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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.

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.