession, with recording the working processes of the natural world filled up most of his time….His joy in life came from observing and drawing living things; he saw amazing details in the most drab creature or place. — Elizabeth Berry

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Slow the Clock, Sharpen the Senses

“Lightning moving from Hozomeen slowly west into red clouds turning gray, then black; rising wind. Sheet lightning pacing over Little Beaver, fork lightning striking Beaver Pass.
This morning a sudden heavy shower of rain and a thick fog. A buck scared: ran off with stiff springy jumps down the snowfield. Throwing sprays of snow with every leap: head held stiffly high.” from Gary Snyder’s Lookout Journal.

Recently, we have been working with many of the Land Library’s forestry books. One unexpected outcome of that work has been the discovery (right in our midst) of a very fun and quirky collection of books on the history and lore of fire towers, fire lookouts, and similar stations of both lonely isolation and peaceful solitude (take your pick!).

Not many of us will have such an opportunity that both slows the clock and sharpens the senses. But, hopefully we can carry a few insights into our daily lives from the people who have scanned the vast and lonely horizons. Come to think of it, the Land Library has more than a few books on wilderness poets, monks and hermits. Maybe they all deserve a section of their own?

Pictured above: Mountains of Memory: A Fire Lookout’s Life in the River of No Return Wilderness by Don Scheese (a lookout in the central Idaho wilderness for over ten years), and Black Sun, by Edward Abbey (like the novel’s main character, Abbey was a fire lookout along the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park).

For more information on the romance and history of fire lookouts, follow this link to the Forest Fire Lookout Association!

And here’s just a few more volumes from the Land Library’s shelves:

Poets on the Peaks: Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen & Jack Kerouac in the North Cascades by John Suiter, Adirondack Fire Towers by Martin Podskoch, The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, Look Out: A Selection of Writings by Gary Snyder.

Nehasane: Fire Observer — An Adirondack Woman’s Summer of ’42 by Frances Boone Seaman, Go Tell it on the Mountain: A Collection of Lookout Writings, edited by J. Johnson Maughan.

I went out in my alpine yard and there it was…hundreds of miles of pure snow-covered rocks and virgin lakes and high timber. — Jack Kerouac
Kerouac was a fire observer at the Desolation Lookout in 1956.

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You, Me, Exxon & BP

“I refer to Prince William Sound as one of the two most beautiful places on earth. I leave it to each of you individually to decide what the other one is. We all have a Shangri-La in our hearts and minds. Think of yours when you contemplate what has happened to ours.” — Don Moore, city manager of Cordova, Alaska.

As the oil continues to flow in the Gulf of Mexico, we’ve been consulting some lessons of history preserved on the Land Library’s shelves. On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker ran aground on Alaska’s Bligh Reef, spilling over 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound, home to salmon, sea otters, seals and seabirds — not to mention, a thriving fishing industry.

Riki Ott, a former commercial fisherwoman from Cordova, Alaska, provides a riveting account of the spill, the clean-up, and its lingering aftermath in her 2008 book Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. Ott traces the twenty-year struggle of Cordova residents as they deal with the nation’s largest oil spill, and one of the longest-running court cases in U.S. history.

None of this is fun, but to forget these stories won’t serve the Gulf Coast well in the months (and years) ahead. For additional historical grounding on the Gulf of Mexico spill, here’s a few more volumes from the Land Library’s shelves:

The Spill: Personal Stories from the Exxon Valdez Disaster by Sharon Bushnell & Stan Jones, Oil Spill! by Melvin Berger & Paul Mirocha (from our Waterton Canyon Kids Library).

Fishcamp: Life on an Alaskan Shore by Nancy Lord, The Fate of Nature: Rediscovering Our Ability to Rescue the Earth by Charles Wohlforth (drawing on lessons from Alaskan coastal life and the 1989 Prince William Sound oil spill).

For more on the Gulf Coast’s remarkable natural history, please scan our recent post, The Gulf Coast: Downstream and Part of Our World

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Assume the Stillness of a Tree

J.A. Baker spent ten years observing the peregrines along the east coast of England. His obsession yielded a mountain of field notes and this classic study of a most elusive bird. The Peregrine is also one of the most unusual (and memorable) books we have on our shelves. Barry Lopez sums it up perfectly when he wrote that Baker’s book was “one of the most beautifully written, carefully observed, and evocative wildlife accounts I have ever read.”

As you read The Peregrine it’s almost impossible not to slow down, re-read, and copy down passages. Here’s one of our favorites, on the simple art of watching:

“To be recognized and accepted by a peregrine you must wear the same clothes, travel by the same way, perform actions in the same order. Like all birds it fears the unpredictable. Enter and leave the same fields at the same time each day, soothe the hawk from its wildness by a ritual of behavior as invariable as its own. Hood the glare of your eye, hide the white tremor of the hands, shade the stark reflecting face, assume the stillness of a tree.” Advice a young Jane Goodall would appreciate!

also pictured above: Two paintings by C.F. Tunnicliffe, from his book The Peregrine Sketchbook — the subject of one of our earlier posts!

And here’s three more books on the peregrine falcon, from the Land Library’s shelves on raptors:

The Peregrine Falcon by Derek A. Ratcliffe, Return of the Peregrine: A North American Saga of Tenacity and Teamwork by Tom J. Cade & William Burnham, In Pursuit of the Peregrine by R.B. Treleaven

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The Spirited Release of the Pinon Pine

The pinon pine grows where few trees can survive. This sturdy scrub conifer dominates the natural history of vast areas of our arid western states. Exceptionally large, nutritious pinon nuts are prized by pinyon jay, squirrel, and man. Native peoples use its pitch for waterproofing baskets, its pollen for ceremonial use, and its wood for building.

For all you would like to know about this remarkable tree, we can definitely recommend Ronald Lanner’s The Pinon Pine. Here is Lanner on yet another gift of the pinon: “Pinon firewood comes into its own on dark nights in midwinter, when warmth and cheer and a bit of excitement is needed. Nobody who has sat before a roaring, pitch-boiling, bubbling scented fire of pinon can think of it as the mere consumption of wood. It is the spirited release of centuries of brilliant sunlight absorbed under a cloudless southwestern sky…” The pinon pine has found its storyteller!

Ronald Lanner must have pine-pitch running through his veins. Here’s three more of his books on North America’s conifers:

The Bristlecone Book: A Natural History of the World’s Oldest Tree, Conifers of California, Made for Each Other: A Symbiosis of Birds and Pines.

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A Natural History of North American Trees

You come home after a good day in the field, pantlegs smelling of sage, cradling a cluster of needles still in their sheath. A field guide supplied you a genus and species under the noonday sun. Now Donald Curloss Peattie’s masterful study can take you the next step and root you in a tree’s particular natural history, especially its niche in the cultural history of a region.
For each tree, Peattie gives us a concise list of vital features, followed by a more wide-ranging essay. It’s clear that he not only knows a tree’s length and breadth, but also its sensual delights. And last, but not least, in one of the most inspired pairings of authors and illustrators, Paul Landacre’s bold scratchboard etchings puts this work in a class by itself!

pictured above: A Natural History of North American Trees (the most recent single-volume edition of Donald Curloss Peattie’s original two volume set), and one of the original volumes from that set, A Natural History of Western Trees.

And here’s a typical page from Peattie & Landacre’s classic work:

It was a perfect collaboration, the words of Donald Curloss Peattie and the bold imagery of Paul Landacre:

Black Walnut Juglans nigra

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High Country News: 40 years & Getting Better all the Time

The best way to inform yourself of the always changing American West is, hands down, High Country News. Over the course of 40 years they have become one of the most valuable institutions the West has ever known. And it all started with a passionate rancher named Tom Bell (pictured below).

Take a few moments this weekend and learn about the unlikely tale of the best newspaper we know. Here’s a link to a inspiring film clip on High Country News after 40 years:

http://www.hcn.org/40years/history/40th-anniversary-video

For more on High Country News, be sure to visit their website!

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