Grex Nature Conference

Item 5: Nature books

My two favorite books about nature are both in the category of what might be
called "lyrical nonfiction."  Both of these are widely considered classics.

   Aldo Leopold, "A Sand County Almanac"

   Annie Dillard, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"

Aldo Leopold was a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison until
his death in a brush fire in the 1940's.  His book, which ranges from his
farm in the sand counties of central Wisconsin to unique and interesting
ecologies around the world, manages to be at once analytical, hugely
informative, and (as I said) lyrical at the same time.  I have read it
several times.

Annie Dillard writes about the environment around her home in the Virginia
mountains.  Her book is a little more toward the literary side, which is
appropriate since she also writes fiction.

I enjoyed the Annie Dillard book, too.  It was fun to read that book
shortly after bicycling through that part of the country.  I wish I 
could write like Annie Dillard.

i like the 'peterson's field guides' myself. except when it comes
to rocks and minerals, then i like the guide the audubon society
puts out.

i also love patric mcmanus, who used to write for field and stream,
but now writes for outdoor life. he has several books out now, some
in soft cover. my favorite is 'the grasshopper trap'.
(it is usually in the comedy section, not nature)

Yeah, good old Pat is much better than some docunaturementary or other sort
of dullness.

Annie Dillard is wonderful.  Pilgrim at Tinker Creek will ensure her
immortality.  I like Thoreau's _Walden_, from which _Pilgrim at Tinker
Creek_ is descended.  I'm 100% with igor about the Petersen series.
Howe's _Butterflies of North America_ is the best book of its kind.
My very favorite series of books is called _The Nature Library_, a
collection of books about trees, flowers, mosses & lichens, mammals,
fish, etc., etc., all of which had been published separately from
around 1890 to 1905.  Two books per volume, mostly b&w illustrations,
nomenclature partly out of date now, the whole series published in
1910 or so.  I picked it up at a second-hand bookstore in Farmington.
It has an outdoorsy, fresh air, turn-of-the-century quality that I
find charming.  It also has Holland's _Butterfly Book_ and _Moth
Book_ bound into a single volume.  I love Rachel Carson's _The Sea
Around Us_ and Thor Heyerdahl's _Kon Tiki_.  Felix Salten's _Bambi_,
believe it or not, is an excellent nature book for kids, despite the
European flora and fauna in it ("gorse", "furze", etc.).  John
Brainerd's _Working with Nature_ is a great book, unfortunately now
out of print.  

Btw, there is a category of not-quite nature books that I'd like to 
mention.  Gia-Fu Feng's translation of _Tao Te Ching_ with Jane 
English's grainy photographs is a magical example.  Herman 
Melville's _Moby Dick_ is another one.  The butterflies and moths 
and their ecosystems in Vladimir Nabokov's books put many of them 
in this category as well, especially _The Gift_, _Speak, Memory_, 
and _Pale Fire_.  

For poetry lovers, there's James Thompson's "The Seasons", much of 
William Wordsworth's poetry, Matthew Arnold's "The Scholar Gypsy" 
and "Thyrsis", Walt Whitman's poetry and parts of _Specimen Days_, 
Robert Frost's poems, Robert Bly's poetry from his "Snowy Fields" 
period, just about all of Gary Snyder's poetry, various poems by 
Donald Hall, Richard Wilbur, and so on.  

For the hard-core reader, there is Darwin's _Origin of Species_.  
Also, Stephen Jay Gould published an abstruse textbookish volume 
ten or fifteen years ago called _Ontogeny and Phylogeny_ which I 
can't recommend highly enough.  Gilbert White's _Natural History of 
Selbourne_ is one of my favorites.  

If I think of any others I'll enter them.  (Can you tell I love 
this item?) 

I've recently read Gould's "Wonderful Life", about the Burgess Shale,
and its reinterpretation in the 1970's, following a long standing
error in interpretation. I thought it very interesting and thought
provoking, though it could have been written in a more organized and
informative manner (one needs a few charts regarding taxonomy and
paleontology, to get into the right perspective). The provokative 
aspect is that it has been discovered that the Cambrian fauna consisted
mostly of *phyla* that became extinct - not just variations on phyla
that exist today. That is, *our* phylum, chordates, was a very minor
component of early life, and could have easily gone extinct, and some
other body plan could have evolved to an intellectual organism. 
(Well, even Cambrian life is *nature*!)

This is a good item. Hasn't anybody read any nature books since 1993?

  "Playing God at Yellowstone"  by Alston Chase
  "Cadillac Desert", Marc Reisner
  "Game Wars", Marc Reisner
  
  These books are as much about people as nature...but wait, people are
natural, and these books are very good accounts of people in nature lest
we forget while we daydream of "wild" places.

I am new at this GREX thing, but I am fascinated with this topic.  Of Gould's
books, is there any one or two that anyone would recommend as his "best" or
"must" reading?  I haven't read any yet but would like to know where I might
best begin.  Thank you.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a good herb identifier book and/or herbs
in the wild identifier book?  I could sure use some help with all the wild
stuff growing here.  Can't seem to tell the difference between wild carrot
and yarrow!

I find Gould very hard to read as he goes on at great length with the
preliminaries, is very repititious, and when he does get down to the
essentials - he omits many. My impressions come from reading him mainly in
the magazine _Natural History_, but I have read his _Wonderful Life_,
about the Cambrian Explosion and the Burgess Shale. I recommend it, but
get a book on elementary taxonomy, with charts, to keep track of the
kingdoms, phylas, orders, etc. It is amazing how many *phyla* arose in the
Cambrian - and then went extinct. The main story is about how the first
scientists working with the Burgess Shale insisted on cramming the weird
fossils they found (and fossil parts!) into existing phyla, hardly
imagining what had really happened, and how their errors were eventually
corrected. 

I have read a few of Gould's books and found them all interesting.  The last
one was "The Panda's Thumb"  It is a collection of his articles from Natural
History and I found it well written, and not super technical.  I'd recommend
it.

The best Book on Tape I ever had was Charles Darwin's THE VOYAGE OF THE
BEAGLE.  It is a diary made during his trip around the world in approx 1840-50
(I think).  It is a fantastic book.

"Log from the Sea of Cortez" by Steinbeck.  Good book, covering the author's
trip with the marine biologist (Ed Ricketts) who was a character in "Cannery
Row" along with being a real-life person.

Heh...I had forgotten that I had given an account of _Wonderful Life_
in # 6 - about three years ago - and that I said just about the same things
about it. 

nature 5 is now linked to books 55 - about time, too!

Re:9 I have the Audubon field guide to N.American Wildflowers. It's 
pretty good, but, of course, can't have everything. I checked out the 
"taylor's" guide from the library, and it was able to fill in some 
blanks. I might get that one if I see it on sale somewhere. Others?

Most states have published "Flowers of...." books, both for the layperson
and for the expert. I also have the Peterson and McKenney _A Field Guide
to Wildflowers_ (Houghton Mifflin). It tells me that you can tell the
Yarrow apart from the Wild Carrot by (among other things), the Yarrow
has soft, aromatic, much-dissected, fernlike leaves, while the Wild
Carrot are finely divided and subdivided. The Wild Carrot also has stiff,
3-forked bracts below the main flower cluster, while the Yarrow does not.
(The pictures show all this better than the words do!)

Thanks for the suggestions re. reading Gould.  Some books I really like to
use to help identifying plants in the field are:  Peterson's "Edible Wild
Plants," Newcomb's "Wildflower Guide" (Northeastern & North central North
America), Harry Lund's "Michigan Wildflowers" (lots of color photographs;
plants are arranged according to color of flower and there's no key so you
really need to have the plant in flower to i.d. it using this book), and
Lauren Brown's "Weeds in Winter" (this one is unique because you use the key
& black and white drawings to i.d. herbaceous plants by their dry winter
remains, e.g. seeds, stalks, pods, capsules; there's a bonus to going out in
winter --- no mosquitos!)  Maybe one of these might help you tell the yarrow
from the wild carrot.:)  Caution:  Unless you really know your plants, don't
eat any wild carrots (Daucus carota) because they have a relative in the
Parsley family which rather closely resembles them:  Poison Hemlock (Conium
maculatum).

Thank you both!  I am doing more research now...

Freida, how's the reserarch coming along?/

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