With your Head in the Clouds

Clouds connect people to the wonders and workings of nature, whether you are in Manhattan on a beautiful spring day, or on the Great Plains as the weather suddenly shifts. But the trick is, you have to look up, you need to have a healthy degree of cloud awareness. And that is why we so admire the life’s work of Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of The Cloud Appreciation Society, and the author of The Cloudspotter’s Guide: The Science, History, and Culture of Clouds, and his latest book, The Cloud Collector’s Handbook.

Throughout both books (and no doubt throughout his daily life) Gavin Pretor-Pinney can’t help but have fun. He describes The Cloud Appreciation Society as a global organization that fights “blue-sky thinking” wherever they find it.

Pretor-Pinney’s books are overflowing with wonderful photos and illustrations. Along the way, you’ll quickly realize that you are learning the clouds from the most entertaining teacher you’ve ever had. But there’s poetry as well. Here is the grand Manifesto of The Cloud Appreciation Society (wacky and incredibly sane at the same time):

–We believe that clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them.

–We think that clouds are nature’s poetry, and the most egalitarian of her displays, since everyone can have a fantastic view of them.

–We pledge to fight ‘blue-sky thinking’ wherever we find it. Life would be dull if we had to look up at cloudless monotony day after day.

–We seek to remind people that clouds are expressions of the atmosphere’s moods, and can be read like those of a person’s countenance.

–We believe that clouds are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul…

And so, we say to all who’ll listen: Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and live life with your head in the clouds.

Over the years it has been excruciatingly hard for the Land Library to pass by any good book on clouds. It’s as simple as that, and the reason why we have so many fun books, such as these:

another “visual manifesto” from Gavin Pretor-Pinney: Hot Pink Flying Saucers and Other Clouds from The Cloud Appreciation Society, and Richard Hamblyn’s Extraordinary Clouds: Skies of the Unexpected from the Beautiful to the Bizarre.

The Book of Clouds by John A. Day, and For Spacious Skies: A Sketchbook of American Weather by Eric Sloane.

Richard Hamblyn’s The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies, a fascinating biography of Luke Howard, the London chemist who gave the world the three basic cloud family names: cirrus, cumulus, and stratus.

and, from our Waterton Canyon Kids Nature Library, here’s another biography of Luke Howard, The Man Who Named the Clouds by Julie Hanna, Joan Holub, and Paige Billin-Frye, along with a terrific cloud awareness guide for kids: Shapes in the Sky: A Book About Clouds by Josepha Sherman & Omarr Wesley.

Kelvin-Helmholtz Cloud over Jervis Bay, Australia, photo by Giselle Golog.

The Land Library is based in Denver, Colorado. Occasionally (and once at our bus stop) we have spotted a dramatic white wave breaking across the Front Range. With those fond memories, we were especially excited to read these words from Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s The Cloud Collector’s Handbook:

“Looking just like enormous waves breaking on the shore, it is rare, fleeting and the favorite of cloudspotting surfers. A well-defined Kelvin-Helmholtz is a crown jewel in many a cloud collection, for it requires the cloudspotter to be blessed with eagle-eyed sky awareness and sheer blind luck.“

The Land Library loves its continued blind luck, and we hope you give yourself a treat and visit The Cloud Appreciation Society’s website for much, much more — including an amazing photo gallery. Click here for terrific photos of Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds!

Read Full Post »

Sketch, Paint, and Listen to the Stories

“Talk about high-class detective stories! What Raymond Chandler did for L.A., Laura Cunningham does for the forests, meadows, and riverbanks of the Golden State. This brings a lost world straight back to life — and one hopes it will help us work to restore it in the real world, not just in the pages of a book.” — Bill McKibben

Where there are towns, sleek freeways, and bustling cities, Laura Cunningham imagines what came before — the ancestral California landscape of salt marsh, grassland, mountain, and oak savanna. The happy result of Laura Cunningham’s imaginings is the most exciting combination of eloquent text and inspiring art that we have seen for quite some time — A State of Change: Forgotten Landscapes of California.

Laura Cunningham is an artist and naturalist who studied paleontology and biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She has produced a book that demands a slow page-by-page pursuit of a new brand of historical ecology. It’s hard to know what excites us the most about this book; the riveting story she tells with her words, or the wonderful images she has created. As much as we love her vivid paintings, we have a special fondness for her pages of black-and-white field sketches. They remind us of a terrific artist-naturalist we wrote about last year, William D. Berry!

Laura Cunningham’s book has lessons to teach anyone, no matter where you live:

“As I dove deeper into the richness of California landscapes, what struck me most were not the individual animals and plants, nor even the vision of cityscapes erased back to natural habitats, but the processes that affect the world, including us. Things such as fire, climate change, disturbance, and species interactions.“

For more on Laura Cunningham and her work, be sure to visit her website!

A grizzly, long ago, wanders the blue oak and feathergrass hills of the South Coast Range, 1997. Laura Cunningham

“I have approached this work as an artist-naturalist might if she could visit Old California to explore, take notes, sketch, paint, and listen to the stories told about the changing landscape and wildlife.” — from A State of Change

A reconstruction of San Francisco around 1300 A.D. from Nob Hill, looking east across the bay toward Oakland. Laura Cunningham

“The wonderful aspect of discovering old landscapes is that anyone can do it. You don’t have to have a Ph.D., simply good powers of observation and lots of curiosity. I describe activities throughout the book for the landscape detective, and the beneficial side effects include getting us closer to the land itself.” — from A State of Change

The Land Library first obtained a copy of A State of Change for the simple fact that it was published by Heyday Books, one of our all-time favorite publishers. Few regions are as well served as California has been by Heyday. In a future post we hope to write more about their work, and their founder Malcolm Margolin, but for now here’s a fun selection of Heyday titles from the Land Library’s shelves!

Starting off with two of our favorite Heyday titles, featuring the wonderful partnership of Gary Snyder’s words, and Tom Killion’s dramatic images: The High Sierra of California, and Tamalpais Walking: Poetry, History and Prints.

A California Bestiary by Rebecca Solnit & Mona Caron, the forthcoming Rise of the Ranges of Light: Landscapes and Change in the Mountains of California by David Scott Gilligan (here we go again, assuming a book is good just because it comes from Heyday!), Indian Summer: Traditional Life Among the Choinumne Indians of California’s San Joaquin Valley by Thomas Jefferson Mayfield, The Wild Muir: Twenty-two of John Muir’s Greatest Adventures, edited by Lee Stetson (for more on this fun title, be sure to catch our earlier post!).

Sally Carrighar’s classic of the Sierras: One Day on Beetle Rock, Nature’s Beloved Son: Rediscovering John Muir’s Botanical Legacy by Bonnie Gisel & Stephen Joseph, The Shirley Letters: From the California Mines, 1851-1852 by Louise Clappe, and A World Transformed: Firsthand Accounts of California Before the Gold Rush, edited by Joshua Paddison.

Keep up-to-date on all the great work underway at Heyday Books by visiting their website!

Read Full Post »

Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams

France’s Chauvet Cave is home to the oldest art work known to man. Discovered in 1994, Chauvet’s cave paintings have been dated at 32,000 years ago, making them roughly twice as old as the renowned cave art at Lascaux. Access to both caves has been restricted for years — even the breath of humans can damage the paintings. Fortunately for all of us, legendary film director Werner Herzog was recently given the chance to fully document the wonders of Chauvet. His new film Cave of Forgotten Dreams captures the charcoal etchings of unknown ancient artists. The drawings of animals (bison and mammoth among them) are especially alive, supple, and seemingly drawn only yesterday.

Here’s a short film clip on Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams:

Early in the process, Werner Herzog made the decision to film Chauvet Cave in 3-D:

“Once you see the cave with your own eyes, you realize it had to be filmed in 3-D. I’ve never used the process in the 58 films I made before and I have no plans to do it ever again, but it was important to capture the intentions of the painters. Once you saw the crazy niches and bulges and rock pendants in the walls, it was obvious it had to be in 3-D.”

Until Cave of Forgotten Dreams plays in your area, here’s a few more excellent resources from the Land Library’s shelves!

Return to Chauvet Cave: Excavating the Birthplace of Art by Jean Clottes, Dawn of Art: The Chauvet Cave by Jean-Marie Chauvet, et. al.

The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World’s First Artists by Gregory Curtis, Stepping-Stones: A Journey through the Ice Age Caves of the Dordogne by Christine Desdemaines-Hugon, Cambridge Illustrated History of Prehistoric Art by Paul G. Bahn, et. al.

Read Full Post »

When the Earth Was Young

“Rock painting was our species’ first artistic adventures, our first celebration of the natural world, maybe our first crucial step into reflective self-consciousness. Tony Hopkins’ extraordinary artistic project, to witness this art from the chalk-hills of England to the shaman caves of South Africa, and then paint the paintings himself, gives a uniquely sympathetic insight into this first flowering of the human imagination.” — Richard Mabey.

For over twenty years, British artist Tony Hopkins has traveled in pursuit of the globe’s most remarkable rock art sites. The result is one of the most intriguing books we’ve seen this year — Pecked and Painted: Rock Art, from Long Meg to Giant Wallaroo, a wonderfully rich volume full of the author’s photographs, field sketches, finished paintings, and extensive journal entries. Hopkins truly went far and wide in his rock art quest: Britain, Ireland, France, Italy, Scandinavia, Australia, South Africa, Namibia, Sudan, Egypt, and the American Southwest. No two sites were the same, but as Tony Hopkins describes, something universal shone through:

“Whatever its meaning when the earth was young, rock art speaks to us now of a time when people lived their lives close to nature, in tune with the rhythm of the earth. It is no coincidence that most rock art is associated with what we think of today as wilderness areas, the far reaches of temporal and spiritual existence, wild landscapes where the past is still visible in the present, where what is most special has to do with the way we respond to nature.“

Hopkins’ words perfectly describe why the Land Library has built a 20 year collection of books devoted to prehistoric art. Starting with North America, and volumes such as these:

The Serpent and the Sacred Fire: Fertility Images in Southwest Rock Art by Dennis Slifer, Plains Indian Rock Art by James D. Keyser & Michael A. Klassen , Legacy on Stone: Rock Art of the Colorado Plateau and Four Corners Region by Sally J. Cole.

But before long, those universal themes mentioned above, led us to seek out volumes such as these:

Rock Art of the Dreamtime by Josephine Flood, The Hunter’s Vision: The Prehistoric Art of Zimbabwe by Peter Garlake, The Archaeology of Rock-Art edited by Christopher Chippindale and Paul Tacon.

along with Jean Clottes’ classic and comprehensive World Rock Art:

Stay tuned for our next post: German film director Werner Herzog and the birth of art in the Cave of Forgotten Dreams!

Read Full Post »

A History of Innovation

“Gene Kritsky’s charming book is like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition for honey bees. For over 10,000 years, humans have tried to design accommodations for the world’s most useful insect that not only take into account the bees’ remarkably sophisticated behavior but also allow human landlords to help themselves to the products of their industry. Engagingly written and gorgeously illustrated, this book offers a uniquely entertaining and thought-provoking perspective on the longstanding partnership between honey bees and humans.” — May Berenbaum, author of Bugs in the System: Insects and Their Impact on Human Affairs.

Gene Kritsky’s The Quest for the Perfect Hive: A History of Innovation in Bee Culture traces the evolution of hive design from ancient Egypt to the present. Each technological advance is noted and copiously illustrated — from hollowed out log hives and mud daubed cylinders, to the straw skep (in use for over 1,500 years) and Lorenzo Langstroth’s breakthrough innovation: the movable frame hive (pictured below). Even Christopher Wren (architect of London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral) came up with his own hive design!

The books and manuals of bee culture are many. Here’s three authoritative tomes from the Land Library’s shelves:

Langstroth’s Hive and the Honey-Bee by L.L. Langstroth, The Hive and the Honey Bee, Dadant & Sons, Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture by Ross Conrad

Gene Kritsky sees no end to innovation when it comes to bee culture:

“Today, honey bees are in trouble. These valuable insects, so critical to $16 billion worth of food production, are suffering from mites, diseases, the large-scale use of pesticides, and Colony Collapse Disorder. The history of beekeeping may provide clues that could help beekeepers and researchers as they struggle to save honey bee populations. Beekeepers will have to build upon this history of innovation, of successes and failures, or art and science, if they want to save not just an industry, but a way of life.“

This is the fourth in a series of posts as we prepare for our upcoming Literature of the Land Book Club on Bees and Beekeeping (presented in partnership with the Helen Fowler Library at the Denver Botanic Gardens. For more on the Book Club, click here!

Read Full Post »

Seeing with New Eyes

Twenty years ago, and fresh out of graduate school, John and Colleen Marzluff left Arizona for a small mountain cabin in western Maine. Their mission, and opportunity of a lifetime, was to work with renowned biologist Bernd Heinrich on the first-ever extensive study of the winter ecology of the Common Raven.

The Marzluff’s new book, Dog Days, Raven Nights is a fascinating account of two young wildlife biologists at the beginning of their careers. Drawing on their field notebooks and diaries, this book tells the exciting story of their three year immersion into the intricate lives of ravens and assorted corvids. Along the way, sled dogs became their essential companions and helpers, and so quite unexpectedly, the Marzluffs took on a new passion: the raising and training of an avid pack of sled dogs.

Bernd Heinrich had this to say in his foreword to Dog Days, Raven Nights:

“The three years that John, Colleen, and I worked together to solve a raven mystery is recounted here in Dog Days, Raven Nights. As I read their accounting of our time together, I came to understand and appreciate much more about their personal adventure and unique experiences, not only with ravens, but also with the dogs that shared their lives….As I reminisce about the time two decades ago, I see it as one of the great adventures of my life.”

After their days in Maine, John Marzluff went on to become a highly regarded biologist known for his several books, and for his work on corvid behavior and ecology. Colleen Marzluff has since become an expert in the training of herding and sled dogs — a natural pursuit that began in the wilds of Maine!

Dog Days, Raven Nights tells a wonderfully rich story, and it inspired us to pull the following books from two distinct corners of the Land Library’s collection:

The World of Sled Dogs: From Siberia to Sport Racing by Laura Coppinger, In the Company of Crows and Ravens, John Marzluff’s previous book, written with Tony Angell

The Raven by Derek Ratcliffe, Ravens in Winter by Bernd Heinrich, along with Heinrich’s Mind of the Raven, and Dogs: A New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior, and Evolution by Raymond & Lorna Coppinger

Read Full Post »

Being in the Moment by an Icy Northwoods Lake

“The Finnish sauna is often a modest structure, made of wood and stone. Over time the wood rots, the stones crack, and finally all that is left are memories. But what memories! I can’t think of any human activity except eating that brings people together with such wholeness. Mind, body, and spirit are fused by the heat and steam, and we are collectively reminded of all the things that make us uniquely human. Author Michael Nordskog and photographer Aaron W. Hautala have created a fitting tribute to the great sauna tradition of northern Minnesota. The Opposite of Cold makes permanent the fleeting memories of the early Finnish immigrants and the generations that followed. This is an important work and it honors everything it touches.” — Mikkel Aaland, author of Sweat

Why do we love this book? Well, certainly for all the reasons Mikkel Aaland eloquently expresses above, but there’s more. The Opposite of Cold: The Northwoods Finnish Sauna Tradition also provides nice counterpoint to the notion that any corner of America is like any other corner of America. This book celebrates a unique enduring tradition of what has been imaginatively described as our Northern sauna belt. Not only that, but Aaron Hautala’s photographs have also captured a wonderfully functional and beautiful folk architecture.

Starting with the surviving saunas from immigrant homesteads, The Opposite of Cold commemorates the history, culture, and practice of the Finnish sauna in the northwoods — and for that reason alone, we found this book to be as stimulating as 180-degree steam heat, followed by a wild jump in an ice-cold lake.

Here’s a few more books from the Land Library’s shelves that celebrate regional diversity, cultural traditions, and simple buildings done well!

The Sauna: A Complete Guide to the Construction, Use, and Benefits of the Finnish Bath by Rob Roy, and Vernacular Architecture by Henry Glassie (one of the touchstone books in the Land Library’s architecture collection)

And here is a wonderful book from a great photographer of the North Country:

Testaments in Wood: Finnish Log Structures in Embarrass Minnesota by Wayne Gudmundson

For more on The Opposite of Cold & the Finnish Sauna Tradition, take a quick look at this short video!

<a href="“>

Read Full Post »

The Ancient Art of Honey Hunting

Long before the first man-made bee hives, people hunted honey in the wild. Following eight months of field research, Eric Valli and Diane Summer documented this ancient tradition in their beautifully photographed book, Honey Hunters of Nepal.

The sheer cliffs of Nepal is home to the world’s largest honey bee, Apis laboriosa. The Gurung tribesmen ascend rickety bamboo ladders, hundreds of feet high. When they find the wild hives nestled in the cliff walls, they subdue the colonies with smoke, and then, ever so carefully, maneuver the honey-laden combs to the ground.

This surely is an ancient tradition. Some of the earliest evidence of man’s fixation on honey comes from rock art dating to around 13,000 year ago — as captured in Eva Crane’s classic book:

The Rock Art of Honey Hunters. Also above: a photo from The Honey Hunters of Nepal, showing the delicate balancing act the Gurung are so accustom to.

In addition to the Land Library’s more than 100 adult books on bees & beekeeping, our Waterton Canyon Kids Nature Library has many, many volumes on bees, among them are these two wonderfully illustrated books on the ancient art of honey hunting!

If You Should Hear a Honey Guide by April Pulley Sayre, and The Honey Hunters by Francesca Martin

This is the third in a series of posts as we prepare for our upcoming Literature of the Land Book Club on Bees and Beekeeping (presented in partnership with the Helen Fowler Library at the Denver Botanic Gardens). For more on the Book Club, click here!

Read Full Post »

A Gift for the Cranes

“There is a wonderful old tradition in some parts of Scandinavia, in which the children hang their stockings outside their houses during those days in early spring when the European common cranes first return from their wintering areas in France and Spain. Sometimes the children place an ear of corn or some other gift for the cranes, whose welcome voices and overhead flocks are the surest sign of spring and renewed hope for the future after enduring a long, unbearably dark and frigid Scandinavian winter.” — one of our favorite passages from Paul Johnsgard’s Sandhill and Whooping Cranes: Ancient Voices Over America’s Wetlands.

Harvesting Ice by Carl Larsson, 1905, and above, Larsson’s The Yard and Wash House.

Read Full Post »

The Return of the Cranes

Paul Johnsgard captures the drama of the greatest gathering of cranes on earth — the flocking in early spring of more than a half million sandhill cranes along the Platte River, Nebraska. — George Archibald, cofounder of the International Crane Foundation.

Just in time for the upcoming crane migration comes the latest volume from the great prairie naturalist Paul Johnsgard — Sandhill and Whooping Cranes: Ancient Voices Over America’s Wetlands. Johnsgard’s new book provides a detailed ecology of both crane species, along with the wetlands on which they depend. Johnsgard also fully explores the uncertain future the cranes face due to climate change and the constant pressure of human settlement.

Of immediate value to the travel plans of naturalists far and wide, this book includes a detailed 35-page guide to crane-viewing sites in the United States and Canada. As for the author, Paul Johnsgard’s travel plans have been the same for nearly fifty years:
Returning each spring to the central Platte Valley to observe the migration of a half-million sandhill cranes is a mind-shattering experience that can only be had in Nebraska, and only by making a special effort to participate in it. From the time the Platte River becomes ice-free in February, until almost the middle of April, hundreds of thousands of sandhill cranes use the valley…the largest assemblage by far of any cranes in the world.

Here’s a few more books from the Land Library’s shelves to enrich anyone’s encounter with cranes in the wild:

Peter Matthiessen’s global crane survey, The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes, and Cranes: A Natural History of a Bird in Crisis by Janice M. Hughes.

Paul Johnsgard’s earlier book, Crane Music: A Natural History of American Cranes, Cranes: The Noblest Flyers by Alice Lindsay Price, and a beautifully done new book on the sandhill crane’s fellow traveler, Whooping Crane: Images from the Wild by Klaus Nigge

If 2011 allows you the opportunity to view one of the Earth’s great migrations, be sure to take advantage of the books above, along with regional natural histories that will give you an even broader context. Here’s two excellent volumes if you trek to Nebraska’s Platte River, or another renowned crane-viewing site — Colorado’s San Luis Valley:

The Platte: Channels in Time by Paul Johnsgard, and The San Luis Valley: Sand Dunes and Sandhill Cranes by Susan J. Tweit and Glenn Oakley

Read Full Post »