June 2020 – CommonPlace Nature

Living with Reverence: “The Outermost House” by Henry Beston, 1928

Birds, Books, Natural History, Sense of Place 1 Response »

Jun 262020

Aprof2 / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

Creation is here and now. So near is man to the creative pageant, so much a part is he of the endless and incredible experiment, that any glimpse he may have will be but the revelation of a moment, a solitary note heard in a symphony thundering through debatable existences of time. Poetry is as necessary to comprehension as science. It is as impossible to live without reverence as it is without joy.

CAUGHT UP IN POETIC WONDER, I HAVE COME HOME. In Beston’s writing, I glimpse nature as elemental force pervading the planet, flowing through our veins, rooting us to the land, to each other, to the sea, to the sky. I share the Outermost House with him, gazing reflectively into the hearth, peering out the window into a thunderstorm, seeing the swirl of birds just beyond the doorway in the dunes. Having read six previous nature writers, all struggling to convey something of what it is to encounter the natural world, I find success at last in Beston’s prose. All six authors — Treat, Torrey, Thomas, Burroughs, Stratton-Porter, Flagg — struggled to combine scientific scrutiny with poetic rapture. Their solution, time and again, was to riddle their prose with snatches of poetry — Emerson, Whitman, or even original work. Poetry and prose remained separate, apart. The prose spoke of wonder at times, yet never fully realized it. Until now. In “The Outermost House”, Beston has brought the two together at last, crafting some of the most soaring, magnificent sentences I have ever read. There is scientific insight here, and there is wonder here too. I am not quite clear where one ends and the other begins. Here, for instance, Beston explains how he came to take up solitary residence there, in words that could have been written just yesterday:

The world today is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot. In my world of beach and dune these elemental presences lived and had their being, and under their arch there moved an incomparable pageant of nature and of the year. The flux and reflux of ocean, the incomings of waves, the gatherings of birds, the pilgrimages of the peoples of the sea, winter and storm, the splendor of autumn and the holiness of spring — all these were part of the great beach. The longer I stayed, the more eager was I to know this coast and share its mysterious and elemental life….

THERE IS CLARITY AND WHOLENESS — AND HOLINESS — TO “THE OUTERMOST HOUSE”. Beston’s small cabin, the fo’c’sle, is positioned within a field of elemental forces — wind and wave and the life-energy of the schooling fish and flocking seabirds. And it is situated in a liminal space, between ocean water and salt marsh. Human presences are there, but isolated and largely predictable — the regular beats of the Coast Guard walking from the station at Nauset Light in the north, southward to a half-way house (a small structure lying halfway to the next station), then back to Nauset Light again. Beston would watch the time for the moment of their passage, hoping for a knock on the door, hot coffee prepared for the visitor. His world was contained, whole, and at once both austere and rich without measure: “…there is always reserve and mystery, always something beyond, on earth and sea something which nature, honouring, conceals.” And always overhead, the Sun, whose seasonal wanderings traverse the pages of Beston’s book:

We lose a great deal, I think, when we lose this sense and feeling for the sun. When all has been said, the adventure of the sun is the great natural drama by which we live, and not to have joy of it and awe of it, not to share in it, is to close a dull door on nature’s sustaining and poetic spirit.

FOR BESTON, NATURE, TOO, IS ELEMENTAL — AN ENERGY FLOWING THROUGH ALL BEINGS, NOT STRICTLY CONTAINED IN DISTINCT FORMS, BUT A FECUND FIELD OF POSSIBILITY. “Dwelling thus upon the dunes,” he explained, “I lived in the midst of an abundance of natural life which manifested itself every hour of the day, and from being thus surrounded, thus enclosed within a great whirl of what one may call the life force, I felt that I drew a secret and sustaining energy…. Life is as much a force in the universe as electricity or gravitational pull, and the presence of life sustains life.”

WITHOUT DOUBT, BESTON’S “THE OUTERMOST HOUSE” IS ONE OF THE GREATEST WORKS OF NATURE WRITING EVER WRITTEN. He is renowned today chiefly as a regional writer, a naturalist who captured vividly life on the Cape Cod shore and, quite a few years later, on a farm in Maine (“Northern Farm”, 1948). “The Outermost House” is still in print, though that is not true of his other books. The book stands above the others I have read for several reasons. As I noted at the opening of this post, Beston merged science and poetry into a single, powerful voice, and used that voice to enchant the reader with the experience of life on the shore of Cape Cod. He also constructed a single, highly coherent work that spanned a natural passage of time (a year) — though, like Thoreau with Walden, he actually condensed the experiences of about two years down to one. For months, Beston gave himself fully to the experience of inhabiting the world, observing the birds and ants and growing dune grasses during the daytime, and writing into the evening. I sense, too, that Beston, in the wake of his years as a foreign war correspondent in Europe and stationed aboard a US destroyer, hungered for the deep, elemental engagement with the cosmos that living in the Outermost House offered him. The results were moments of wonder, awe, and deep insight — such as this famous passage about animals — the myriad other beings with which we share this planet — with which I will close this brief essay:

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feature magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.

AS A POSTSCRIPT, I WILL SHARE BRIEFLY ABOUT THE COPY OF THE BOOK THAT I READ THIS WEEK. Limited by financial considerations, I stopped short of buying a first edition hardcover of this work; eBay currently offers a signed copy of the work for merely $5,000 (but at least there is free shipping). I settled for a Viking Compass Edition paperback in its 11th printing from September, 1969. It included a forward written by Beston to mark the 20th anniversary of the work in 1949. The font and typesetting, at least, were the same as in the original hardcover edition. The back cover includes the text of a plaque placed on the house in a 1964 ceremony declaring it a National Literary Landmark. Beston actually attended the ceremony; it was his final visit there. (Unfortunately, the fo’c’sle was washed out to sea in a winter storm in February, 1978.) The brief bio of the author on the back cover of my book uses present tense to describe Beston, though he had actually died a year and a half before my copy was printed. As for the book’s history, it contains no marks that would offer clues, except for a bookseller’s stamp for the Fireside Book Shop in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, a small town east of Cleveland.

Travelling Through an Extensive Morass: “A Year Among the Trees” by Wilson Flagg, 1881

Backyard Nature, Books, Environmental conservation, Landscape History, Native Plants, Natural History, Sense of Place No Responses »

Jun 252020

WHEN THOMAS WILSON FLAGG DROPPED HIS FIRST NAME EARLY IN HIS WRITING CAREER, IT WAS HIS FIRST AND LAST ACT AS EDITOR. What would follow, over the course of a lengthy and prolific writing career, would be dozens and dozens of highly detailed accounts of nature — birds, trees, the functions of a forest. What they nearly all share is a writing style that one admiring reader called “whimsical” but I would classify instead as soporific. I will allow the modern-day reader to judge from this supposedly “whimsical” passage:

Evening calls [the botanist] out from his retreat, to pursue another varied journey among the fairy realms of vegetation, and ere she parts with him curtains the heavens with splendor and prompts her choir of sylvan warblers to salute him with their vespers.

Another example, the inspiration for the title of this post:

The White Cedar constitutes with the southern cypress the principal timber of the Great Dismal Swamp, and is the last tree, except the red maple, which is discovered when travelling through an extensive morass.

FLAGG IS NOTABLE TODAY CHIEFLY FOR BEING A CONTEMPORARY OF HENRY THOREAU, RECOGNIZING THOREAU, GEORGE PERKINS MARSH, AND JOHN BURROUGHS AS SOURCES OF INSPIRATION. Alas, he and Thoreau never met (nor did he meet the the other two, from what I have found). However, in an 1857 letter to Daniel Rickerson, Thoreau voiced his opinion of Flagg’s work in no uncertain terms; after reading 300 pages of Flagg’s writing, I honestly confess that I agree with Thoreau on this one:

Your Wilson Flagg seems a serious person, and it is encouraging to recognize a contemporary who recognizes nature so squarely…. But he is not alert enough. He wants stirring up with a pole…. His style, as I remember, is singularly vague (I refer to the book) and before I got to the end of the sentences I was off the track.

TO BE FAIR TO FLAGG, THE BOOK I READ PUTS HIM AT A CONSIDERABLE DISADVANTAGE FOR WINNING OVER THE READER. During his lifetime, he produced dozens of essays, and all of his books are essay compilations. One of them followed the year round, making use of an organizational structure that was commonly employed from the 1840s through the 1940s, and is still encountered in some modern-day nature writing. The one I read — the only volume I could afford, I might add, due (I expect) to the relative scarcity of the other tiles — was “A Year Among the Trees”. It consists of a subset of essays, taken from a larger work, “The Woods and Byways of New England”. The common theme in this work is trees and shrubs. Unfortunately, most of the essays highlight particular tree and shrub species, giving them a rather field-guidish treatment but often without illustrations and without scientific names in the text (though they are included in the table of contents). Flag tends to focus his account on aesthetic considerations, highlighting the degree to which a tree form is picturesque or not, and the extent to which the tree is more or less attractive than its English counterpart (when there is one). Combine that with wandering sentences generally long on Latinate words, and the result is a sort of mind-numbing tedium, a morass of tree limbs, leaf forms, and flowery words.

THERE IS ANOTHER KIND OF ESSAY IN THIS BOOK, TOO; IT INCLUDES SOME OF HIS FINEST WORK AND ALSO SOME OF HIS MOST PECULIAR IDEAS. In a series of essays scattered throughout the book (with no clear order to them), Flagg explores the nature and functions of forests. The volume opens with an essay on The Primitive Forest in which Flagg proposes that, prior to European settlement, most of North America east of “The Great American Desert” (as the Great Plains was called at the time) was densely covered with forest. Subsequent clearing of the trees has led to regional warming, for reasons explained here:

The American climate is now in that transitional state which has been caused by opening the space to the winds from all quarters by operations which have not yet been carried to their extreme limit. These changes of the surface have probably increased the mean annual temperature of the whole country by permitting the direct rays of the sun to act upon a wider area….

WHILE HIS CLIMATOLOGICAL SPECULATIONS FELL WIDE OF THE MARK, HIS CONCERNS ABOUT THE LOGGING OF STEEP SLOPES REMAIN SCIENTIFICALLY VALID. As in his thoughts about the influence of forest cover on climate, it is not clear the extent to which Flagg’s ideas are original; in this case, for instance, he may owe a debt to George Perkins Marsh (who he mentions in another essay in the book). In his essay Relations of Trees to Water, Flagg explains,

If each owner of land would keep all his hills and declivities, and all slopes that contain only a thin deposit of soil or a quarry, covered with forest, he would lessen his local inundations from vernal thaws and summer rains. Such a covering of wood tends to equalize the moisture that is distributed over the land, causing it, when showered upon the hills, to be retained by the mechanical action of the trees and their undergrowth of shrubs and herbaceous plants, and by the spongy surface of the soil underneath them, made porous by mosses, decayed leaves, and other debris, so that the plains and valleys have a moderate oozing supply of moisture for a long time after every shower. Without this covering, the water when precipitated upon the slopes, would immediately rush down over an unprotected surface in torrents upon the space below.

AS AN AMATEUR GEOMORPHOLOGIST, FLAGG IS QUITE NOTEWORTHY. Indeed, his musings remind me of some of Thoreau’s own unpublished research and observations on the effects of dams on stream flow. Like Thoreau, Flagg looked closely and thought deeply about natural processes in his native Massachusetts. Also like Thoreau, he calls for the establishment of parks to protect the remaining New England forests. First, here is Thoreau, from the last pages of his manuscript “Wild Fruits” as edited by Bradley Dean:

I think that each town should have a park, or rather primitive forest, of five hundred or a thousand acres…where a stick should never be cut for fuel, nor for the navy, nor to make wagons, but stand and decay for higher uses — a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation.

And here is Wilson Flagg’s proposal, from his essay The Dark Plains; though not quite as plainly spoken, he echoes Thoreau’s general sentiment well:

Some spacious wood ought to remain, in every region, in which the wild animals would be protected, and we might view the grounds as they appeared when the wild Indian was lord of this continent.

FINALLY, A FEW WORDS ABOUT MY BOOK ITSELF. This time, the closest I could come to an original volume by the author was an edition of Flagg from 1889, eight years after the original edition, and five years after Flagg’s death. Apart from the gilt cover with pine branch and cones, the book is fairly nondescript. The work includes three photo illustrations, including the roadside elm above. It also includes a number of line drawings of the parts of various trees and shrubs. Affixed to the inside of the front cover is a book label, indicating this book was once part of the Private Library of Walter S. Athearn. Here my tale potentially gets more interesting. Out of curiosity, I did a Google search of the name, and this biography turned up. Dr. Walter Scott Athearn lived from 1872 until 1934, and was a pioneering religious educator. While much of his life was spent in Iowa, he did move east in 1916 to serve for 13 years as a Graduate School Dean at Boston University. Could he have purchased the title in some used bookshop upon his arrival, perhaps with an eye toward learning more about the trees and forests of his new home state? Or could the person who owned my book just happened to have had the same name? I could not locate any obituaries online for a different Walter S. Athearn, but I doubt I will ever know for certain. Meanwhile, his photo brings a fitting closure to this post.

With Senses Alive to Everything: “Music of the Wild” by Gene Stratton-Porter, 1910

Agriculture and Husbandry, Backyard Nature, Birds, Books, Natural History, Sense of Place No Responses »

Jun 222020

Ripening pawpaws: Gene Stratton-Porter, 1910 *(left)* & the author, 2020 *(right)*

“Somewhere in the depths of the forest you will meet the Creator. The place is the culmination of His plan for men adown the ages, a material thing proving how His work evolves, His real gift to us remaining in natural form. The fields epitomize man. They lay as he made them. They are artificial. They came into existence by the destruction of the forest and the change of natural conditions. They prove how man utilized the gift God gave to him. But in the forest the Almighty is yet housed in His handiwork and lives in His creation. Therefore step out boldly. You are with the Infinite.

AFTER READING OVER THREE HUNDRED PAGES OF GENE-STRATTON PORTER’S BOOK, “THE MUSIC OF THE WILD”, I AM UNSURE WHERE TO BEGIN; SO I WILL BEGIN WITH THE PAWPAWS. The ripening pawpaws on my backyard tree offer me an immediate and direct connection to her work. The book is laden with her original photos. Taken sometime prior to the book’s publication in 1910, they represent some of the earliest nature photography in America. Only four years earlier, in 1906, National Geographic had published its first photographs of wildlife. Across 110 years, I find a sense of connection and belonging. It is relatively easy for me to find those points of contact through her photography; her text, however, frequently leaves me feeling adrift in a foreign land. For Gene Stratton Porter, everything exists by design of God, and was carefully brought into being in order to meet the human needs. To go into the deep woods is to enter a cathedral in a quite literal sense. Nature brings humans delight fundamentally because nature is the handiwork of a Supreme Being.

THERE ARE OTHER OBSTACLES TO APPRECIATING THIS BOOK. She tends to anthropomorphize most everything, from a calling songbird to a flowing stream. In the case of animal calls, she frequently translates them into everyday human speech with less than inspiring results. For instance, she proposes that a calling heron could be saying “Come my love, this spot is propitious. Share a morning treat with your dearest,” or might intend to mean “Better keep away, old skin and bones; there’s danger around this frog pond.”

AND THEN THERE IS HER RELENTLESS “POETRY”. The lovely black and white photographs, some the result of hours spent atop a ladder in her orchard, are each accompanied by a few lines, usually rhymed. Some innocuous passages are taken from other poets, like Emerson or Whitman. Others are snippets of doggerel she dreamed up, best forgotten as quickly as possible after reading them. For instance, consider this one: “The screech owl screeches when courting, / Because it’s the best he can do. / If you couldn’t court without screeching, / Why, then, I guess you’d screech too.”

FOR THOSE THAT SURVIVE POETRY THAT WOULD PUT A VOGON TO SHAME, AND ENDURE HER INSISTENT CHRISTIANITY, THERE IS MUCH TO BE GAINED FROM SPENDING AN AFTERNOON WITH STRATTON-PORTER. Although not a professional scientist, she carefully observed the workings of nature in and around Limberlost Swamp in northern Indiana. She took photographic sequences documenting breeding birds, from nest-building to the first flights of the young — in some cases, being the first to do so for particular species. As she explained early on in the volume,

Whenever I come across a scientist plying his trade I am always so happy and content to be merely a nature-lover, satisfied with what I can see, hear, and record with my cameras. Such wonders are lost by specializing on one subject to the exclusion of all else. No doubt it is necessary for someone to do this work, but I am so glad it is not my calling. Life has such varying sights and songs for the one who goes afield with senses alive to everything.

THROUGHOUT THE BOOK, STRATTON-PORTER CELEBRATES THE RICH PLANT AND ANIMAL LIFE OF RURAL INDIANA — THE MOTHS, THE BIRDS, THE FROGS, THE BATS. She takes delight in celebrating what others would pass off as mundane. “I sing for dandelions,” she announces proudly. “If we had to import them and they cost us five dollars a plant, all of us would grow them in pots. Because they are the most universal flower of field and wood, few people pause to see how lovely they are.” After essays on the forest and the field, she closes the book with a paean to the life of the swamp and its rich music:

It is the marsh that furnishes the croakings, the chatter, the quackings, the thunder, the cries, and the screams of birdland…. At times we may think that we would be glad not to hear again the most discordant of these musicians, but they are all dear in their places, and were any of them to become extinct, something of its charm would be taken from the damp, dark, weird marsh life that calls us so strongly. We have learned to know and understand them, and they have won our sympathy and our love.

IF STRATTON-PORTER DEPICTS HER LIMBERLOST LANDSCAPES AS AKIN TO PARADISE, THERE IS A SERPENT IN THE GARDEN: HUMANS. Lurking in the passage above is the possibility of extinction, something naturalists were just beginning to come to grips with then. Four years after the book was published, Martha, the last known passenger-pigeon, died. Concerned over what was being lost, Stratton-Porter wrote bitterly of the wanton destruction of waterbirds for the millinery trade, and the trampling and picking of wildflowers by unthinking nature tourists. And already in her day there was abundant evidence of how humans were altering the land — turning forests into agricultural fields and draining the swamps. In my opinion, without a doubt the most perceptive passage in the book is one where she considers, the bigger picture — how humans were even beginning to alter Earth’s hydrologic cycle:

It was Thoreau who, in writing of the destruction of the forests, exclaimed, “Thank Heaven, they can not cut down the clouds!” Aye, but they can! That is a miserable fact, and soon it will become our discomfort and loss. Clouds are beds of vapor arising from damp places and floating in air until they meet other vapor masses, that mingle with them, and the weight becomes so great the whole falls in drops of rain. If men in their greed cut forests that preserve and distil moisture, clear fields, take the shelter of trees from creeks and rivers until they evaporate, and drain the water from swamps so that they can be cleared and cultivated, — they prevent vapor from rising; and if it does not rise it cannot fall. Pity of pities it is; but man can change and is changing the forces of nature.

ALAS, IT WAS A WARNING THAT NO ONE HEEDED. When the first water cycle diagrams appeared two decades later, they depicted an entirely natural process, from which humans were absent. That is still the case in most hydrologic cycle diagrams available today. In a recent Nexus Media article on human impacts on hydrology, Dr. David Hannah from the University of Birmingham remarked that “Nearly a century ago, human impacts were less extensive and less understood. But we have no excuses now not to include people and their various interactions with water in a changing world.”

AS AN AFTERWARD, A FEW REFLECTIONS ON THE COPY THAT I READ. When this first edition copy of “Music of the Wild” first arrived in the mail many weeks ago, I immediately thought back to my penchant as a child for removing book jackets and disposing of them. Here, I really wished the jacket had been retained, as the outside of the book is rather soiled, detracting a bit from the charm of its gilt gold lettering against a green background. Making the spine white was not particularly wise to begin with; it definitely shows its age. In terms of the volume’s history, all I can say is that it once belonged to Jean Kerr, who wrote her name on the top of the first page in flowing pencil. The most notable characteristic of the book is its weight: 2.4 pounds, according to a bathroom scale. Every sturdy page of text is followed by an even thicker page with a photograph on it; there are literally over a hundred photographs included in the volume. What a magnificent “coffee table” tome it must have been, 110 years ago.

In Praise of Luna: A Moth Encounter

Backyard Nature, Books, Natural History, Night No Responses »

Jun 202020

June is the time for appreciative people to sing in praise of the moths…. (Gene Stratton-Porter)

THE OTHER EVENING, along a stretch of Piney Woods Church Road bordered primarily by loblolly pines, with a scattering of sassafras, sweet-gum, and persimmon, I encountered a male luna moth. When I met up with him, he was just in the process of unfurling his elegant wings; half an hour later, when I left him, he had achieved the glorious pose in the last of the series of photographs above.

SEEKING TO LEARN MORE OF LUNA’S WAYS, I turned to my bookcase with its growing collection of old natural history books and field guides, wondering what nature writers thought and wrote about Actias luna over one hundred years ago. First, these brief words, from “The Moth Book” by W. J. Holland, 1916:

This common and well-known insect has an extensive range from Canada to Florida and westward to Texas and the trans-Mississippi States as far as the region of the great plains. The larva [see below]…feeds upon the various species of walnut and hickory, the sweet-gum, the persimmon, and other trees. In North Carolina it appeared to be particularly fond of the persimmon. The cocoon is thin and papery, spun among leaves, and falls to the ground in autumn.

Next, I consulted my copy of “Moths and Butterflies” by Mary C. Dickenson, 1901, with a less than satisfactory result:

The larva feeds on hickory, walnut, and birch; and the cocoons are found under these trees…. The cocoons are very thin, so thin that color can be seen through them and the time of change from the green caterpillar to the brown chrysalis be ascertained. The large light green moth is very beautiful indeed and is a great favorite with amateur collectors.

Finally, I opened Gene Stratton-Porter’s “Moths of the Limberlost” from 1921, where I found this richer and far more satisfying account of the majestic creature I had seen:

Clinging to my finger, the living creature was of such delicate beauty as to impoverish my stock of adjectives in the beginning. Its big, pursy body was covered with long, furry scales of the purest white imaginable. The wings were of an exquisite light green colour; the front pair having a heavy costa of light purple that reached across the back of the head: the back pair ended in long artistic “trailers”, faintly edged with light yellow. The front wing had an oval transparent mark close to the costa, attached to it with a purple line, and the back had circles of the same. These decorations were bordered with lines of white, black, and red. At the bases of the wings were long, snowy, silken hairs; the legs were purple, and the antennae resembled small, tan colored ferns. This is the best I can do at description, A living moth muse be seen to form a realizing sense of its shape and delicacy of colour.

Photograph by Gene Stratton-Porter from “Moths of the Limberlost”, 1921

Keeping a Sharp Lookout: “A Year in the Fields” by John Burroughs, 1901

Agriculture and Husbandry, Backyard Nature, Birds, book review, Books, Landscape History, Native Plants, Natural History, Sense of Place No Responses »

Jun 192020

…the student and lover of nature has this advantage over people who gad up and down the world, seeking some novelty and excitement; he has only to stay at home and see the procession pass. The great globe swings round to him like a revolving showcase; the change of seasons is like the passage of strange and new countries; the zones of the earth, with all their beauties and marvels, pass one’s door and linger long in the passing…. I sit here among the junipers of the Hudson, with purpose every year to go to Florida, or to the West Indies, or to the Pacific coast, yet the seasons pass and I am still loitering, with a half-defined suspicion, perhaps, that, if I remain quiet and keep a sharp lookout, these countries will come to me.

AFTER THREE QUITE OBSCURE NATURE WRITERS, I THOUGHT IT WAS TIME TO VISIT FAMILIAR GROUND, SO I PULLED MY VOLUME OF BURROUGHS DOWN FROM THE SHELF. Granted, many casual natural history readers forget “the other John”, recalling from this time period only John Muir (who, like Burroughs, sported a white beard and spoke exultantly of nature’s marvels). The two, though, are remarkably different. John Muir was a mountain prophet, speaking in tones of religious rapture about his beloved Sierra Nevada fastnesses. John Burroughs, on the other hand, grew up and lived out his days in the Catskills of New York State, keeping close to the Hudson River. Muir walked long distances alone in the mountains and climbed a redwood in a thunderstorm just to feel it rocking in the wind; Burroughs, meanwhile, remarked self-deprecatingly about his own efforts to venture into the wilds. After a particularly difficult short camping trip with a few companions, he observed that “On this excursion…I was taught how poor an Indian I should make, and what a ridiculous figure a party of men may cut in the woods when the way is uncertain and the mountains high.” It must be added that the highest point in the Catskill “Mountains” is Slide Mountain, at 4189 feet; the highest point in the Sierras, Mount Whitney, is 14,505 feet.

JOHN BURROUGHS’ PROSE WANDERS COMFORTABLY THROUGH THAT LIMINAL RURAL SPACE BETWEEN CIVILIZATION AND THE WILD. I would classify him as a ruderal writer, using a term most commonly applied to plants that are the first to colonize ground disturbed by human action, such as an abandoned field. Cattle roam across many a page, and he frequently writes of fields and weeds. My particular copy of this book, the second edition from 1901, features about 50 photographs (all black and white, of course) of John Burroughs in the landscape and at home. Most of his out-of-door images show predominantly open farmland dotted with occasional trees. In these familiar haunts, Burroughs encountered, and wrote about, numerous birds, trees, and forbs (flowering ground plants), occasionally drifting into comments about his other “neighbors”, from bumblebees to black bears. In all of his walks, his enduring goal, I think, was to realize himself as more deeply a part of his home landscape, and to more fully understand not only nature, but himself as part of it:

One’s on landscape comes in time to be be a sort of outlying part of himself; he has sowed himself broadcast upon it, and it reflects his own moods and feelings; he is sensitive to the verge of the horizon: cut those trees, and he bleeds; mor those hills, and he suffers…. Man can have but one interest in nature, namely, to see himself reflected or interpreted there; and we quickly neglect both poet and philosopher who fail to satisfy, in some measure, this feeling.

FOR BURROUGHS, KEEPING A SHARP LOOKOUT INVOLVED ALL THE SENSES, NOT JUST THE KEEN EYE. In his essays in this volume (collected from his previous works), Burroughs wrote with equal enthusiasm about the scents and sounds of the fields and woodlands near his home. For instance, writing about early April, he enthusiastically remarked:

Then its odors! I am thrilled by its fresh and indescribable odors — the perfume of the bursting sod, of the quickened roots and rootlets, of the mould under the leaves, of the fresh furrows. No other month has odors like it. The west wind the other day came fraught with a perfume that was to the sense of smell what a wild and delicate strain of music is to the ear. It was almost transcendental.

Speaking of “music to the ear”, here Burroughs describes the sounds of tiny frogs (species not identified) “piping in the marshes” in late April:

…toward the last of the month, there is a shrill musical uproar, as the sun is setting, in every marsh and bog in the land. It is a plaintive sound, and I have heard people from the city speak of it as lonesome and depressing, but to the lover of the country it is a pure spring melody.

BURROUGHS ALSO CELEBRATES SEASONAL CHANGE, AND HOW IT REFLECTED THE NATURE’S INNATE VITALITY. “Does not the human frame yield to and sympathize with the seasons?” he asked the reader, in his essay “Autumn Tides”. Underlying it all, no matter how much insight science can offer us, is an abiding mystery: “The only thing inexplicable is the inherent impulse to experiment, the original push, the principle of Life.”

BURROUGHS IS AT HIS MOST PROFOUND, I FEEL, IN HIS MUSINGS ABOUT SCIENCE AND POETRY. In his written work, he moves comfortably between the two worlds, appreciating their kindred natures. As he explains toward the close of his essay, “A Sharp Lookout”,

You may go to the fields and the woods, and gather fruit that is ripe for the palate without any aid of yours, but you cannot do this in science and in art. Here truth must be disentangled and interpreted — must be made in the image of man. Hence all good observation is more or less a refining and transmuting process, and the secret is to know the crude material when you see it…. Before a fact can become poetry, it must pass through the heart or the imagination of the poet; before it can become science, it must pass through the understanding of the scientist.

THE PACE OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE DURING HIS LIFETIME WAS QUITE DRAMATIC. He was already in his late 20s when the Civil War broke out, but by the last decade of his life he gleefully roamed the countryside in a Model T automobile given to him by Henry Ford. His long life (he died just short of his 84th birthday) spanned America’s transition from a largely agrarian society to a rapidly industrializing one. Yet he maintained a confidence in what science and technology have to offer. I wonder if he would still maintain this outlook if he were alive today?

Science does not mar nature. The railroad, Thoreau found, after all, to be about the wildest road he knew of, and the telegraph wires the best aeolian harp out of doors. Study of nature deepens the mystery and charm because it removes the horizon farther off. We cease to fear, perhaps, but how can one cease to marvel and to love?

BEFORE CLOSING THIS ESSAY, I CANNOT RESIST COMPARING HIS WRITING STYLE WITH THAT OF HIS CONTEMPORARY, EDITH THOMAS. Both of them, it turns out, wrote about gossamer — the slender threads of spider silk festooning the landscape in the autumntime. Thomas actually devoted an entire essay to it, and provides a more detailed picture of the phenomenon than Burroughs does. Here is an excerpt:

During this season [of gossamer summer], …miles and miles of hazy filament (if it could be measured linearly) are floating about in the soft, indolent air. Especially, late in the afternoon, with a level and glowing sun, do these mysterious threads flash out along the ground, horizontally between shrubs, slantwise from grass to tree, or else cut adrift, and sailing as the wind wills…. It takes nothing from the poetry that lies in the weft of the gossamer when it is known to be the work of an unconsidered spider…. By some, it is claimed that this floating web is not spread with predaceous intent, but rather as a means of aerial navigation; indeed, these vague and indeterminate threads would hardly disturb a gnats’ cotillion, if blown in their path. Hitherto, we have regarded the spider as an humble, plodding creature of the earth, an unaspiring, stay-at-home citizen, but this new aeronautic hypothesis hints that the poor insect is a very transcendentalist, an ideal voyager…. Some naturalists assert that the gossamer spider instinctively takes advantage of the levity of the atmosphere, thrusting out its threads until they reach a current of warmer and rarer air, which draws them upward, the spider going along with the uncompleted web. Whether it is capable of cutting short its journey and casting anchor at pleasure is indeed questionable.

And here is gossamer again, this time described by Burroughs:

A peculiar feature of our fall may sometimes be seen of a clear afternoon late in the season. Looking athwart the fields under the sinking sun, the ground appears covered with a shining veil of gossamer. A fairy net, invisible at midday and which the position of the sun now reveals, rests upon the stubble and the spears of grass covering acres in extent — the work of innumerable little spiders. The cattle walk through it, but do not seem to break it. Perhaps a fly would make his mark upon it. At the same time, stretching from the tops of the trees, or from the top of a stake in the fence, and leading off toward the sky, may be seen the cables of the flying spider, — a fairy bridge from the visible to the invisible. Occasionally seen against a deep mass of shadow, and perhaps enlarged by clinging particles of dust, they show quite plainly and sag down like a stretched rope, or sway and undulate like a hawser in the tide.

(A hawser is a thick rope for mooring or towing a ship.)

AS A POSTSCRIPT, I WOULD LIKE TO SHARE WHAT I CAN ABOUT MY PARTICULAR VOLUME OF BURROUGHS. I was able to obtain an original second edition from 1901 (augmented by a biographical sketch of Burroughs and the some further photos by Clifton Johnson). It has a lovely gold gilt cover, and includes dozens of photographs of Burroughs, posing on rocks, standing in the doorway of his study, pointing out tracks in the snow with his walking stick, etc. My copy bears almost no marks of its 119-year journey to me, with the notable exception of a normally blank back page filled with text in ink. It is a poem (not inspiring particularly, but a step up from Bradford Torrey’s), entitled “The Lure o’ the Woodland”, attributed to Thomas S. Jones, Jr. Thanks to the marvel of the Internet, I was able to discover that the work originally appeared in Ainslee’s magazine in November, 1907. Unfortunately, every year of the magazine is available online except for 1907. So this transcription of the poem, semi-legible though it is, may be the only copy left in existence. Of the copy-writer, all I know is that his or her initials were JWD, and that he or she was in Jacksonville, Florida on March 19, 1911.

The Poetic Eye: “The Round Year” by Edith Thomas, 1886

Backyard Nature, Birds, Books, Geometry and Nature, Natural History, Night 2 Responses »

Jun 172020

I find the night, like the cup of Comus, “mixed with many murmurs.” First and the nearest at hand, the lively orchestration of the crickets (the later summer adds the fife of a grasshopper and the castanets of the katydid); then, in the distance, the regular, sonorous, or snoring antiphonies of the frogs at different points along the winding course of the creek. It would not surprise me to learn that these night musicians are systematically governed by the baton and metronome, so well do they keep time in the perplexing fugue movement which they are performing.

THANK GOODNESS FOR WIKIPEDIA, OR ELSE EDITH THOMAS WOULD HAVE LOST ME ON HER VERY FIRST LINE. Comus, it turns out, was the Greek god of festivities and revels. A god of excess, he represents anarchy and chaos. He was cup-bearer for Dionysus, Greek god of wine and fertility, so it is fairly easy to guess what Comus’ cup contained. Knowing this adds a contextual richness to Thomas’ imagery; the sense of chaos and wildness is juxtaposed with the “orchestration” of the “night musicians”. I glimpse a poet at work here.

EDITH THOMAS WAS FIRST AND FOREMOST A POET, FAMOUS IN HER DAY AND COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN NOW. Her poetry is tightly constructed, flowery, and ornate. Fortunately for her, and we in the 21st century, she also wrote a single book of nature essays, “The Round Year”, published in 1886. Written shortly after Thomas moved from her native northern Ohio to New York City (where she remained the rest of her life), the book is infused with a bittersweet longing for her home place. (“Who knows whether soul or body pines more for the familiar environment?” she asks in the book’s first essay. “Have wood, field, rock, and stream vested in us something of theirs? Or have we parted our spirit among them, that separation touches us so sorely?”) The title of her book comes from a poem by Emerson with these lines, “Cleave to thine acre; the round year / will fetch all fruits and virtues here.” In this, my third book journey, the pendulum has swung a full arc, from a scientist who seasoned her careful observations with a few poetic passages (Mary Treat) to a poetic rambler with a keen eye for birds and trees (Bradford Torrey) to a dedicated lifelong poet, well versed in literature and Greco-Roman mythology.

IT IS EASY SOMETIMES TO DROWN IN THOMAS’ LITERARY ALLUSIONS, WONDERING AT THE POINT OF IT ALL. There are certainly obstacles to accessing her work. By this, I mean not only the mythological thickets abounding in her prose but also her poetic flights of fancy that sometimes left me wondering if it all might be condensed to a pithy sentence or two instead. It is easy to write her off as lost in raptures of poetic fancy and musings of obscure myth, disconnected from nature. And then the minute I decide that, I find a passage that convinces me that she is, in fact, a perceptive observer of the natural world:

A strange servitude is this of the oak to the cynips, or gall-fly, in thus contributing of his substance to the housing and nourishment of his enemy’s offspring. The mischievous sylph selects sometimes the vein of a leaf, sometimes a stem, which she stings, depositing a minute egg in the wounded tissues. As soon, at least, as the egg hatches, the gall begins to form about the larva, simulating a fruity thriftiness, remaining green through the summer, but assuming at length the russet of autumn. The innocent acorn nature puts to bed as early as possible, that it may make a healthy, wealthy, and wise beginning on a spring morning; but the cradle that holds the gall-fly’s child she carelessly rocks above ground all winter.

THERE IS SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY HERE, THOUGH CLOTHED IN POETIC TRAPPINGS. Replace the sylph — an imaginary aerial spirit — with a wasp, and you have a fairly robust description of the formation of an oak gall. And sometimes Thomas’ poetic insights can even shift from being an obstacle to understanding to offering the reader a path toward an alternative way of encountering the world, a reminder that a successful scientist needs imagination and wonder, too. Consider this image:

Would you for a while shut out the earth and fill your eye with the heavens, lie down, some summer day, on the great mother’s lap., with a soft grass pillow under your head; then look around and above you, and see how slight, apparently, is your terrestrial environment, how foreshortened has become the foreground — only a few nodding bents of blossomed grass, a spray of clover with a bumble-bee probing for honey, and in the distance, perhaps the billowy outline of the diminished woods. What else you see is the blue of heaven illimitably stretched above and beyond you. You seem to by lying not so much on the surface of earth as at the bottom of the sky.

Consider, too, this lovely blending of mathematics and flowing water:

In cooler and deeper retirement, on languid summer afternoons, this flowing philosopher sometimes geometrizes. It is always of circles — circles intersecting, tangent, or inclusive. A fish darting to the surface affords the central starting-point of a circle whose radius and circumference are incalculable, since the eye fails to detect where it fades into nothingness. Multiplied intersections there may be, but without one curve marring the smooth expansion of another. There are hints of infinity to be gathered from this transient water-ring, as well as from the orb of the horizon at sea.

DESPITE THEIR DIFFERENCES IN WRITTEN VOICE, TREAT AND THOMAS SHARED MUCH COMMON GROUND. For instance, just as Treat studied nature in the field (the backyard or the further woods), so Thomas spoke strongly of the need to engage with living nature, instead of collecting dead specimens. On the very first page of “The Round Year”, for instance, she addressed the reader thus:

You come, eager and aggressive, on your specialist’s errand, whatever it may be — botany, ornithology, or other; you may take hence, perforce, a large number and variety of specimens, press the flower, embalm the bird; but a “dry garden” and a case of still-life are poor showings for the true natural history of flower or bird.

ANOTHER COMMON ELEMENT IS THAT BOTH WRITERS ENCOUNTERED A KINGFISHER AND DESCRIBED IT TO THE READER. A comparison of the two accounts provides further insight into their different approaches to observing birds. First, Mary Treat:

The belted kingfisher (Ceryle alycyon) is another familiar bird that frequents the grounds. His name indicates his occupation, and a very successful fisher he is. His fishing-post is on the railing that runs along the wharf. The wharf extends from the grounds about two hundred and fifty feet into the river. Whether he remains at this post the entire year I do not know; we find him here upon our arrival, and leave him here when we depart for the North. I am inclined to think that his permanent residence; at all events, he objects to being disturbed, as if he had been sole manager too long to yield the ground without a loud protest. If more than one person geos upon the wharf, he leaves with a clang and clatter which sound like a watchman’s rattle. and usually flies to the terrace, and alights upon a small tree bending over the water, where he can overlook and watch proceedings. But he does not seem to be afraid of one person alone; if I go upon the wharf unaccompanied, he flits along before me, alighting upon the railing, often not more than fifteen or twenty feet distant, and faces about as if to intimidate me. Seeing this I quietly drop upon a seat; for really, with his rumpled crest and fierce-looking black eyes, he looks rather formidable, being a foot or more in length. Seeming to be satisfied that I am under subjection, he goes on with his fishing, in which he is very expert. Motionless he eyes the finny tribes beneath him until one of their number comes within his range to suit his taste, when he dives under the water and brings it up; and now beating it upon the railing until it is quite limp, he swallows it. Small fish-scales are scattered along the entire length of the railing, where he has dressed his fish preparatory to taking his meals.

And now a very different account of a kingfisher (likely a different species, one found along Lake Erie in Ohio) from the pen of Edith Thomas:

There were fish taken under my observation, though not by line or net. I did not fish, yet I felt warranted in sharing the triumphs of the sport when, for the space of ten minutes or more, I had maintained most cautious silence, while that accomplished angler, the kingfisher, perches on a stately elm branch over the water, was patiently waiting the chance of an eligible haul. I had, meanwhile, a good opportunity for observing this to me wholly wild and unrelated adventurous bird. Its great head and mobile crest, like a helmet of feathers, its dark blue glossy coat and white neck-cloth, make it a sufficiently striking individual anywhere. No wonder the kingfisher is specially honored by poetic legend. I must admit that whenever I chanced to see this bird about the stream it was faultless, halcyon weather.

IT IS AMAZING TO THINK THAT BOTH AUTHORS ARE ENCOUNTERING THE SAME BIRD. I have to confess that Treat’s kingfisher strikes me as far more believable than Thomas’s. Perhaps that is in part because Treat sought to interact with the kingfisher, while Thomas instead watched it quietly from a distance. Treat’s kingfisher emerges as a unique character, while Thomas’s is inextricably part of a semi-mythical landscape, with one foot on an elm branch and the other lost in the mists of “poetic legend”.

AS A POSTSCRIPT, A FEW WORDS ABOUT MY PARTICULAR VOLUME. I managed to locate an 1886 copy, the first (and, I suspect, only) edition. It is an austere volume, bound in army gray without ornamentation apart from the title and author in gold on the spine. It was once Number 2973 at Belding Memorial Library but was stamped Discard at some point. Curious about where my book had been, I tracked down the library. There are two Belding Libraries. There is one in Michigan, but I do not think that is the correct one, since that is technically the Alvah N. Belding Library (in Belding, Michigan). More likely, this book was once held by the Belding Memorial Library in Ashfield, Massachusetts, pictured below.

Rambling with Bradford Torrey: “A Rambler’s Lease”, 1889

Backyard Nature, Birds, book review, Books, Natural History No Responses »

Jun 142020

It is one of the enjoyable features of bird study, as in truth it is of life in general, that so many of its pleasantest experiences have not to be sought after, but befall us on the way; like rare and beautiful flowers, which are never more welcome than when they smile upon us unexpectedly from the roadside.

JUST FOUR YEARS AFTER MARY TREAT PUBLISHED HER “HOME STUDIES IN NATURE”, BRADFORD TORREY PUBLISHED THE SECOND OF WHAT WOULD BE TWELVE BOOKS ABOUT NATURE. I suspect, however, the two never met, as they inhabited such different worlds. Mary Treat was a scientist, carefully observing birds and spiders in her backyard; Bradford Torrey was a saunterer, heir to Thoreau, rambling the countryside near his home with a fond familiarity. Known as an ornithologist, he published no scientific studies, but instead did much to encourage city-dwellers and the ever-increasing suburbanites of his native New England to get out into nature and appreciate its wonders. Born in 1843 in Weymouth, Massachusetts, Torrey published his first natural history book, “Birds in the Bush”, in 1885. “A Rambler’s Lease”, a collection of essays he had written for periodicals, followed four years later. Torrey continued writing for the rest of his life, though his productivity declined after 1900, when he took on the task of editing Thoreau’s Journals. (The edition he ultimately published, reprinted by Dover as two immense volumes of 14 books condensed to two, was the one that I read in my own childhood.) In Torrey’s last several books, he reported on travels to various parts of the country: Florida, Tennessee, the Blue Ridge, New Hampshire, and California. Torrey died in Santa Barbara, California in 1912.

I first met Torrey through another book on my shelf, an anthology of six well-known American nature writers published by Houghton-Mifflin in 1909. The fact that I had never heard of three of them (the other three were, of course, Thoreau, Muir, and Burroughs) kindled my curiosity, ultimately leading me down that path to this blog. I quickly obtained all of Torrey’s works in online editions, but I still longed to be able to hold a copy in his hand. Here, the degree to which he is forgotten today served me in good stead. For a relative pittance, I was able to purchase a first edition of one of his books, in fairly good condition, with a signed original poem by Torrey tipped into the front.

READING IT, I CAN SEE RIGHT AWAY WHY TORREY IS NOT KNOWN TODAY AS A POET. It is more bland than eloquent and more religious than inspiring. Still, it was never published and is in Torrey’s own hand, accompanied by his signature. Apart from this, the book bears practically no trace of its life these past 135 years; all I have to chronicle its journey is a tiny book trade label affixed inside the front cover: W.B. Clarke Co., Booksellers & Stationers, 26 & 28 Tremont St. & 30 Court Sq., Boston.

TORREY MAKES FOR A CHARMING TRAVEL COMPANION FOR THE ARMCHAIR NATURE EXPLORER. I found his prose quite flowing and the author charming and endearing. The volume includes a number of accounts of his “rambles” across the countryside, interspersed with a few more speculative pieces, such as “Butterfly Psychology” (more about those later). At home in the woods, Torrey engages with the animals he encounters (especially birds) as familiar friends. In one chapter, he describes befriending a pair of brooding orioles, to the point that he is able to hand-feed them plant lice, while they are still on their nest. At the same time, Torrey expresses a humble appreciation of the abundance of nature: “I stood in the path…and looked about,” he write of his visit to a nearby tract of land that he had inherited from a relative. “So much was going on in this bit of earth, itself the very centre of the universe to multitudes of living things.”

IN HIS WORK, TORREY PERCEIVED THAT HUMAN LAND USE CHANGES COULD ACTUALLY HAVE POSITIVE IMPACTS ON SOME NATIVE SPECIES. Decades before the term “ecology” entered the lexicon, Torrey was able to observe that clearing a patch of forest for farming could enhance bird life in the area: “…in such a place [a farmed clearing in the woods] one may see and hear more birds in half an hour than are likely to be met with in the course of a long day’s tramp through the unbroken forest….. Up to a certain point, civilization is a blessing, even to birds. Beyond a certain point, for aught I know, it may be nothing but a curse, even to men.” I will leave the 21st century reader to render a verdict on that.

WHILE TORREY HAD A KEEN EYE FOR NATURAL HISTORY, ESPECIALLY BIRD BEHAVIOR, HE ALSO HAD A POETIC SIDE THAT HE SOMETIMES FELT COMPELLED TO DEFEND. In a passage from his essay on “Esoteric Peripateticism”, he argues for sometimes approaching the landscape as a poet rather than as a naturalist: “…it is a blessing to be able on occasion to leave one’s scientific senses at home….. There are times when we go out-of-doors, not after information, but in quest of a mood. Then we must not be over-observant. Nature is coy; she appreciates the difference between an inquisitor and a lover. The curious have their reward, no doubt, but her best gifts are reserved for suitors of a more sympathetic turn….. One may become so zealous a botanist as almost to cease to be a man. The shifting panorama of the heavens and the earth no longer appeals to him.” With these words, Torrey plants himself firmly on the terra-firma of late 19th century natural history writing — a golden age when scientific scrutiny often alternated with poetic reverie. Sometimes, as in many of Torrey’s essays in this book, the two would flow together. At others, such as in Mary Treat’s essays, the poetic allusions feel somewhat forced or as an afterthought.

AT THE SAME TIME, TORREY CONFESSES ON MORE THAN ONE OCCASION TO ANTHROPOMORPHIZING WILDLIFE. Speaking as an ornithologist, Torrey remarks, “To borrow a theological term, my conception of bird nature is decidedly anthropomorphic, and I incline to believe that chickadees as well as men find it easier to blame others than to do better themselves.” In perhaps the most odd essay in the book, “Butterfly Psychology”, Torrey wonders about how butterflies encounter their world. Do they wonder how they came into being? Do they recognize the brevity of their lives? To what extent are they able to recognize and appreciate beauty? After several pages of such wild speculations, he defends such musings with a bit of self-deprecation: “It is my private heresy, perhaps, this strong anthropomorphic turn of mind, which impels me to assume the presence of a soul in all animals, even in these airy nothings; and, having assumed its existence, to speculate as to what goes on within it.”

AT THIS POINT, I CANNOT RESIST COMPARING BRADFORD TORREY’S APPROACH TO NATURE WITH THAT OF MARY TREAT, THE CONTEMPORANEOUS SCIENTIST. Both studied bird behavior, including making close observations of nesting birds. Both had some interest in botany, though Torrey was more at home listing common names, which Treat kept to resolutely to scientific ones. It is in looking at their approaches to insects that the clearest difference emerges. Mary Treat approached ants and spiders and wasps with fascination and patient observation, seeking to know their minds (which she argued they had at a time when many people thought otherwise) by studying them meticulously. Torrey, on the other hand, approached butterflies with imaginative inquiry, wondering about they extent to which their own thoughts and feelings mirror those of human beings. His poetic musings entertain the reader, but do not really add to our scientific understanding of how nature works.

BOTH TREAT AND TORREY HAVE ENCOURAGED ME TO SPEND MORE TIME OBSERVING NATURE, A TREND THAT I HOPE WILL CONTINUE THROUGHOUT THIS JOURNEY. I envy Torrey his countryside rambles, and would love to take more of my own. In the case of Treat, on a recent dog walk I paused to inspect some spider burrows topped with turrets, wondering if the spiders who constructed them could belong to the same genus as the ones that Treat studied. Here are a couple of photographs that I took yesterday of these fascinating constructions:

Spiders and Pitcher Plants: More Reflections on “Home Studies in Nature” by Mary Treat, 1885

Backyard Nature, book review, Books, Native Plants, Natural History 1 Response »

Jun 122020

Many other experiments I recorded which I will not inflict on the reader in detail.

AFTER A FEW ENCHANTING CHAPTERS ABOUT BIRDS, TREAT REVEALS HERSELF TO BE A HIGHLY DEDICATED, RIGOROUS FIELD BIOLOGIST. Treat begins the second section of her book, on the Habits of Insects, by observing that “I sometimes think the more I limit myself to a small area, the more novelties and discoveries I make in natural history. My observations for the past four summers have been almost wholly confined to an acre of ground in the heart of a noisy town” (Vineland, New Jersey). In that chapter and the ensuing ones, Treat reports on her careful observations of burrowing spiders, ants, and wasps. She reports discovering two entirely new species of spider on her acre in town, counting the numbers of burrows and regularly observing each one. She placed a number of spiders in jars, in order to study them more closely. In a rare humorous passage in the book, she explains how she kept them in captivity.

These spiders make very interesting pets. I capture them by cutting out the the nests with a sharp trowel or large knife, and have ready some glass candy jars from twelve to fourteen inches in heigh in which I carefully place them. I then fill in with earth all around, making the jar about half full, and cover the surface with moss, introducing some pretty little growing plants, so that my nervous lady friends may admire the plants without being shocked with the knowledge that each of these jars is the home of a large spider.

THROUGHOUT HER ACCOUNTS OF THE DAILY BEHAVIORS OF SPIDERS, WASPS, AND ANTS, SHE WRITES OF THEM WITH THOUGHTFULNESS AND RESPECT. At various points, she mentions the spiders’ “skill”, “wisdom”, and maternal “care”. “If anyone will closely observe the behavior of insects — especially ants, wasps, and spiders [evidently grouped with insects at the time] — he will not be at all startled or surprised with the announcement that these humble creatures have brains like our own.” Her writing reflects both a sense of fascination with insects and also a painstaking commitment to firsthand, rigorous study. And throughout her chapter on spiders and wasps, I encountered the most fabulous artwork, often flowing organically across much of a page, as in the case of the argiope spider web, below. (Her chapter on ants, however, was entirely devoid of illustrations.)

AFTER SHARING OBSERVATIONS OF BACKYARD INSECTS, THE THIRD SECTION OF TREAT’S BOOK COVERED STUDIES IN INSECTIVOROUS PLANTS. Over five chapters, she details her observations and experiments involving bladderworts, butterworts, sundews, Venus flytraps, and pitcher plants. Many of her investigations included microscopy, such as this drawing of the underwater trapping mechanism of a bladderwort, complete with its mosquito larva victim:

SHE CLEARLY SPENT MANY TEDIOUS HOURS TRYING TO FEED HER BOTANICAL CHARGES. And she documented much of it in her essays, including time of day, type of food, and response of plant. At times, her writing veered toward the kind of prose found in scientific journals; she was clearly quite comfortable in her role as scientist, making new discoveries and, even, at times, contradicting Darwin: “In a letter bearing date June 1, 1875, Mr. Darwin says: ‘I have read your article with the greatest interest…. It is pretty clear I am quite wrong….'” I wonder how often that happened. This part of the book, I confess, was tough going, and I nearly nodded off a time or two. All the plant names were in Latin (common names were only mentioned once in passing if at all), and I began wishing her observations had been reduced to a simple table or two that I might pass over. At one point (quoted at the opening of this post), Treat even recognized the somewhat painful aspect of her reporting, by offering not to “inflict” more of them on her reader.

THE LAST CHAPTER OF THE SECTION, ON PITCHER PLANTS, HOWEVER, WAS ONE OF THE MOST INTRIGUING PARTS OF THE BOOK. In it, Treat reported her observations of numerous flies and cockroaches, all of whom appeared to become intoxicated after consuming some of the liquid exuded by the pitcher plant she was studying. She described them becoming disoriented, stumbling about, and being drawn to the pitcher plant’s open mouth, “as if fascinated by some spell.” Even the ones she rescued before they were entrapped did not live very long afterwards. Treat was convinced that the pitcher plant was drugging them with some sort of toxin, though she seemed a bit frustrated that she could not provide stronger evidence for it:

I have been asked by an eminent scientist if I can prove that the flies are intoxicated. I do not see how I can prove it. I am not a chemist, and cannot analyze the secretion. I can only give the result of my observations and experiments. I might get a large quantity of the leaves and make a decoction of the secretion and drink it; but I find the flies never recover from their intoxication, and my fate might be the same if I took a sufficient quantity.

AS SCIENTISTS NOW KNOW, IT WAS A GOOD THING THAT MARY TREAT DID NOT GO FURTHER IN TRYING TO PROVE THE PITCHER PLANT WAS DRUGGING ITS PREY. We now know that at least eight species in the genus Sarracenia (to which Treat’s pitcher plants belonged) produce the alkaloid coniine, a paralyzing neurotoxin that is most commonly known as the active ingredient in poison hemlock. Consuming it in substantial quantities can cause a burning sensation in the mouth, nausea, vomiting, confusion, rapid heartbeat, seizures, paralysis, and, of course, death.

THE LAST SECTION OF THE BOOK WAS DEDICATED TO PLANTS SHE ENCOUNTERED IN FLORIDA AND NEW JERSEY. Here, her personna of experimental scientist was replaced with that of an eager, open-eyed adventurer, finding spectacular flowering plants in the nearby wilds of New Jersey and Florida. Along the St. John’s River in Florida, she found a water lily that had been depicted in a work by Audubon but never actually described, and nearby she discovered an amaryllis that was entirely new to science. She spoke highly the botanically rich landscape of northern Florida, but declared that there was no more amazing place for botanizing than the New Jersey Pine Barrens. In the only passage in the book where she writes about environmental impacts of human “progress”, she interrupts her tale of floral discoveries to note that “…within a few years past it has been found that the pine-barrens of Southern New Jersey are quite fertile, and at no distant day they are destined to become the greatest fruit gardens in the Union. And then farewell to the rare floral treasures that no art can save.” I was surprised how resigned she seemed to the inevitability of that loss. Fortunately for all of us, reports of the fertility of the Pine Barrens appear to have been greatly exaggerated; a large portion of southern New Jersey remains forested to this day.

AND SO, AFTER A FINAL PARAGRAPH EXTOLLING THE VIRTUES OF NEW JERSEY’S PINE BARRENS FLORA AND A FEW PAGES OF INDEX, THE FIRST LEG OF MY JOURNEY ENDED. I closed the book, taking a last deep draught of the volume’s delightful “old book smell” (which you can read more about here). On the whole, it was a satisfying start to my adventures. I appreciate how Mary Treat succeeded remarkably as a scientist at a time when the profession was largely closed to women. She went head to head with the likes of Darwin, and won. As a popularizer of science for the common folk, I think she was a bit less successful. “Home Studies in Nature” is at best an uneven work. It is a collection of essays, so there really isn’t any structure or theme. Its audience is sometimes the everyday reader (particularly in the section on bird nests and behavior), sometimes the fellow scientist (when reporting on experiments with spiders and pitcher plants). I get the sense from her book that she was most at home (often quite literally) when carrying out meticulous fieldwork, making amazing discoveries just beyond her doorstep or through the lens of a microscope.

Living in the Past: Encountering Works from the Early Days of American Nature Writing

Backyard Nature, book review, Books, Native Plants, Natural History 2 Responses »

Jun 112020

“To the lover, especially of birds, insects, and plants, the smallest area around a well-chosen home will furnish sufficient material to satisfy all thirst of knowledge through the longest life.”

I HAVE DECIDED TO EMBARK ON A JOURNEY. It is not a journey marked by miles — in light of the recent pandemic, I have only been away from my home twice since mid-March, both times venturing only as far as our CSA Farm in Fairburn, less than ten miles from doorstep. It is, instead, a journey into the past (and as I write this, I hear faint strains of Jethro Tull, Living in the Past). Like Ian Anderson, I seek solace and shelter from an unsettling world, one that presses itself into my office and into my being practically every hour of every day. This journey is one into a Golden Age — not a utopia, certainly, but a time of promise and possibility — a time when nature writing in America blossomed, for lack of a better word. Will you join me on my travels? I have mapped out a path in books lined neatly along the upper shelf of my bookcase. Adventures await!

I HAVE GONE ON AN AMAZING JOURNEY BEFORE. It is chronicled already in this blog. Half a dozen years ago, I set out down Piney Woods Church Road, an unassuming byway a short distance from my front door. I walked over 350 miles on that trip. For one year, every day, I walked that patch of road, between my home street of Rico Road at one end and Hutcheson Ferry Road, a bustling path from the outside world to Serenbe, at the other. Every day, I carried my camera, and found new things to photograph and appreciate. I have been overseas many times now — Australia, New Zealand, Bolivia, Ireland, Belize, Malta — but the journey I am most enamored of, the one that taught me the most, is the one I took on foot, here in Georgia, along the same pathway of gravel and dust, past the front and back yards of neighbors, along fields of cattle and horses.

AT LONG LAST, IT IS TIME TO WANDER AGAIN. After my last travels, I fully expected to keep wandering. I envisioned myself a Dirt Road Pilgrim, walking the backroads of Chattahoochee Hills, taking more photographs and having more adventures. Somehow, that never happened. There was something magical, I think, about the level of commitment I had to make in order to take my first journey. Every day, for an entire year, I remained at home, faithfully recording the quotidian wonders of a space that was practically my backyard. And the thought of shifting to once a week, or even once a month, just didn’t seem the same. Oddly enough, it felt like more of an obligation than a calling. Instead, I waited. And now the waiting is finally over. My path has appeared — not one that begins at my front walk or even in the trace of a colored line on Google Maps, but in an ever-growing row of dusty, somewhat tattered volumes on a shelf.

IN THESE TROUBLED TIMES, I SET FORTH IN SEARCH OF HEALING. I seek to assuage the sufferings of myself and my world, to find moments of comfort and calm, maybe even to encounter flashes of wonder and hope. And I believe — I know — they can be found between the covers of aged, largely-forgotten texts. My quest will lead me back and forth across a span of one hundred years, between about 1840 and 1940, and into books whose titles I had until recently never heard of, by authors I had scarcely imagined even existed. Yes, there will be the occasional visit with an old friend — Henry Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Burroughs, John Muir. But mostly I will be seeking the acquaintances of a lesser-known assortment of nature writers — some even contemporaries of Thoreau and Burroughs, most commemorated only in my Biographical Encyclopedia of Early American Nature Writers (edited by Daniel Patterson) and/or a brief entry in Wikipedia. Many of them are women. All of them have wonders aplenty to share. Will you join me?

FOR THIS JOURNEY, LIKE MY EARLIER ONE, I HAVE SET MYSELF A COUPLE OF RULES TO FOLLOW. I have committed myself, wherever possible, to reading original copies of each writer’s work. I believe that the magic of a book does not end with the words themselves. Ancient volumes, imbued with the power of story, call out to me, and I answer them to the extent that my meagre budget allows. I crave the feel of old paper, the brown blotches of old ink stains, the tattered spine, the library stamp, the gift inscription from perhaps 100 years ago or more. Ideally, I would limit myself to first editions, which have that beginning-magic to them even after many decades. Limited as I am to what used copies I can find for thirty dollars or less each (and sometimes a lot less), I will content myself with any old copy whose binding is still intact enough to read without causing further damage. Because I have opted to restrict my reading almost entirely to the forgotten, sometimes opportunities present themselves to obtain the holy grail of the antiquarian book fancier — the signed copy! In a few cases, though, I will have to content myself with whatever copy I can find. A first edition of Walden, for instance, costs more than my annual salary. But mostly I will travel through old books — and my accounts will include not only the words, but the experiences. I will do my best to bring you along on my journey. My second rule? (After all, I did refer to “a couple” of them.) My second rule is to dispense with the thought of a logical sequence to the books I will read. There is no chronology here, though I fully anticipate dialogue between the various authors (some of whom knew and corresponded with, or at least quoted, each other).

TO VARY MY TRAVELS A BIT MORE, I WILL SOMETIMES WANDER INTO MY BACKYARD. I may even set out down Piney Woods Church Road a time or two. My living discoveries — animal tracks, insects, flowers, tree leaves — these I will examine further at home, in light of some field guides that also happen to be some of the earliest published in America. These will include a guide to Southern Wild Flowers and Trees, by Alice Lounsberry, copyright 1901. I managed to win a first edition in an auction in which I was the only bidder (one of the perks of pursuing the obscure and supposedly “out of date”). I can’t wait to open it up and consider everyday nature through the lens of its images and text.

AND SO I BEGIN WITH MARY TREAT, WHO PUBLISHED “HOME STUDIES IN NATURE” IN 1885. I somehow managed to track down a first edition — probably the only edition, for that matter. Like most of these titles, this one is available now in reprinted form, usually printed on demand. But as far as I can tell, since obtaining my copy, no other originals have appeared on the market. That said, the book itself is rather plain: olive drab binding (which looks more yellow-green in the sunlight, in my photograph below), lettering in burgundy across the top, spine (what is left of it) in burgundy, too. A thick folded sheet of transparent plastic both protects my copy and, I suspect, helps prevent its falling apart.

THE BOOK ITSELF HAS HAD A SOMEWHAT ROUGH HISTORY. It was, at some point, known as “Number 808” and kept on the library shelf of the Richland County Training School. My Google search revealed that it was a Normal School (one that trained future school teachers) in the town of Richland Center, Richland County seat, in the backwoods of Wisconsin about halfway between LaCrosse and Madison. Apart from library stamps inside the front cover and on a library card pocket glued into the back, there is no other writing in the book — no choice underlined passages or random scrawl in pencil or ink. But it did take some beating — about a third of the spine is missing. Was the book popular? Were any readers inspired by it to share some of its ideas or messages with their own pupils?

BEFORE I OPEN THE VOLUME, A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE AUTHOR ARE IN ORDER. Born in 1830 in Trumansburg, New York, she spent most of her formative years in Ohio before returning to New York State and marrying Dr. James Burrell Treat in 1861. The couple moved briefly to Iowa, then settled in Vineland, New Jersey. Beginning in her home’s backyard, and that of a cottage the Treats purchased on the St. Johns River in Florida, Mary Treat explored the natural world. She became renowned for her research and knowledge in entomology and botany (particularly in regard to carnivorous plants). Her botanical and entomological fieldwork took her to the Pine Barrens of New Jersey and the wilds of Florida. Two species of amarilys (one of which she discovered) and two species of ants are named after her. She corresponded with scientists of her day who are still well known — Asa Gray and Charles Darwin, among others. While the public generally knew her as a popularizer of nature study (at a time when the Nature Study Movement was just getting underway), she also conducted experiments and published her findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Her first book for a popular audience, “Chapters on Ants”, came out in 1979 and was a collection of essays that had previously appeared in publications like Harper’s. Her second essay collection, “Home Studies in Nature”, came out six years later.

AT LAST, I BEGIN TO READ. After a brief introduction on encountering nature right where you are (including the quote at the beginning of this article), the book begins with a section on birds. There are a lot of bird books from the late 1800s. In fact, a large portion of the early environmental movement emerged from the popularity of birdwatching. Birding also spawned many titles, some of which await reading in my bookcase. Try as I will, I have not been able to connect with my inner ornithologist. I spent a summer working as a seabird interpreter off the Maine Coast, but what I most fondly recall from that time is the rocky, wave-battered coast, the blooming lupines, the strawberry festivals, and the endless used book sales (heaven!), not really the puffins (though I certainly found them adorable). So I was a bit apprehensive as the first chapter on Our Familiar Birds began.

ALREADY I CAN SEE THAT TREAT IS A DELIGHTFUL AND ASTUTE WRITER. I really enjoyed all four of her chapters on birds, including birds of Florida, birds in winter, and the architecture of birds’ nests. I was in awe of how patiently Treat worked on what she refers to as “domesticating” the birds around her, to the point that she could observe their habits closely and begin describing their characters. In so doing, she reveals the birds as living beings, not automatons acting by instincts only. While it is common now for us to ascribe intelligence to birds, in her day that was hardly the norm. In her chapter on birds’ nests, she shares about how different members of the same bird species can construct wildly varying nests — some skillfully crafted, others hastily thrown together. This provides evidence, she argues, that birds can reason and learn — abilities at the time that others would not have attributed to them. Specifically, she writes that

A close observer of birds cannot fail to see that they exercise reason and forethought, not only in the management of the young, but in many other things.

ALREADY, IN 1885, TREAT RECOGNIZES THE HORRENDOUS HUNTING OF BIRDS FOR SPORT. She even expresses a moment of regret that hunters themselves cannot legally be hunted. Compared to that person who shoots birds “from mere wantonness and sport of the chase, the hawk or owl, which takes a bird only to appease his hunger, towers above him in moral rectitude.” I would definitely side with the birds, too.

NEXT TIME, AN ADVENTURE WITH INSECTS. The next section of Treat’s book covers some entomological explorations. For now, I will close with one of my favorite illustrations in the book thus far, the Spanish bayonet in flower.