The Natural Patriot

A few months ago I happened to pick up a copy of Jacques Cousteau’s classic first book, The Silent World, less from a burning desire to read it than for the mysterious and evocative cover photo, and out of a sense of comradely solidarity with this pioneer submariner. It gathered dust on my bedside table for a while, as books often do, before the opportunity arose to read it, in this case during a week on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, a place, appropriately enough, dominated by the edge of the Ocean.

What a book. I would be the first to admit that Cousteau is not the most talented writer — the prose is often pedestrian and the organization a bit clunky. But this is not a novel to be read for the art of its language. This is the real McCoy. It is a tale of exploration of a fabulous new world hitherto almost completely unknown. After reading The Silent World, I’m left with the powerful sense that Cousteau was an explorer in the classical mold, in the company of Columbus, Lewis and Clark, and the early astronauts.

It’s fashionable in some professional circles to dismiss Cousteau with a condescending wave. He was not a “real oceanographer”, they might say, and this is true enough. He had no formal training in marine biology, though he did have the naval Captain’s years of practical knowledge of the Sea. And he had some engineering background. Many passages in the book describe activities that the team undertook in the name of research to learn about animal behavior and diving physiology and so on, which seem quaintly sophomoric to us in the modern world where we’re accustomed to seeing the wonders of the universe in high-definition while we loaf on the living room sofa.

But that is part of the point. Cousteau was not an egghead product of the universities as many of us are know. There was essentially noone to teach him the skills and understanding that we take for granted today, either as marine biologists or sport divers. He was, to use the old cliche, a student in the school of hard knocks. He and his buddy Emil Gagnon invented underwater breathing, something that humans had been trying to figure out for literally thousands of years. That alone is enough to qualify him for heroic status.

But there’s more. The human stories behind the Cousteau saga are fascinating. The aqua-lung, as they called their creation, was cobbled together from scrounged parts while Cousteau and his homies were laying low in Nazi-annexed France during the war. They tested the thing out in a hidden cove to escape the attention of Italian occupation troops. They fed themselves in those lean times by spearing fish. Everything was trial and error, including terrifying dives to great depths, in caves, and such places where divers not infrequently passed out or lost their bearing from nitrogen narcosis. Some never came back.

After the war, as a naval officer, Cousteau was detailed to Marseilles to run “a collecting center for returning sailors in a commandeered castle.” He convinced his superiors that the aqua-lung had promise in a variety of naval applications and wheedled their permission to conduct a series of explorations. His buddy Taillez quit his job as a forest ranger, and a motley crew was assembled as the “Undersea Research Group.” Their activities included location and salvaging of wrecks, which led them eventually to the wrecks of cargo ships from classical times, the merchant marine of Greece, Phoenicia, Carthage, and Rome. The treasures they found had been sitting on the bottom of the Mediterranean since they sank two millennia ago, and offered unprecedented insights into the life of those times. Cousteau was, without a doubt, larger than life.

“I have recounted how the first goggles led us underwater in simple and irresistible curiosity, and how that impulse entangled us in diving physiology and engineering, which produced the compressed-air lung. Our dives are now animated by the challenge of oceanography. We have tried to find the entrance to the great hydrosphere because we feel that the sea age is soon to come.” 

Reading these tales of high adventure half a century or more later inevitably brings the wistful sense, all too familiar nowadays, of what has been lost from the oceans, which were still comparatively virgin in the 1940s and 1950s when Cousteau first penetrated them. The descriptions of schools of gigantic fishes moving placidly among colorful reefs, which Cousteau and company were the first humans to see in their natural habitat, are almost nowhere to be found in the world oceans of today. But I am willing to bet that the situation would be far worse had the mysteries and beauty of the Ocean world not been brought to such wide popular attention by Cousteau’s lifelong passion.

What “professional” ocean scientist today can claim that kind of victory?

Over the last few weeks, while piddling around the project site (i.e., yard), pulling weeds, attempting to ferret out the invaders from the natives, puzzling over bugs, and pondering where I might site a small pond (and how to sell the idea to my spouse), I’ve had occasion to dust off my venerable Golden Nature Guides, beloved little books of childhood.

For me, there are few physical objects that can conjure the idyllic, big wide world of childhood gone by than these wonderful little gems of natural history. They were frequent companions for me as a youngster and I still take them out with a certain reverence to look through the pages, one for each species, each a marvel of textual and pictorial concision, with a short description of the creature’s habits and natural history, a map of its distribution, and a simple but beautiful painting of it in its characteristic habitat. These books somehow hit on the perfect formula for conveying the beauty and fascination of living things to kids.

And we owe it all to a guy named Herbert S. Zim.

Not exactly a household name. But if you still have a dog-eared copy of one of the dozens of Golden Nature Guides that were eventually published over the decades starting in 1949, you will notice that virtually all of them were written, co-written, or edited by Herbert S. Zim. His curriculum vitae, in brief, from Wikipedia:

“Zim was born 1909 in New York City, but spent his childhood years in southern California. At the age of fourteen he returned to the east, and took his degrees (B.S., M.S., Ph. D.) at Columbia University. Zim wrote or edited more than one hundred scientific books, and in a thirty-year career teaching in the public schools, introduced laboratory instruction into elementary school science. He is best known as the founder, in 1945 (and for twenty-five years, editor in chief) of the Golden Guides, pocket-size introductions for children to such subjects as fossils, zoology, microscopy, rocks and minerals, codes and secret writings, trees, wildflowers, dinosaurs, navigation and more. He was the sole or co-author for many of the books, which were valued for their clarity, accuracy and attractive presentation—helped by the illustrations of his friend, Raymond Perlman.”

Consider the impact that this single unsung man (so unsung, in fact, that the pixelated snapshot above is the only one I could find of him online!) has had on the environmental awareness of an entire generation — perhaps even two or three generations — of American citizens. Who can say how many kids in the 50s and 60s and 70s decided, while browsing through one of these little books, to spend the afternoon outside hunting for caterpillars instead of yielding to the seductive stupor of the cathode ray tube? Who can say how many of today’s alternative energy entrepeneurs and scientists and educators and conservationists caught fire as a result of a spark generated by one of these books? I can’t, but I know one: me.

By way of illustration, three personal anecdotes:

When I was a kid, my family drove cross-country (in a van without air-conditioning that was prone to overheating in the desert and climbed the Rockies at about 18 mph, etc.), from Arlington, Virginia to LA, every three years, where we spent the bulk of three weeks visiting my aunt and her family. When I tell people this they think my parents were crazy. But it was a the adventure of a lifetime and an incomparable learning experience for kids. We saw a lot of the country, did a lot of camping, and my parents occasionally allowed us to visit the cheesy fake Indian trinket shops that were common along the dustier stretches of Route 66 in the olden days. One day when I was probably about seven (this would have been the late 1960s), we were visiting Walnut Canyon, which is somewhere in the southwest, and I convinced my parents to buy me the Golden Nature Guide to Rocks and Minerals. I felt so grown up to have a real book instead of a kid’s book. It was an early watershed moment in my life as a bookworm and naturalist.

Nevertheless, I was not destined to be a geologist. For one thing, rocks are dead. Or so they seemed to me. I found animals much more interesting. Second anecdote: Around the same time, in second grade, I became obsessed with turtles. I take this herpetophilia to be a common, though poorly understood, genetic trait located somewhere on the Y chromosome, since it is so commonly expressed among young boys. This is despite the fact that my white-bread suburban neighborhood turned out, to my dismay, to be nearly devoid of reptiles. I saw maybe two or three box turtles, and no snakes at all, in the wild while I was growing up despite frequent expeditions mounted for that purpose to the local park where I spent much of my youth. But I can remember sitting rapt with the pocket-sized Golden Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians, studying the pictures, memorizing what they ate, looking at the ingenious maps that showed purple where the summer (pink) and winter (blue) ranges overlapped. This genetic propensity has in fact been transferred to my son, who latched on to my antique Reptile guide in an uncannily similar way and spent a lot of time with it (it is now bound with duct tape).

Anecdote three: One of the standard operating procedures of the cross-country trips was that, periodically, we would take a rest stop and every kid (of which there were ultimately six, though we never made the trip as a complete group) got to choose a magazine or coloring book or something to keep them quiet for 6 or 8 minutes after we hit the road again. On this trip, I think I was about ten and, instead of getting the standard Mad magazine or puzzles or comic book, I chose the Golden Nature Guide to Birds. Paging though that book as we droned along the highway, through southern Canada if I remember correctly, was the first time I actually noticed that birds (and other animals) had distinguishing marks that could be used to identify them. Perhaps the first tentative roots of my later interest in taxonomy.

It appears that I’m not the only one with such fond memories. Evidently the original versions of the Guides have recently become “collectible“. Many have since been reprinted, albeit without the engaging covers of old, and are available from St. Martin’s Press.

Now then: I was appalled to read, as I was surfing the web in search of intel on Dr. Zim, that the famous PZ Myers of Pharyngula fame had disparaged the gentleman’s name — simply because as a lad PZ lost a library copy of Zim’s Golden Guide to Mammals and got into deep doo-doo with the librarian. Even today, these decades later, the Golden Guides have traumatic associations for him.

Note to PZ: Dude, Herb didn’t lose your book — you did! Suck it up.

So I am here to clear the man’s name. Let us lift a glass to the late great Herbert S. Zim, pioneer of biophilia and Natural Patriot: we salute you.

[Editor’s note: This just in — and in time for Earth Day (barely). I reprint below an extract from the new, second edition of Richard Louv’s classic and inspirational book, Last Child in the Woods.  The new edition is expanded and contains more practical suggestions (here are a few more), as described below. I intend to use them since this week is my son’s “TV turn-off week” (this also includes computers) suggested by his school. I sure had a lot of fun with dirt when I was a young’un.]

BEYOND NATURE-DEFICIT DISORDER
It’s Time to Turn Consciousness into Action
By Richard Louv
Author of Last Child in The Woods

Got dirt? “In South Carolina, a truckload of dirt is the same price as a video game!” reports Norman McGee, a father in that state who bought a small pickup-load of dirt for his daughter and friends.

McGee is turning consciousness into action. So is Liz Baird, who keeps a “wonder bowl” available for her children.

When Baird was a little girl she would fill her pockets with natural wonders — acorns, rocks, mushrooms. “My Mom got tired of washing clothes and finding these treasures in the bottom of the washer or disintegrated through the dryer,” Liz recalls. “So she came up with “Liz’s Wonder Bowl”, and the idea was that I could empty my pockets into the bowl. I could still enjoy my treasures, and try to find out what things were, and not cause trouble with the laundry.”

McGee and Baird are among the thousands of parents who have joined — and are leading — an international children and nature movement. Sometimes known as Leave No Child Inside, the effort is bringing together people from all walks of life, who are creating grassroots regional campaigns, state and national legislation, and changes in their own families to help children become happier, healthier and smarter.

An emerging body of scientific knowledge links nature time to longer attention spans, better cognitive functioning, reduction of stress, and strengthened family bonds. What better way to enhance parent-child attachment than to walk in the woods together, disengaging from distracting electronics, advertising, and peer pressure?

Howard Frumkin, director of the National Center for Environmental Health at Centers for Disease Control, recently describes the clear benefits of nature experiences to healthy child development, and to adult well-being.

“In the same way that protecting water and protecting air are strategies for promoting public health, protecting natural landscapes can be seen as a powerful form of preventive medicine,” he says. He believes that future research about the positive health effects of nature should be conducted in collaboration with architects, urban planners, park designers, and landscape architects. “Of course, there is still much we need to learn, such as what kinds of nature contact are most beneficial to health, how much contact is needed and how to measure that, and what groups of people benefit most. But we know enough to act.”

If you’re a parent who missed out on nature as a child, now’s your chance. Indeed, all the gifts of nature that come to children also come to the good adult who introduces a child to nature.

Young people are acting, too, by becoming natural leaders in the movement. For example, a seven-year-old girl in Virginia rounded up her friends and enrolled them in her own Girls Gone Wild in Nature Club. Together they organize backyard campouts and bug hunts.

In Mississippi, teenager Josh Morrison founded Geeks in the Woods for his friends and fellow geeks everywhere. He defines “geek” as a “gaming environmentally educated kid,” and says he and his friends are “tired of being labeled” tech addicts ” can have their PlayStations and their outdoor time too: “We could be the generation that makes a U-turn back to . . . a balance between virtual reality and what sustains all life . . . nature.”

FIVE ACTIONS YOU CAN TAKE TODAY

1. Go for a family walk when the moon is full. There’s a whole new set of animals, sights and sounds out there. Listen to animals calling. Owls and bats are looking for prey. Watch for things glowing, like worms and fungus on trees. And look up at the stars.

2. Help your child discover a hidden universe. Find a scrap board and place it on bare dirt. Come back in a day or two, lift the board, and see how many species have found shelter there. Identify them with the help of a field guide. Return to this universe once a month, lift the board and discover who’s new.

3. Tell your children stories about your special childhood places in nature. Then help them find their own: leaves beneath a backyard willow, the bend of a creek, the meadow in the woods. Let it become their intimate connection with the natural world.

4. Revive old traditions. Collect lightning bugs at dusk, release them at dawn. Make a leaf collection. Keep a terrarium or aquarium. Go crawdadding — tie a piece of liver or bacon to a string, drop it into a creek or pond, wait until a crawdad tugs.

5. Invent your own nature game. One mother’s suggestion: “We help our kids pay attention during longer hikes by playing “find ten critters” — mammals, birds, insects, reptiles, snails, and other creatures. Finding a critter can also mean discovering footprints, mole holes, and other signs that an animal has passed by or lives there.”

Adapted from LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS by Richard Louv, copyright 2008. Reprinted by permission of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

In our families and our communities, it’s time to take action. That’s why the new, expanded 2008 edition of “Last Child in the Woods” contains a “Field Guide” with 100 Actions that families and communities can take, along with discussion questions, a report on the movement, and other resources for parents, educators, conservationists, business people and community leaders.

For more information, see the Second Edition of “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder“. To help build the movement, please join the Children & Nature Network.

Richard Louv, recipient of the 2008 Audubon Medal (and an honorary Natural Patriot!), is the author of seven books. The chairman of the Children & Nature Network, he is also honorary co-chair of the National Forum on Children and Nature.

[Editor’s note: Few have employed the Spanish language so masterfully as Pablo Neruda.  I’ve often felt that an important incentive to improve my own rudimentary Spanish would be the ability to read and appreciate Neruda’s poetry in his native tongue.  For now, alas, I have to be satisfied with the translation of by Alastair Reid, who has been called “Neruda’s most talented and imaginitive English translator”.  This is from Neruda’s poetic autobiography, written in his elder years as he reminisced down his long and eventful life from his remote home on the coast of Chile.  As winter winds down here in Virginia, and I can already see in the woods the subtle wash of red maple buds, I’m waiting for the earth too.]

Oh tierra, esperame
(Oh, Earth, Wait for Me)

Pablo Neruda
from “Isla Negra“

Return me, oh sun,
to my country destiny,
rain of the ancient woods.
Bring me back its aroma, and the swords
falling from the sky,
the solitary peace of pasture and rock,
the damp at the river margins,
the smell of the larch tree,
the wind alive like a heart
beating in the crowded remoteness
of the towering araucaria.

Earth, give me back your pristine gifts,
towers of silence which rose from
the solemnity of their roots.
I want to go back to being what I haven’t been,
to learn to return from such depths
that among all natural things
I may live or not live.  I don’t mind
being one stone more, the dark stone,
the pure stone that the river bears away.

[The photo below shows Neruda’s house at Isla Negra, Chile]

199 years ago on this day, the 12th of February 1809, a child was born in the town of Shropshire in the West English midlands, and grew up to change the world. 

Charles Darwin spent a unique life studying nature, with the 19th century gentleman’s enviable leisure to pursue his subject with a concentration and material wherewithal never before possible, and which will certainly never be seen again.  He lived and worked, as it were, at the ephemeral gateway between an old world on which large swaths of territory remained in an essentially primeval state — some of which he was the first European to see during his seminal voyage aboard H.M.S. Beagle — and a new one beginning to yield to the industrial revolution spreading rapidly over its surface.

Darwin is of course most famous for the revolutionary idea that grew out of his uniquely comprehensive experience with the earth’s inhabitants: evolution by natural selection. The idea was revolutionary because, for the first time in history, it provided a mechanistic explanation for how living organisms develop the characteristics that suit them so astoundingly to their environment, an explanation based on simple and well understood physical and biological processes (indeed, so simple that his colleague and defender Thomas Henry Huxley observed after reading the Origin, “how extremely stupid not to have thought of that!”).  And because the explanation fit such a motley range of previously inexplicable observations.  One of the types of observations that were unified by his theory was the strange similarities in structure among wildly different kinds of animals, such as whales, mice, and bats — all of which share a basic anatomical structure.  The reason of course is that they are descendents of a common ancestor, whose parts have become modified, as Darwin would say, to different ends.  We are all, in a very literal sense, family. 

For the first time, the natural world made sense. 

In hiw own words, “As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.”

Of course, Darwin’s materialistic explanation of life’s diversity crashed headlong into the Biblical story of creation that had reigned since the beginning of time, with implications so fundamental and far-reaching that the anthropologist Ashley Montague aptly observed:”Next to the Bible, no work has been quite as influential, in virtually every aspect of human thought, as The Origin of Species.”  The reverberations continue to this day, as is clear from reading the newspaper in almost any given week. Darwin is arguably the superlative example in human history of the power of a scientific idea to change the world.

One of the wonderful things about Darwin is that his works are completely accessible to the moderately educated layperson.  Even with the slightly stilted prose of the mid-19th century, his writing has an engaging quality, and his account of the Beagle voyage in particular has real drama and some ripping yarns (told, of course, with Darwin’s characteristic modesty) — danger, despair, the thrill of discovery, you name it. You can begin with The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online (He even has this stuff in podcasts — who knew?) 

But what is perhaps less widely appreciated about Darwin, and what I admire most about him, is that he was a consummate naturalist.  After literally overturning the philosophical foundations of human thought with the Origin, Darwin did not go off to play golf or spend his life on a celebrity tour.  He spent decades in the tedious and methodical tasks of minute dissection and description of the world’s barnacles (yes, barnacles), eventually producing a masterwork that still stands as the seminal, classic foundation of knowledge on this group of animals. Clearly, it was a labor of love.

So let’s raise a glass, virtually speaking, to the gentle naturalist who figured it all out.

Dear friends, colleagues, family members, sparring partners, lost souls, and passers-by,

I am proud to say that, as of this day, the Natural Patriot has survived its first perilous year in this world (I’m referring to the blog, not myself.  I of course also survived the year but that’s probably less newsworthy). As is true of most species, the early days and months are the most dangerous stage of life history, and a newborn blog, all dewy and wide-eyed, emerging tentatively from the womb or wherever it emerges from to find its way in the world, is no exception.  There are apprehension, missteps, risk of starvation, fear of predators, fear of exposure. And of course the constant siren song of tossing it all in (”Why on earth am I spending my non-existent free time doing this?”). 

The vast majority of young animals, alas, don’t survive their first year, and I gather that the same is true of blogs, though I can’t locate the stats at the moment. Somehow we muddled through.  Makes me want to stand up and belt out an Aretha Franklin song — but that would surely kill my visitor stats so I’ll spare you.

So, in lieu of actually writing something new and compelling and worthwhile, I hope that you, gentle reader, will grant me the indulgence just this once (or perhaps once a year, if we beat the odds and survive another) of a retrospective exhibit.  Here then are some of the posts I am most fond of (Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!):

It all started with The Nature of Patriotism, an idea that I think is underappreciated but key to living a long and harmonious life as a global society.

I don’t want this to be just another partisan blog (though my colors undoubtedly show through).  Which is why I remain intrigued — and heartened — by the question: Is purple the new green?

Natural patriotism, like anything worthwhile, is not easy.  Which is why it is worth pondering The nature of natural, and its implications.

Holding that thought, it may be that long-term sustainability requires an evolution in our approach to our relationship with nature, namely one of Reconciliation ecology.  

But with all the other problems we face, Can we afford to save the world? Well, can we afford not to?  Addressing this most important question of the new millennium requires that we focus on The real economy.  

The root of Natural Patriotism is the intuitive understanding that the natural world is essential to our physical and spiritual life. Every once in a while, I slow down long enough to remember my Ocean soul and realize this. And now, even the scientific approach supports the idea that, to be melodramatic, Biodiversity is a secret to inner peace.

How to share that love?  The most inspirational and hopeful message I’ve read comes from Richard Louv, a true Natural Patriot.

Lest there be misunderstanding, a harmonious relationship with nature is not only an issue of esthetics or even spirituality, it is critical to our material well-being: Trees save lives.  Again, saving both trees and lives will require hard choices, which in turn requires recognizing that Economic growth is the opiate of the people.

So there you have it.  Sorry I can’t throw a wild birthday party — I’ve learned a surprising amount of HTML and other arcane geekana in the last year, but haven’t yet figured out how to do that online.  But if you happen to feel inspired about a birthday gift, there’s no need to send cash, baked goods, or expensive merchandise (although I will surely not turn them down).  Instead, it would warm the cockles of the Natural Patriot’s heart if you simply tell a friend about the site (something good, I mean), subscribe by RSS if you haven’t already, and . . .

Sign in below with a comment! (just hello is fine)

Thanks, as always, for your support!

Right, I promised something about pumpkin pie, or at least some fare less likely to produce indigestion than the end of the world as we know it (although the conversation during the Thanksgiving holiday with the extended family did, perhaps inevitably, ultimately turn in that direction).

As we all know (or think we know) from grade-school history, the official First Thanksgiving was observed by the English pilgrims, with their Wampanoag neighbors, at Plymouth colony in 1621, for the general purpose of giving their heartfelt thanks that, somewhat aganst the odds, a small fraction of their number had survived the starvation, disease, horrible accidents, and hostile attacks to which colonists of previously unknown but already populated lands in those rustic days were prone at all times.

Of course, giving thanks for surviving another year with enough crops to face the winter has been a cause for celebration since the beginning of time and in probably all cultures, including those of many of the North American Indians, as well as the Spanish and English adventurers, soldiers, and would-be settlers that found their way to this continent in the early days. So it’s not surprising that some argument has arisen about who observed the first “official” Thanksgiving on American soil (implicitly meaning the first one involving Europeans). Partisans from my neck o’ the woods (including our Governor) have been making noise for some time that settlers in Virginia had a Thanksgiving feast even earlier. 

“Historians have also recorded other ceremonies of thanks among European settlers in North America, including British colonists in Berkeley Plantation, Virginia. At this site near the Charles River in December of 1619, a group of British settlers led by Captain John Woodlief knelt in prayer and pledged ‘Thanksgiving’ to God for their healthy arrival after a long voyage across the Atlantic. This event has been acknowledged by some scholars and writers as the official first Thanksgiving among European settlers on record.”

This year, even President Bush himself visited the Berkley Plantation site of this earlier Thanksgiving event and took the opportunty to fan the flames of North-South rivalry over the issue (perhaps trying to win back some cred with the southern voters lost to his party’s downward spiral in recent years). 

Be all that as it may, my interest here is not in the minutiae of who was first, but on how this holiday illustrates our American (and of course, everyone’s throughout the world) intimate dependence on the bounty of Nature. As Edward Winslow wrote in A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, in 1621:

“Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, among other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed upon our governor, and upon the captain, and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakersof our plenty.”

Moreover:

“People tend to think of English food as bland, but, in fact, the pilgrims used many spices, including cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, pepper, and dried fruit, in sauces for meats . . . Since the pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians had no refrigeration in the seventeenth century, they tended to dry a lot of their foods to preserve them. They dried Indian corn, hams, fish, and herbs.”

There’s a reason for this — the spices over which great wars were waged, fortunes were made and lost, and nations rose and fell in the Old World, served not only the familiar purpose of making food tasty, but also of making it safer, particularly meat.  In general, what we know as spices are the defensive chemical weapons that plants produce to battle the insects, microbes, and other enemies constantly trying to make a meal of them.  When chosen carefully and used in moderation, these chemicals not only taste good but fulfill the same antimicrobial role for us that they did for the plants that fashioned them.  It is not coincidence that strong spices are much more common in the cuisine of more tropical countries where meat spolis quickly than in, say, Norway.  And there is strong circumstantial evidence that the spices most commonly used in cooking are those that have broad antimicrobial effectiveness. 

Interestingly, the menu at that first Thanksgiving almost certainly did not include corn, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, ham, or even cranberries, all of which are considered staples of the feast in various parts of the USA today.  Instead, the table was likely laden with Cod, Eel, Clams, Lobster, and even perhaps . . . eagle.

Which brings me, circuitously, to how history has treated the noble creature that has come to serve as the symbol of Thanksgiving, but which some believe might have had a more illustrious career as our nation’s symbol. Alas, here we encounter another appealing but apocryphal piece of Americana.  That great polymath scientist, inventor, keen observer of Nature (like many of the other Founding Fathers) and wit Ben Franklin did indeed extoll the turkey’s virtues relative to those of the bald eagle. But contrary to legend, this did not produce a debate about which of these birds should become the national symbol.  The truth appears more prosaic — ol’ Ben discussed this idea only privately in a letter to his daughter:

“For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead Tree near the River, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him.

“With all this Injustice, he is never in good Case but like those among Men who live by Sharping & Robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank Coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District. He is therefore by no means a proper Emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America who have driven all the King birds from our Country . . .

“I am on this account not displeased that the Figure [the eagle adorning the recently adopted Great Seal of the USA] is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey. For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America . . . He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

Yes, that Newt Gingrich. I admit this is hard for me, as a lifelong Democrat. But bear with me.  

In our better moments, we all like to talk about finding common ground and fostering bipartisanship and all that stuff.  So I am trying to walk the walk here.  If we can put aside his social agenda for a moment, one has to recognize that Newt Gingrich has been one of the more compelling voices on the right in terms of the role of science in American policy, consistently arguing that generous investment in science and education is among the key factors in making this country strong, economically robust, and flexible in the tumultuous new millennium.

Probably many of us who remember him from his Speaker-of-the-House days have forgotten, or were never aware, that Gingrich is a bona fide environmentalist.  So much so that conservative think tanks have found it necessary to keep an eye on him – fearing that his support for the Endangered Species Act and  National Instutute of the Environment have brought us dangerously close to the end of western civilization as we know it.  All the code words are there: “junk science”, “property rights”, “unreasonable regulation”.  As one conservative think-tanker commented, disapprovingly, on Newt’s establishment of a House task force on the environment:

“Then Gingrich gave Republicans with views similar to those of liberal environmental organizations equal representation on the task force with Republicans holding conservative/limited-government views”

Horrors — equal representation! What is America coming to?

According to Wikipedia, Gingrich started his career as a Professor of History at the University of West Georgia (where he was denied tenure, which may have something to do with his lifelong antipathy toward the “intellectual elite“). Interestingly, the book jacket lists him as having been an “environmental studies professor.” At any rate, it is clear that the environment has been a key, substantive issue for Gingrich over the long haul.

So I have now finished reading his book, A Contract with the Earth, co-authored with Terry Maple, Professor of Pyschology, Behavior, and Conservation at Georgia Tech and former Director of Zoo Atlanta.  The book is pretty easy going, really an extended essay.  And it is excellent. Much of this stuff has been said before, but rarely from a voice that carries (or carried at one time) so much weight with the large conservative American constituency that “environmentalism” or “creation care” or whatever you want to call it so desperately needs. The proposed Contract with the Earth consists (presumably not coincidentally) of Ten Commandments Commitments:

1. Take the Lead (message to the “sole superpower” remaining on earth, whose leadership has, to put it politely, dropped the ball on environmental issues)

2. Reward a new generation of environmental entrepeneurs (employing the core conservative approach of market-based approaches to innovation)

3. Retire or rejuvenate old technologies (Coal comes to mind)

4. Transform the role of government (Again, near and dear to conservatives, and a long-term Newt issue.  But these guys also recognize that some problems cannot be solved by the market alone and that some government regulation is necessary, hence Newt’s long-time support for te Endangered Species Act)

5. Become an aspirational and inspirational Nation (here’s where the Patriotism comes in)

6. Position America to meet the challenge (”We must be prepared to anticipate and quickly respond to present and future threats.  The high priority of the environment must be affirmed.”)

7. Encourage scientific and technical literacy (I’ll drink to that, as I have said before)

8. Invoke the spirit of collaboration and cooperation (Who can argue with that?  I only wish Newt had discovered this lofty goal before leading his scorched-earth attack on the Clinton White House back in his glory days.  But let’s not go there . . .)

9. Support the environment through philanthropy and investment (”A coordinated, strategic philanthropy will support the increasing priority of environmental events and issues.”)

10. Enlist the Nation (”executives in government, business, science and the arts must rally to mobilize all citizens to pursue proactive, environmental policies and practices at home and in the workplace . . . Every one of us, meek and mighty, is needed to reach our goal of a cleaner, healthier Earth”)

There is a lot of good stuff here, along with, inevitably, some fluffy rhetoric and some substantive issues I would question.  The wonkish details of how such a revolution might transpire have been expressed better elsewhere (e.g., here and here), but of course, that is not the goal of this book.  What is important is its compelling case that working toward a harmonious and sustainable symbiosis with the rest of life is not only the central and most important practical challenge of this century, but that it is a moral and patriotic imperative.  The message is expressed with the concise, emotionally stirring, and intellectually compelling prose we’ve come to expect from this master political operator, and each chapter ends with the “talking points” one expects in a political manifesto.  It is incredibly refreshing to hear these obviously heartfelt and well-reasoned arguments from a hard-core conservative.  Like author Tom Friedman, Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, and Republican Governor Charlie Crist of Florida, Gingrich and Maple are showing that natural security must be a fundamental part of patriotism. And it must unite people from across the political and ideological spectra.

So I say: Kudos to Newt Ginrich and Terry Maple, two premier Natural Patriots.  And Let’s hope their ideas take root and grow.

During my idyllic vacation two weeks ago, I pulled out a book that had been sitting on my table for some time: Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods.  Based on the somewhat off-puttingly pedantic subtitle (”Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder”) I had been procrastinating.  But once I started I could hardly put it down. I think it will prove to be a seminal work in environmentalism.

Yesterday, at the Ecological Society of America’s annual meeting in San Jose, I had the privilege of seeing Mr. Louv speak in a session and panel discussion entitled “No Child Left Indoors” (see my previous post on this topic here).  I was spellbound and inspired. It has been the highlight of the meeting for me.  This guy is my new hero.  Here’s to Richard Louv, Natural Patriot.  In fact, I will go out on a limb and say this:

If you care passionately about the environment, and you read only one book in the coming months, read this one!

The book documents the profound changes that have occurred – largely unnoticed, or at least largely without recognition of their importance — over the short period of a single human generation in the relationship between people and nature, and the equally profound implications of those changes for nearly every aspect of modern life: our physical health, our psychological health, spiritual identity, our sense of community.  Louv documents with a seamless blend of both scientific documentation and heartfelt, poetic sense the consequences of our increasing estrangement from the rest of the universe, and the especially destructive impact that this has on kids.  He has put his finger squarely on the strong but inchoate sense of discord that has been growing in so many Americans over recent decades: something fundamental has gone wrong with American childhood, but what is it?

There are of course many aspects of life that have changed in recent decades, and fingering any one of them definitively as the culprit would be difficult. But Louv makes a compelling case that a major part of the problem, an ultimate cause underlying many of the proximate symptoms, is the estrangement of kids from nature and the outdoors. 

How have we missed this?  Modern environmentalism has focused so much on the impacts humans have on nature that it has largely ignored the impacts that nature has on humans.  Those impacts are now coming into focus and they are turning out to be deep, broad, and important.  And this stands to reason: for the entire sweep of human history and prehistory — from the African savannah millions of years ago to my childhood in the 1960s and 1970s – kids have spent most of their childhoods outside.  That is, up until the last two decades.  Now, as every parent recognizes with distress, kids are sitting in front of a glowing screen for much of the day.  And we’re frightened to let them out of our sight for even a few minutes. We have taken children out of their natural habitat.  It’s hard to imagine that this could happen without affecting their physical, psychological, and spiritual health.  And, indeed, strong evidence suggests that we have affected their health, and our own, profoundly.  To illustrate, consider just two telling observations:

The greatest increase in childhood obesity in American history has taken place in the last two decades, despite the fact that this same period has witnessed the greatest increase ever in organized sports participation by kids.  Clearly, playing soccer a few times a week is not making up for the many hours that kids formerly spent running around outside, playing creatively, building treehouses, etc.

Why are so many kids on ritalin, a phenomenon that would have seemed unthinkable when I was a youngster?  As Louv points out, there are thousands of studies documenting the effects of pharmaceuticals on attention-deficit-disorder (ADD), but only six studies relating experience in nature to ADD. Why? Perhaps because there is no money to be made by sending kids outside, and thus no vested interest to fund such studies.  Yet the few studies that do exist show that nature experience often has beneficial effects on kids’ behavior even without drugs.  And that is on top of the various other benefits of being outside and active.

So whose fault is it that kids are cooped up indoors playing Nintendo all day?  Surely not their own.  They are responding to the message that we adults are sending them, whether overtly or subliminally, whether personally or through our restrictive homeowners’ covenants and cable TV saturation coverage of the handful of child abduction cases each year. We are sending the message that Nature is in the past, that the boogeyman is out there in the woods, and that it’s probably illegal to play there anyway.  Yes, I’m guilty too.  I’ve talked with my son many times about the threats facing wildlife and wild habitats.  At the age of ten he is well aware of global warming and endangered species.  Louv suggests that indoctrinating kids with this information may be counterproductive, serving less to educate them toward stewardship than to instill a sense of hopelessness. Instead, Nature should be a bright, inviting world of wonder for them.

But here’s the most important thing: the greatest beauty of the book is that, rather than generating the angst and sadness that have become the constant companion of those of us concerned about the natural world around us, this book achieves what would seem an impossible feat: It is a beacon of hope.  We can and must turn this around and change the world.  And here’s what we can do:

1) Educate ourselves and the public about how important nature is to the physical, psychological, and spiritual health of children and adults.

2) Accept the responsibility of taking kids outside.  The 1950s are gone, for better or for worse.  Kids will never again play outside for hours at a time unsupervised.  We will have to take them there.  Go fishing, hiking, camping, even hunting.  The hidden gem is that all the benefits of creativity and health that accrue to kids also go to adults.  

3) Support, morally and financially, the programs and people that help kids connect to nature – scouting programs, etc.  For example, there is a growing movement to incorporate nature experience into the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind act.  This should be supported.

Louv also emphasizes that we need to be careful about how we talk with kids about nature and the future of the environment.  He emphasizes two things that resonate with kids of all ages.  First, their own health – physical, psychological and spiritual – is connected intimately with nature.  “The environment” (or the Creation if you prefer that terminology) is not an abstract issue, it has real consequences for their lives.  And second, the rapidly changing world we are living in is filled with new opportunities and they will be the ones that reap them.  We need to build a new civilization, with new kinds of agriculture, new kinds of business, new careers that don’t even have names yet.  These things are already happening and the kids of today will be the leaders of this new civilization.

Finally, this is not just about kids.  If children don’t appreciate nature, where will the next generation of environmental stewards come from?  Who will care enough to take responsibility for a healthy natural envirnment?  Here are some resources for making sure that no child is left indoors: 

The Children and Nature Network.  Lots of news, commentary, and useful, inspiring information showing that “No Child Left Indoors” has grown into a bona fide movement that is making real progress — with governors, mayors, and other policy makers getting on board. Join the network here.

The Powerful Link Between Conserving Land and Preserving Health. “Evidence suggests that children and adults benefit so much from contact with nature that land conservation can now be viewed as a public health strategy.”

A synopsis of scientific research documenting the benefits from connecting children and nature. Volume 1 and Volume 2.

And so, hats off to Richard Louv, a true Natural Patriot and a hero for our time. 

Claudia Alta (Lady Bird) Taylor Johnson, former First Lady of the United States and pionering conservationist, has passed on. But her multifaceted legacy of beautification and restoration of native American landscapes and cities will live on.

Lady Bird, as she was universally known, was a true Natural Patriot, making the conservation of native wildflowers and landscapes her special cause well before conservation became a widespread concern.  With Helen Hayes, she established in 1982 the National Wildflower Research Center, later renamed the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, housed at the University of Texas Austin.  She was a restoration ecologist decades before that field had a name, and her restoration efforts continue.

Mrs. Johnson was close to nature from childhood: “When I was a little girl, I grew up listening to the wind in the pine trees of the East Texas woods.” Those experiences stayed with her throughout her life: “My heart found its home long ago in the beauty, mystery, order and disorder of the flowering earth.”

She is considered by many the most active first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt, and much of that energy went into conservation and restoration.  For her many contributions she was awarded in 1977 the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award.  According to her biography:

“Mrs. Johnson was First Lady of the nation before she was able to translate her love for the land into national policy. Once started, she has amassed a lifetime of achievement as the Environmental First Lady.

Today, perhaps most people think of Lady Bird Johnson as the reason why we see wildflowers blooming along the nation’s highways and fewer junkyards and billboards. The Beautification Act of 1965 was one tangible result of Mrs. Johnson’s campaign for national beautification. Known as “Lady Bird’s Bill” because of her active support, the legislation called for control of outdoor advertising, including removal of certain types of signs along the nation’s Interstate system and the existing federal-aid primary system. It also required certain junkyards along Interstate or primary highways to be removed or screened and encouraged scenic enhancement and roadside development.

It is part of that legacy that today the Surface Transportation and Uniform Relocation Assistance Act of 1987 requires that at least 0.25 of 1 percent of funds expended for landscaping projects in the highway system be used to plant native flowers, plants and trees.

That the Johnson Administration was the most active in conservation since the time of Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt is largely due to Mrs. Johnson. Among the major legislative initiatives were the Wilderness Act of 1964, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Program and many additions to the National Park system, a total of 200 laws relevant to the environment.”

The Reverend Billy Graham was a family friend, who presided over President Johnson’s burial service, and said of Lady Bird: “Every time I see the flowers blooming along the highways of America, I think of her.”