Ansel Hall & The Last Great Expedition in the American West

In the 1930′s, Ansel Hall, the Chief Naturalist for the National Park Service, led a massive scientific expedition along the Arizona/Utah borderlands. For six years a wide array of naturalists and scientists studied the landscape and inhabitants of one of the continent’s least known regions.

To finance the project, Hall traveled the country, showing lantern slides of the expedition’s finds, while soliciting support from philanthropists and foundations. The original black & white photographs (many taken by Hall) had been meticulously hand-tinted by the National Park Service’s Lantern Slide Department — a beehive of activity at the time, devoted to extremely detailed work requiring magnifying glasses and delicate brushes. Gone are those days!

Thankfully a new book preserves Ansel Hall’s story, along with many of the stunning color images. Landscapes on Glass: Lantern Slides for the Rainbow Bridge-Monument Valley Expedition is written and edited by Jack Turner, grandson of the leader of what many call, the last great expedition in the American West. For more information, and many more images, please visit the book’s website!

Join us on Saturday November 20th as the Rocky Mountain Land Series presents a slide talk by Jack Turner, full of wonderful lantern-slide images!
Time: 2pm, at the Tattered Cover’s LoDo Store.

Lantern slide of the Grand Canyon’s Kaibab Trail, looking west from Mormon Flats.

Many of the hand-tinted photographs from Landscapes on Glass focus on the native peoples of the Four Corners, including this Navajo girl at her loom.

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Books Come to Buffalo Peaks Ranch

Many of you are aware of the Rocky Mountain Land Library’s plans to establish a residential land-study center at Buffalo Peaks Ranch, an unused historic ranch set in the high mountain grasslands of Colorado’s South Park. Over the next few months we hope to write more on our progress at the ranch. The University of Colorado’s School of Architecture is into its second year of design work at Buffalo Peaks Ranch, and we’ve also hosted a number of volunteer days, full of fun and hard work, all the while surrounded by a one-of-a-kind Western landscape. We’ll be reporting on all of this, and more!

But for now, here’s a quick “slide show” marking the arrival of the first few Land Library books to Buffalo Peaks. More than 20,000 volumes will follow, but for a recent public tour we lined the main house’s porch with less than a hundred books (pictured above) — all representative of the Land Library’s diverse collection.

Please take a quick glimpse, and we hope you enjoy. And you can click to enlarge, which will get you up close to all the titles on the shelves!

A tiny cluster, but containing books on Mountain Men, Platte River ecology, trout biology, three volumes of Thoreau’s Journals, along with The Lost Pathfinder: Zebulon Montgomery Pike by W. Eugene Hollon (Pikes Peak rises directly east of South Park!), and Cutthroat: Native Trout of the West by Patrick Trotter.

Dignity and beauty and meaning are given to our lives when we see far enough and wide enough, when we see the forces that minister to us, and the natural order of which we form a part. — John Burroughs

A loose coalition of raptors, beavers, A Literary History of the American West, The Ecology of Running Waters, prairie dogs, cowboy poetry, the Southern Cheyenne, The Voice of the Coyote, and Forest Fires (Buffalo Peaks Ranch is just west of the Hayman Fire site — the largest wildfire in Colorado’s history).

Not to mention, Trout at Ten Thousand Feet. Why so many books on trout? Well, Buffalo Peaks Ranch lies on the banks of the South Platte River, critical headwaters for the Front Range, and home to many miles of Gold Medal trout streams. A wonderful spot for anglers, and freshwater biologists too!

A porch potpourri, featuring books on frontier literature, The History of the U.S. Forest Service, Snow Ecology, Navajo weavers, and a truly inspirational book from the Trust for Public Land, Groundswell: Stories of Saving Place, Finding Community by Alix W. Hopkins.

Three touchstone books from the Land Library: Artists Land Nature by Mel Gooding & William Furlong (featuring the land art of Herman de vries, Chris Drury, Richard Long, and many others), Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness by Lisa M. Hamilton, Rivers & Birds by Merrill Gilfillan (a wonderful collection of essays from a great poet of the American grasslands).

A mix of agrarian essays, John McPhee on geology, mining in the west, Native American ethnobotany, Peattie’s Natural History of North American Trees, and Peter Wild’s Different Travellers, Different Eyes: Artists’ Narratives of the American West, 1820-1920.

For each home ground we need new maps, living maps, stories and poems, photographs and paintings, essays and songs. — Scott Russell Sanders

We hope Buffalo Peaks Ranch provides people a warm and vibrant space to slow down a notch, and find the opportunity to pursue the creative work of their own design.

To that end, we set out a small antique desk on the ranch house porch. A still-life of sorts, featuring books such as George Miksch Sutton’s inspirational To a Young Bird Artist, along with an open page from the published journals of one of the greatest young nature artists we know — Sherrie York.

Two Books & a Bowl of Jolly Ranchers: Maybe that says it all, but we should add, the Land Library loves the fact that pronghorn roam throughout South Park (check out our earlier post on pronghorn!), plus the fact that Buffalo Peaks Ranch is a short trek away from the world-class fossil site at Florissant National Monument. The natural & cultural heritage of central Colorado is incredibly rich!

And so the day ended, as all good days do, with plenty of melons and lots of good books. But stay tuned for more updates on Buffalo Peaks Ranch!

Buffalo Peaks Ranch, along the Middle Fork of the South Platte River, with the long valley leading to Mount Silverheels.

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A History Both Epic and Tragic

Historian Eric Jay Dolin has just written one of the most comprehensive histories of the rise and fall of the American fur trade. To read Fur, Fortune, and Empire is to understand how North America was explored and settled, as its native peoples were both enriched and exploited by the trade. Buffalo, beaver, and sea otters were slaughtered, and their precious pelts were tailored into hats, coats, and sleigh blankets.

Dolin is a natural-born storyteller, and he makes a convincing case for the seminal role the fur trade had in the shaping of our continent.

Eric Jay Dolin’s previous book, Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America, was chosen by the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe as one of the best books of the year.

Historian Douglas Brinkley had an excellent comment about Dolin’s latest book: “Nobody writes about the link between American history and natural history with the scholarly grace of Eric Jay Dolin. Fur, Fortune, and Empire is a landmark study filled with a cast of eccentric western-type characters. Not since the days of Francis Parkman has a historian analyzed the fur-trade industry with such brilliance.”

Please join us as Eric Jay Dolin takes part in the Land Library’s ongoing Rocky Mountain Land Series on Monday, July 26th. For more information, you can visit the Tattered Cover Book Store’s website!

The literature of mountain men and the fur trade is voluminous. Here’s just a few classic titles from the Land Library’s shelves:

Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West by Dale L. Morgan, Rocky Mountain Rendezvous: A History of the Fur Trade 1825-1840 by Fred R. Gowans, Osborne Russell’s Journal of a Trapper (a book that has been highly praised over the years by contemporary nature writer Edward Hoagland), Mountain Men and Fur Traders: Eighteen Biographical Sketches by LeRoy R. Hafen

And no study of the fur trade can be complete without a full knowledge and appreciation of the animals most impacted by this industry. The Land Library heartily recommends the following natural history studies:

The Time of the Buffalo by Tom McHugh, Otters: Ecology, Behavior, and Conservation by Hans Kruuk (including the nature & ecology of sea otters), Beavers: Where Waters Run by Paul Strong (from our Waterton Canyon Kids Nature Library), The Beaver: Natural History of a Wetlands Engineer by Dietland Muller-Schwarze & Lixing Sun

For much more on the history of the fur trade in the West, be sure to visit the Museum of the Fur Trade‘s website, or if you’re ever in Chadron, Nebraska, plan a visit!

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Well Off Anyone’s Beaten Track

“In my mind’s eye, I wanted to live, off and on, in an area that was well off anyone’s beaten track, an area so in and of itself that it still had a lively and palpable sense of its own history, culture, and identity, where the source of that history and culture and the people who lived and worked there remained very organic to the place….This book, then, is the story of my years in the Sandhills of Nebraska. Hopefully, through the following words and pictures, you, too, will come to understand why the Sandhills is like no other place.” — David A. Owen

In Like No Other Place, author and photographer David Owen captures the rhythms and rich layers of a region few of us will ever see — Nebraska’s Sandhills, home to a Native American heritage spanning many generations, a still surviving ranching culture, and a remarkable biodiversity set in one of the largest grass-stabilized dune systems in the world.

This book is a wonderful, and amazingly thoughtful study of both people and the land. Please join us for the next Rocky Mountain Land Series event, as David Owen presents a slide show based on his new book. For more program information, please visit the Tattered Cover Book Store’s website!

And here’s a few more Sandhills books from the Land Library’s shelves!

The Road Home by Jim Harrison (a novel set in the Sandhills, as was Harrison’s earlier novel Dalva), The Last Prairie: A Sandhills Journal by Stephen R. Jones, The Niobrara: A River Running Through Time by Paul A. Johnsgard. The Land Library can also strongly recommend Johnsgard’s This Fragile Land: A Natural History of the Nebraska Sandhills (not pictured).

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Resurgence: At the Heart of Earth, Art and Spirit

Six times a year, the Land Library let’s out a woop! as the latest issue of Resurgence arrives. It’s always difficult to know how to spend a limited acquisition budget, but this magazine makes the decision an easy one.

Produced from a cottage in Devon England, Resurgence faithfully documents the age-old relationship between people and the land. With an wonderful blend of art, poetry, and inspiring articles, this journal both values the past, and is creatively engaged in our trouble-strewn present.

Its current issue (July/August 2010) features a special focus on ecological health, and the link between a healthy planet and healthy people — along with an article by E.O. Wilson, a poem by Wendell Berry, and a typically astute essay (by Caspar Walsh) on Tolkien for our times: “If ever there was an extended fable for the causes, effects and solutions to our modern-day woes, the timeless wisdom of Tolkien’s epic is it.”

Given that this is a British magazine, you won’t be able to find Resurgence on every newstand, but several bookstores carry it, including Denver’s Tattered Cover Book Store. And for those who would like to catch up on past issues, the editors of Resurgence have produced several book anthologies including:

Earth Songs: A Resurgence Anthology of Contemporary Eco-Poetry edited by Peter Abbs, Images of Earth & Spirit: A Resurgence Art Anthology edited by John Lane & Satish Kumar, and (not pictured) The Beauty of Craft: A Resurgence Anthology edited by Sandy Brown & Maya Kumar Mitchell

Our admiration for Resurgence also led the Land Library to the following kindred volumes from Satish Kumar, the longtime editor of the magazine:

Earth Pilgrim: Conversations with Satish Kumar, You Are Therefore I am: A Declaration of Dependence (which is one of the best subtitles we know!), The Buddha and the Terrorist, and No Destination: an Autobiography.

Resurgence’s website begins with this greeting: “Welcome to Resurgence — a magazine for people who care about the environment, love reading, enjoy new ideas and are looking for inspiration on sustainable living.” No wonder the Land Library loves this magazine!

And for a quick glimpse at other essential journals the Land Library is committed to, link back to these earlier posts!

–High Country News: 40 Years Old and Getting Better All the Time

–Wild Fibers: Wild fibers stitching us together

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Beatrix Potter: Author, Illustrator, Mycologist

Over the years we have really appreciated the opportunity to learn more and more about the renowned children’s author and illustrator, Beatrix Potter (1866-1943). We continue to find surprises around every corner. She was a close observer and illustrator of the myriad details of nature — focused, perhaps most notably, on the secret world of fungi and lichens.

Beatrix Potter produced hundreds of paintings of fungi, often using the microscope to satisfy her constant curiosity:

“During the autumn and winter of 1895 Beatrix spent an increasing amount of time drawing fungi under the microscope. Her objectives had changed from simply assembling a collection of watercolours and photographs to discovering how fungi reproduced.” — from Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature by Linda Lear.

Of course, Beatrix Potter was destined to be known not for her mycological drawings but for something quite different:

“And so it was that on 4 September, the very day after discovering the rare pine cone fungus, Beatrix sat down in the sunshine on the lawn of Eastwood and wrote a picture letter about a disobedient young rabbit called ‘Peter’. ‘I don’t know what to write to you…so I shall tell you a story about four little rabbits whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter.‘” — from Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature by Linda Lear.

Several books focus on Beatrix Potter’s love of nature, and specifically her life-long devotion to the landscape and traditions of England’s Lake District. Among our favorites is A Victorian Naturalist: Beatrix Potter’s Drawings from the Armitt Collection by E. Jay et.al. (pictured above), and the previously quoted Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature by Linda Lear (pictured below, along with a wonderful photograph of Beatrix at the Keswick Sheep Show in 1935).

And here’s the Land Library’s most recent addition to our Beatrix Potter shelf — a beautifully produced book from France:

On Wednesday August 18th, the Rocky Mountain Land Series will host a free program with Gary Lincoff, author of the Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms. Gary will be speaking on his new book The Complete Mushroom Hunter, and he’ll be bringing along plenty of samples & examples. Over the next few weeks the Land Library hopes to add most posts on the world of mushrooms and fungi. As Beatrix Potter’s work proves, this is a world that has attracted some wonderful books!

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Wall Street’s Sacred Mushroom Seeker

In 1934, R. Gordon Wasson joined the Wall Street banking firm of J.P. Morgan & Company. There he remained until 1963, serving for the last 20 years as Vice-President. Perhaps a typical American success story, but most definitely an unlikely background for one of the most fascinating scholars of the past century.

In the 1950′s, Wasson and his wife Valentina mounted expeditions to Mexico to study the religious use of mushrooms by the native population. They eventually met Maria Sabina, a Mazatec curandera who introduced the Wassons to the cult of the sacred mushroom. In 1957, the Wassons published a still-famous Life magazine article (Seeking the Magic Mushroom) that introduced knowledge of psychoactive mushrooms to a wide audience for the first time.

Following Valentina’s death in 1958, R. Gordon Wasson continued what had already become his life’s work (with all due respect to J.P. Morgan). His fascination with psychoactive plants and the spiritual life of indigenous people led him all over the world, especially to Papua New Guinea, India, and North America (where he studied the ceremonial use of fly agaric among the Ojibway people).

Wasson produced several books throughout his remarkable career, almost all extremely hard to find these days, and very expensive as well. Here’s just a few titles the Land Library would love to add to its shelves someday: The Wonderous Mushroom: Mycolatry in Mesoamerica, Maria Sabina and Her Mazatec Mushroom Velada, and Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality.

But for now, the Land Library is happy to have the highly informative book featured above: The Sacred Mushroom Seeker: Tributes to R. Gordon Wasson, edited by Thomas J. Riedlinger (with contributions from writers in the fields of ethnobotany, religion, and anthropology, and with a foreword by Richard Evans Schultes).

It was a 1927 honeymoon trip to the Catskill Mountains that led the Wassons to their passionate pursuit of the mushroom. Chancing upon some edible wild mushrooms they became fascinated by the differences in cultural attitudes toward the Kingdom Fungi. Field research commenced, and the couple (pictured above) published their first book, Mushrooms, Russia and History, in 1957.

On Wednesday August 18th, the Rocky Mountain Land Series will host a free program with Gary Lincoff, author of the Audubon Society Guide to North American Mushrooms. Gary will be speaking on his new book The Complete Mushroom Hunter, and he’ll be bringing along plenty of samples & examples. Over the next few weeks the Land Library hopes to add more posts on the world of mushrooms and fungi. It’s a world that has attracted some wonderful books!

And speaking of books, we couldn’t sign off without sharing R. Gordon Wasson’s personal bookplate:

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Into the Field

Ecologist Tom Wessels walks into a forest and senses the past. There are clues laid out on the land if your eyes are trained to see. Tom Wessels’ book Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New England sharpens our senses to patterns, changes, and disturbances — whether they be fires, blowdowns, blights, beaver activity, or past logging. Wessels encourages us to read a landscape the way we might solve a mystery.

In a way, Tom Wessels has written two books in one. The first gives us the immediate sense of wonder and discovery that comes when we uncover some hidden aspect of nature. The other book, equally fascinating, urges us to put the pieces together, to connect. This book may be a natural history of New England, but its enduring principles can be applied anywhere you might explore!

Join Tom in the field with this fun 3 minute film clip!

In the next few months Countryman Press will publish a new book by Tom Wessels, Forest Forensics: A Field Guide to Reading the Forested Landscape. In the meanwhile, the Land Library strongly recommends these titles from our shelves:

Three more by Tom Wessels: The Granite Landscape: A Natural History of America’s Mountain Domes, from Acadia to Yosemite (and including Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains and Montana’s Beartooth Range), Into the Field: A Guide to Locally Focused Learning with co-authors Clare Walker Leslie and John Tallmadge, The Myth of Progress: Toward a Sustainable Future

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L. David Mech: A Remarkable Life in the Wild

In 1957, the esteemed wildlife biologist Durward Allen gave a young Dave Mech the opportunity to study a new population of wolves on Lake Superior’s Isle Royale. Fifty years later, L. David Mech is still out there in the wild, observing wolves and telling the life story of one of our continent’s premier predators.

In 1986 he began an ongoing field study of an arctic wolf population on Ellesmere Island, some 600 miles from the North Pole. He gained unprecedented access to the den life, and still counts his summers on Ellesmere as a highlight of what has been a remarkable career in the field: “Hundred of miles north of Hudson Bay…I stood alone in the High Arctic — surrounded by wolves.“

pictured above: L. David Mech, and his books The Wolves of Denali, The Arctic Wolf: Ten Years with the Pack

Along with his early ground-breaking book, The Wolves of Isle Royale, David Mech is the author and editor of several more volumes on the wolf, including:

Three by Mech: The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species, The Way of the Wolf, Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, & Conservation

For much, much more on the life and work of David Mech (pronounced Meech) be sure to visit his website.
Plus, there is an active blogsite devoted to Wolves of the High Arctic: Research on the Arctic Wolves of Ellesmere Island — check it out!

Arctic wolf and pup — photo by L. David Mech

For more on wolves and wolf-related books, please link back to an earlier Land Library post!

–Wolves in Colorado?

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Learning How to See

“As a young child, I used to walk the blue hogback ridges near my family’s ranch in the Iron Mountain country of southeastern Wyoming with my great-grandmother, looking for fossils and arrowheads. Nana — Matilda Tait Lannen, my father’s mother’s mother — lived in town, but she loved to come to the ranch. Though well over eighty, she was tireless as she hiked the steep hills in her flowered dress, her sturdy walking shoes, and a battered flat-brimmed straw hat. Walking was her magic, for she could find crinoids or Indian relics almost anywhere we stepped. It was a matter of looking, she said, of learning how to see…” one of our favorite passages from Teresa Jordan’s classic memoir, Riding the White Horse Home: A Western Family Album

You can learn a lot more about Teresa Jordan’s work by visiting her website!

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