In Defense of Wildness

When people think of nature, too often the only images that come to mind are distant, expansive places like Yellowstone Park and the Grand Canyon, or even more remote wilderness like Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This is a grave mistake. Viewed through the wildlands lens, nature is something you might visit at best a couple of times a year while on vacation. Yet nature is everywhere—in our backyards, schoolyards, and gardens, thrusting skyward through sidewalk cracks and chirping in the neighbor’s tree. Indeed nature is quite literally everything, from stars and galaxies to planet Earth and the stuff in you. As Henry David Thoreau once said:

“It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador a greater wildness than in some recess of Concord.”

If we’re going to connect children (and ourselves) with nature, we must learn, as Thoreau did, to experience the natural world often, and with our full suite of senses. But what kind of nature do we need?

The human experience of nature can be divided into three commonsense categories: wild, domestic, and technological. By wild nature, I refer simply to organisms and natural environments outside direct human control, from backyard birds to vast wilderness areas. Domestic nature, in contrast, is human-controlled—vegetable gardens and tree-lined streets, organic farms and urban parks. In this sense, your indoor potted plant and pet dog can be thought of as nature. Finally, technological nature is any human-produced facsimile of the natural world, from photographs and paintings to natural history exhibitions and documentaries viewed on plasma screen TVs. As portrayals of nature rapidly expand both in variety and quality, people are interacting with stunning simulations, sometimes in high definition 3-D. So it’s important to consider such virtual experiences as well.

Boundaries distinguishing the members of this trio can be hard to define. Whether one calls an urban park wild or domestic depends on a number of subjective measures. Certainly many creatures inhabiting these parks are wild, living outside direct human control. The boundary between domestic and artificial nature becomes equally blurry when we think, for example, about looking through a telescope at a distant galaxy, or even experiencing nature through a window. Yet my concern is less with defining divisions and more about which of these broad categories we need most, and in what amount, to establish a meaningful connection with nature. This issue becomes all the more pressing as wild nature is rapidly replaced—both in actual abundance and human experience—by domestic and artificial alternatives. 

My friend Peter Kahn, a psychologist at the University of Washington, has spent his career examining human interactions with the natural world, including technological nature [1]. One of his studies investigated the effects of nature images displayed on giant plasma screens in windowless offices. Adult occupants reported that, while they found the digital versions soothing, they strongly preferred firsthand nature experiences. Another experiment examined responses of young children to robotic dogs versus living canines. Once again, while kids enjoyed the artificial versions, they strongly preferred the real thing.

These studies and many others indicate that real nature—both domestic and wild—is far superior to technological nature when it comes to evoking emotional responses and sense of connection in adults and children. Some might counter this claim by pointing to the blistering pace of technological innovation. Granted, one day innovative engineers may harness replicated matter, force fields, and tractor beams to generate hyper-real artificial environments akin to those of Star Trek’s “holodeck.” Meanwhile, Kahn’s compelling conclusion is that technological nature experiences will be impoverished relative to the real deal.

This finding is backed by recent research showing that unstructured play in outdoor natural settings is essential for children’s healthy growth [2]. Compared to kids confined indoors, children who regularly play outside show heightened motor control—including balance, coordination, and agility [3]. They score higher on tests of self-discipline, and tend to engage more in imaginative and creative play, which in turn fosters language, abstract reasoning, and problem-solving skills, together with a sense of wonder [4]. Nature play is superior at engendering a sense of self and a sense of place, allowing children to recognize both their independence and interdependence. Play in outdoor settings also exceeds indoor alternatives in fostering cognitive, emotional, and moral development. And individuals who spend abundant time playing outdoors as children are more likely to grow up with a strong attachment to place and an environmental ethic. When asked to identify the most significant environment of their childhoods, 96.5% of a large sample of adults named an outdoor environment [5].

Why is outdoor nature play so powerful? For one thing, it offers a multisensory smorgasbord of seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting, immersing children in a much grander world than can ever be captured indoors, even on a computer screen. For another, natural playspaces tend to be complex, with a much greater variety of unspecified props (rocks, sticks, mud, plants, etc.) than indoor counterparts, so they stimulate more creativity and imagination. Then there’s that all-important sense of wildness, complete with birds, insects, and various creepy-crawlies, as well as the potential to create special places away from prying adult eyes.

We desperately need more research into the physiological, cognitive, and emotional effects of nature, especially the long-term impact of nature on childhood development. At present, it’s impossible to state with any exactness the ideal mix of wild, domestic, and technological nature necessary to forge a lasting nature connection in 21^st Century children. Yet research insights and anecdotal reports help us rule out certain alternatives. For example, exposure to technological nature alone—from Lion King to Shark Week—isn’t going to foster emotional bonds with nonhuman world. Similarly, domestic nature by itself likely won’t cut it either. Even for the (now rare breed of) child who grows up on a farm with plenty of time spent outdoors, a deep connection with nature is unlikely without regular time immersed in some sort of wildness.

To be clear, I’m not denying that domestic and technological nature have important roles to play in fostering nature connection. They certainly do, and we need to utilize the unique assets of each, including such amazing tools as museum exhibitions and school gardens. Nevertheless, in contrast to these alternatives, wild nature seems to be an essential ingredient. When Louise Chawla of the University of Colorado asked a group of environmentalists to summarize the reasons behind their career choice, most identified two factors: “many hours spent outdoors in a keenly remembered wild or semi-wild place in childhood or adolescence, and an adult who taught respect for nature” [6]. Another study of 2000 urban adults from across the US, ranging in age from 18 to 90, similarly found that experiences playing in wild nature prior to age 11 were particularly critical in shaping both environmental behaviors and attitudes during adulthood [7].

The importance of wildness should come as no surprise, given that the human brain evolved over hundreds of thousands of years in intimate contact with wild nature. And let’s face it—healthy relationships depend on recognizing and nurturing the autonomy of both partners. If we are to foster human-nature bonds, we must experience nature on its own terms, outside human control. On the flip side, daily, weekly, or monthly time spent in wilderness is neither practical nor necessary to forge a persistent nature connection. What children require is day-after-day, week-after-week exposure to some sort of nearby wild nature.

“But hold on,” I can almost hear you objecting, “what about the hundreds of millions of us who live in cities? Where are we going to find wild nature?” This question underscores a critical point. Like beauty, wildness is in the eye of the beholder. A child’s perception of wildness changes dramatically with age and life experience. A backyard or empty lot with bushes, bugs, and an abundance of dirt, while ho-hum to most adults, can be plenty wild for a young child. Kids in this early childhood phase instinctively focus on the immediate—flowers and earthworms rather than forests and mountain vistas. For children in middle childhood, a walk up a rocky creek flanked with trees is a wild adventure, whereas adolescents require more expansive natural places, including occasional wilderness excursions.

In future posts, I’ll delve deeper into the shifting target of wildness. For now, let me wrap things up by summarizing a major challenge now before us. If kids are to have those all-important, everyday experiences with nearby wild nature, we will have to re-nature—or, perhaps more accurately, "re-wild"—the places we call home, from backyards and schoolyards to city streets and button parks [8]. It's time for a "Go Wild" revolution!

Notes and References

1. Kahn, P. H. Jr. 2011. Technological Nature: Adaptation and the Future of Human Life. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

2. Kellert, S. R. 2002. Experiencing nature: Affective, cognitive, and evaluative development in children. Pp. 117-152 in P. H. Kahn Jr. and S. R. Kellert (eds.), Children and Nature: Psychological, Sociocultural, and Evolutionary Investigations. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA; Lester, S. and M. Maudsley. 2006. Play, naturally. A review of children’s natural play. Children’s Play Council, Volume 3, http://www.playday.org.uk/PDF/play-naturally-a-review-of-childrens-natural%20play.pdf; Munoz, S. A. 2009. Children in the outdoors: A literature review. Sustainable Development Research Centre, Volume 4, http://www.lotc.org.uk/2011/03/children-in-the-outdoors-a-literature-review/; Hughes, B. 2012. Evolutionary Playwork. Routledge, London.

3. Fjortoft, I. 2001. The Natural Environment as a Playground for Children: The Impact of Outdoor Play Activities in Pre-Primary School Children. Early Childhood Education Journal, 29(2):111-117.

4. Cobb, E. 1977. The Ecology of Imagination in Childhood, New York, Columbia University Press; Taylor, A.F., A. Wiley, F. E. Kuo and W. C. Sullivan. 1998. Growing up in the inner city: Green spaces as places to grow. Environment and Behavior, 30(1): 3-27.

5. Sebba, R. 1991. The landscapes of childhood: The reflections of childhood’s environment in adult memories and in children’s attitudes. Environment and Behavior, 23(4): 395-422.

6. Chawla, L. 1999. Life paths into effective environmental action. Journal of Environmental Education, 31(1):15-26.

7. Wells, N. M. and K. S. Lekies. 2006. Nature and the life course: Pathways from childhood nature experiences to adult environmentalism. Children, Youth and Environments, 16(1):1-25.

8. Louv, R. 2011. The Nature Principle: Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit Disorder. Algonquin, New York; Finch, K. 2012. Nature Play as an Everyday Joy of Childhood? For Kids, Frequency Requires Proximity. C&NN Natural Families Network; Finch, K. 2010. “A Parents’ Guide to Nature Play” from Green Hearts Institute for Nature in Childhood: http://www.greenheartsinc.org/Parents__Guide.html  

Image Credits (top to bottom)

Image 1 & 2, Author

Image 3: www.friendsofterrywilepark.org

Image 4: www.nfw.org 

Mothers All the Way Down

Not long ago, I stood with my nine-year old daughter Jade on a rocky knoll over the ocean near our home. Minutes earlier, the sun’s orange disk had slipped below the horizon. In the distance, San Francisco began to glow. Much further away, starlit pinpoints began poking through the darkening dome overhead. We watched a clan of turkey vultures execute spiraling descents before settling for the night in a eucalyptus tree. As we began our own short descent toward home, it seemed as good a time as any to tell Jade the Universe Story, that grand saga of everything. 


This story, perhaps science's greatest contribution, is all but absent from our culture. As a result, a major proportion of people in the industrialized world live without any cosmology to root them to the earth, to the rest of humanity, and to the place they call home. With the exception of Montessori schools, even our education system has ignored this epic tale. As the all-encompassing story of us, the Universe Story deserves to be center stage in homes and classrooms around the country. What most folks don't realize is that the story of everything can be told anywhere, in an hour or less. Every place has the makings for a simple, yet dynamic retelling. And home turf is often best. 

I began with a flourish. “Once upon a time 14 billion years ago, the universe was born in a humongous explosion called the Big Bang. At the moment of its birth, the entire universe was super-hot—trillions of degrees—and crammed into the tiniest of spaces, far smaller than a speck of dust.” (For effect, I revealed a grain of sand held in my palm.) “Zooming into existence, the universe cooled as it expanded, starting off as a simple place with no stars, no planets, and no life.

“Stars came first, born from sprawling clouds of hydrogen gas. The pull of gravity caused parts of these clouds to collapse into giant balls. As they shrank smaller and smaller, these hydrogen balls grew hotter and hotter until, suddenly, their cores burst into flames and began to burn incredibly bright. What had once been a simple cloud of gas now held thousands of glowing suns. These newborn stars gathered with others in huge, spiraling cities of stars called galaxies, each one with billions of suns. Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, looks to us like a thin veil of light crossing the night sky. But point a telescope at that veil and you’ll find that it’s jam-packed with stars.

“Although stars are pretty simple—just enormous balls of hot gas—they share a lot in common with people. They’re born, have lifetimes, and die. They come in different sizes and, like you, go through many changes as they age. A major difference between stars and people, though, is how they die. Truly gigantic stars go out with a bang, exploding in monstrous events called supernovas. A single supernova can outshine all the other billions of stars in its home galaxy! Astronomers have discovered these exploding stars in distant galaxies, but the last one seen in the Milky Way was over four hundred years ago, just before the first telescope was invented. So stargazers on Earth are waiting excitedly for the next supernova in our little corner of the cosmos.”

I stooped to pick up a hunk of sandstone, handed it to Jade, and continued.

“Deep inside the cores of those very first stars, all that burning transformed hydrogen into heavier and heavier bits of stuff, like helium, carbon, oxygen, and iron. When giant stars exploded as supernovas, all of this heavy matter cooked up inside their cores was blown out into surrounding space, creating more clouds of gas and dust. Rumbling shock waves from later supernovas then triggered the collapse of these wispy clouds into new stars.

The leftover heavy stuff swirling around newborn suns became families of planets. Our sun was one of those later stars, born with eight circling planets—from little, rocky worlds like Earth and Mars to gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. Billions of other solar systems are traveling around other stars in the Milky Way, and in other galaxies. So the stars gave birth to the planets. And all the stuff that makes up planets—from that rock in your hand to the entire Earth—was created inside a burning star.”

Jade’s eyes widened and she handled the chunk of stardust gingerly, as if it might still be hot.

“When Earth was born, it was red-hot, bubbling with molten lava. There was no life back then. Not even any land or oceans. Over millions of years, the surface cooled and formed a thin crust. Think of a hot apple pie, and you’ll get the idea. Earth’s rocky crust split into enormous chunks that moved around, bumping into each other. You and I are standing on the Marin Headlands, made mostly of rocks that formed underwater during the Age of Dinosaurs. But this particular slab of Earth’s crust, including that rock you’re holding, started way down south near the equator. Over millions of years, the land crawled slowly northward, traveling about the same speed as your fingernails grow. Eventually, it crunched into North America down near Mexico and was shoved northward, setting off earthquakes as it inched its way up to where we are today, near San Francisco Bay.”

 Jade grasped the rock tightly and whispered, “Coooool.” Upon reaching the beach, we trod barefoot into the surf, the icy vestiges of waves dancing across our legs and feet. Stooping to gather a cupped handful of seawater, I said, “How many living things do you think I’m holding?”

“Millions,” she guessed.

“Hundreds of millions,” I replied slowly. “The oceans are overflowing with tiny bits of life.”

Jade scooped up her own watery sample, staring intently in hopes of glimpsing the bacterial bounty.

“Life got its start here in the sea,” I continued, “made from stuff in Earth’s crust. The earliest kinds of life were bacteria, each one made of a single cell. And believe it or not, for most of the past four billion years, all life on Earth has been one-celled and microscopic. But those early bacteria were amazing. They learned how to do things like breathe oxygen and grab energy from the sun.”

From amongst the flotsam and jetsam, I grabbed something long and whip-like.

“Hundreds of millions of years later, some of the sunlight-eating bacteria began to merge with each other, becoming creatures with many cells. Their descendents gave rise to seaweed like this bull kelp, and also to land plants.”

We continued down the beach, with Jade clutching her rock in one hand and now dragging the bull kelp with the other. After crossing a creek, we paused to visit some familiar neighbors at the junction of land, sea, and air. Unable to discern much in the gathering darkness, I encouraged Jade to gently feel the bevy of rock-clinging critters: thickly ridged shells of blue muscles, granular arms of ochre sea stars, leathery “necks” of goose barnacles, and tiny swirls of checkered periwinkles. The squishy stickiness of a giant green anemone elicited a delighted scream. Amidst the din of breaking waves we could hear the scurryings of rock crabs.

“Alongside the sunlight-catchers, other kinds of life learned to feed on the sun’s energy by eating each other. These were ancient ancestors that would one day give birth to animals, including the sea stars, muscles, and barnacles on these rocks. Fishes appeared early on too, becoming top predators in the seas. The great white sharks out at the Farallon Islands, and the Coho salmon that struggle up Redwood Creek each year, are direct descendents of those primitive fishes. Eventually, a few ancient fishes found their way onto the land, first transforming into amphibians and much later into reptiles. Some of those scaly reptiles became dinosaurs that stomped around right here on the coast of North America. A few of those dinosaurs sprouted feathers, and then wings, reinventing themselves as birds like those turkey vultures we saw awhile ago.”

I settled on a chunk of driftwood and Jade immediately clambered onto my lap. We were nearing the story’s end.

“When people first arrived here around 15,000 years ago, the place resembled the Serengeti of Africa today, with lots of huge herbivores. Mammoth, mastodon, giant ground sloth, horses, camels, and bison all roamed along this coast. There were plenty of big carnivores too: American lions, dire wolves, saber-toothed cats, and giant short-faced bears. It was the Ice Age, a very cold time when so much water was locked up in ice that the oceans shrunk and sea levels dropped. Back then, the land between where we’re sitting and the Farallon Islands, more than 20 miles away, became a grassy plain jam-packed with animals. Imagine being able to walk from here to the Farallons, keeping a watchful eye out for elephants and saber-toothed cats!

“Sometime after those big mammals went extinct and the oceans grew bigger again, humans arrived, including the Coast Miwok people. They lived here for thousands of years, sharing the oak forests and grasslands with wolves, grizzly bear, and soaring condors. The Miwok hunted mule deer, fished for salmon, ground up acorns, and made woven baskets. When Europeans first arrived about 200 years ago, people from Portugal decided to settle in this beautiful spot where they could catch salmon and farm the land. Today, you and I are fortunate to share this place with bobcats, skunks, and red-tailed hawks. Many others will come after us.”

Approaching the lights of home, I knelt and looked Jade in the eye.

“The real secret of this story is that the universe’s journey is your journey. Your Mom wasn’t the only one responsible for your birth. It was your grandmother, and, before that, your great grandmother and great great grandmother. It was the long, unbroken chain of mammal mothers, reptile mothers, and amphibian mothers. We also owe deep thanks to our fish mothers and the countless other sea creatures and bacteria that gave rise to them even further back in time. Earth Mother gave birth to the first life, and the Great Cosmic Mother birthed the first stars. So you see, in the cosmic family tree, from the tips of the topmost branches to the deepest roots, it’s mothers all the way down! Without them, you and I wouldn’t be here, and neither would all the other wondrous creatures on this planet.

“Most important of all, the journey is far from over. Every plant and animal alive today, including us, is part of this journey, and nobody can say for sure how things are going to turn out. So you can make a big difference in the future of the universe. Pretty amazing, huh?”


Jade nodded slowly, paused, and then broke into a wide smile. “C’mon daddy,” she blurted out, now sprinting up the stairs still gripping rock and kelp. “We’ve got to tell Momma!”

Image Credits (top to bottom)

1) NASA

2) NASA

3-5) National Geographic

6) Author photo

A Country of Naturalists

Well, here we are in yet another election year full of vitriolic demarcations of right from left, seemingly with little overlap. Once again, the looming dangers of global warming, failing ecosystems, and our overall unsustainabilty are lost amidst the rhetorical din of jobs and economy (as if these were somehow distinct from the aforementioned perils). Meanwhile, the chasm between humans and nature deepens.

Watching the national debates unfold, I find little to be positive about. One exception worth underlining, however, is the very fact that such divergent views can co-occur. Most of us live as if there’s only one worldview—ours. But anyone doubting the existence of deeply contrary perspectives need only look at the current Republican-Democrat divide in the United States. And that’s within a single country.

As readers of this blog will be aware, my central concern is how we are to go about connecting humanity with nature, with the assumption that we cannot achieve anything approaching sustainability without a mindset that embeds us inside nature. Living in an indoor culture obsessed with the techno-gadgetry of computers, smartphones, and e-tablets, the notion of embedding humans within nature might seem an impossible dream. But such a mindset is not nearly as alien as it might first appear.

Take America, for example.

Traditionally, the indigenous peoples of this continent, and every other, were expert naturalists who formed deep bonds with their local places. Today, native peoples continue to speak of this close attachment, even co-identity, with their homelands [1]. In the words of Luther Standing Bear, an Oglala Sioux:

"The American Indian is of the soil, whether it be the region of forests, plains, pueblos, or mesas. He fits into the landscape, for the hand that fashioned the continent also fashioned the man for his surroundings. He once grew as naturally as the wild sunflowers, he belongs just as the buffalo belonged..."

Marlowe Sam, an Okanagan Indian, put it simply [2], “As Okanagan people, we are from the land; we are part of it.” Best we can tell, this kind of nature-centric worldview has dominated the human mind for most of our 200,000-year tenure.

European colonists in North America, although bearing a conqueror mindset, found that they too had to be students of nature to survive in the New World. In the bloody wake of indigenous decimation, new generations of naturalists set out to rediscover North America’s wonders. The 19^th Century in particular witnessed an explosion of fascination in natural history. Nuttal, Bartram, Clark, Agassiz and others steeped in the Linnaean tradition collected and classified legions of North American species. Birds, beetles, butterflies, seashells, and wildflowers were favorite targets, but Cope and Marsh expanded the scope to include fossils, competing to see who could recover the greatest number of ancient species from the western territories.

As difficult as it is to imagine today, even the Whitehouse was occupied by a series of naturalists. Early in the 19^th Century, Presidents Washington and Jefferson were both ardent naturalists. Jefferson even had a prehistoric giant ground sloth named in his honor. A century later, Theodore Roosevelt proudly brandished the naturalist label, translating his lifelong fascination with the outdoors into conservation of wilderness areas.

In the 1870s and 1880s, nature fever overtook the general public, resulting in hundreds of small natural history associations from coast to coast. Membership in these societies surged as people relocated from countryside to towns and cities. This public passion for nature translated into the construction of natural history museums, both here and overseas, to house the growing collections and put them on public display. The Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco are all products of this period. By the close of the 1900s, most Americans could describe themselves as naturalists [3].

The nature craze continued early in the 20^th Century with more clubs, more museums, and more learning. Indeed an education was considered incomplete if one lacked a general knowledge of local plants and animals. The chief guide for outdoor adventuring became Anna Botsford Comstock’s 1911 Handbook of Nature Study [4]. The Old and New Testaments may have held sway on Sundays, but Comstock’s Handbook revealed the wonders of God’s creations the remaining days of the week. With abundant illustrations and vivid descriptions linking animals to habitats, she introduced a generation of school children to fireflies, toads, dandelions, clouds, rocks, and robins. Comstock’s firm belief was that experiential education in nature should form the bedrock of education. And, while certainly not all reached adulthood as naturalists, the practice of natural history was highly valued, both as an amateur pastime and a professional vocation.

Following WWII, nature study took an abrupt and precipitous decline. Amongst the contributing factors was the mounting exodus from countryside to cityscape, further separating people from nature, as well as the reinvention of biology as a strictly empirical science focused on genes and molecules rather than whole organisms [5]. Field observations, the bread and butter of natural historians, were replaced by replicable experiments carried out in sterile laboratories. By the 1960s, natural history had become a quaint hobby for amateurs. With landmark exceptions such as Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson, “naturalist” was no longer a label adopted by most self-respecting biologists.

Nevertheless, there’s still plenty of reason for hope. For example, you may be surprised to learn that annual attendance at North American nature institutions—museums, botanical gardens, aquariums, zoos, and science centers—exceeds that of professional sporting events. And plenty of people still flock to beaches and parks on weekends, as well as to natural wonders on vacation. It’s been only two generations, well within the lifetime of my mountain-and-forest-loving mother, since the bulk of people in this country shared a significant link with nature. Viewed in this way, our present mode of thinking can be considered a recent aberration set against a lengthy history of uniting people with their local environs. Connectedness with nature lays dormant within us, waiting to be reawakened. We’re closer than you might think to rebuilding a country of naturalists. But to get there, we’ll need to reverse current trends, getting people (and especially children) back outside experiencing and learning about local nature.

References

1.    Nelson, M. K. (ed.). 2008. Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future. Bear & Company, Rochester; Abram, D. 1996. The Spell of the Sensuous. Vintage Books, New York.

2.   Sam, M. 2008. Ethics from the land: Traditional protocols and the maintenance of peace. Pp. 39-41 in M. K. Nelson (ed.), Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future. Bear & Company, Rochester.

3.   Cain, V. 2012. Professor Carter’s Collection. Common-Place, 12(2): 1-20. (http://www.common-place.org/vol-12/no-02/cain/)

4.   Comstock, A. B. 1911. Handbook of Nature Study. Comstock Publishing, New York.

5.    Pyle, R. M. 2001. The Rise and Fall of Natural History. Orion Magazine, 20(4):16-23.

Image Credits

All images from National Geographic: http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/

Natural Wonders, Old and New

It was a week of amazing spectacles, all courtesy of Mother Nature.

I returned home to California a couple of days ago after a brief, but eventful stint hunting dinosaurs (the extinct kind) in the wilds of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. As I write, some of the crew is still out there in those southern Utah badlands, but I thought I’d offer Whirlpool of Life readers a few highlights from our spring expedition.

Ring of Fire: Annular Eclipse, 2012

The week began in spectacular fashion, with no less than an eclipse of our nearby stellar neighbor. After flying from San Francisco to Las Vegas, I drove my rental 4X4 about four and half hours to the north-central part of Grand Staircase near the small town of Cannonville. Passing through Bryce Canyon, I saw dozens of people setting up telescopes and cameras by the side of the road. No time to waste.

After fixing a surprise flat tire, I made my way out to the meeting spot—a beautiful double sandstone arch known as Grosvenor Arch. There I met with rocket engineer and paleontology volunteer Phil Policelli, with whom I viewed an annular eclipse. Most people are familiar with total eclipses, in which the moon blocks out the entire disk of the sun, turning day to night. An annular eclipse occurs when the lunar disk blocks only the center of the sun, leaving a glowing ring—the annulus, or “ring of fire”—around the silhouette of the moon. Safe viewing requires proper tinted glasses, which thankfully Phil had on hand. It was a magical event, as the sunny afternoon turned briefly to twilight.  

Loading the nets with gear for the helicopter airlift.

Other crewmembers came in later that evening. We camped overnight at Grosvenor Arch and arose the next morning to begin preparations for the helicopter airlift. A “heli-tac” crew arrived and began setting out nets to carry our gear. We weighed the various items—including water barrels, plaster, kitchen items, food, jackhammer, and personal gear—and spread them out among the nets. In total, seven helicopter trips to the remote campsite would be required.

The Kaiparowits Formation, aerial view

I was fortunate enough to ride onboard the first trip. What would normally take almost two hours of challenging off-road driving plus another hour of hiking was navigated in a mere five minutes by helicopter. Fortunately, we had a little trouble locating the campsite, forcing us to make a few stunning circles over the rugged, gray-banded terrain.

Most expedition members—including crews from the Natural History Museum of Utah, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and the Monument—hiked into camp. Over the course of the week, in addition to prospecting for new sites, we concentrated efforts on five quarries, four of which were discovered and opened last year. One site preserves remains of a crested duck-billed hadrosaur, or lambeosaur. Another features fossils of the horned dinosaur Kosmoceratops. Yet another is producing bones of an as-yet unnamed giant crocodile. And the fourth is yielding beautifully preserved leaf fossils.

A fifth quarry, found during the week by Monument Paleontologist Alan Titus when he headed over a hill to relieve himself, was another duck-billed hadrosaur—this one a juvenile with abundant skin impressions. (The site may have been found independently last year by University of Utah student Katherine [Kat] Clayton and rediscovered by Titus, an invertebrate specialist who has become an ace dinosaur finder.) Alan and I spent three windy, but highly enjoyable days at the site, uncovering much of the skeleton. When I departed, we had not yet determined if the skull was present, but the bones are trending the right direction into the hill, so our fingers are crossed.

Monument Paleontologist Alan Titus with juvenile hadrosaur skeleton

We had cached some equipment and supplies over-winter at the lambeosaur quarry, and were surprised to find the cache ripped apart. A brief inspection revealed that a black bear was the culprit—perhaps a rowdy young male coming down from higher elevations in search of food. Despite more than a decade working in the area, for us this event was a Grand Staircase first. I’m afraid that that, other than some water, the bear did not find much to his liking. Together with the torn plastic water bottles, there was a (previously full) plastic gas container, now bearing multiple tooth punctures. And a bag of plaster was ripped open and dragged around the site, leaving an erratic alabaster trail. The event had occurred recently, as evidenced by the fresh plaster. And the bear left a calling card in the form of a large pile of feces.

The week also yielded some ancient feces, or “coprolites.” Small coprolites, usually attributed to crocodiles, are relatively common finds in the Kaiparowits Formation, but we had not found any clear evidence of dinosaur dung. It was Denver Museum paleobotanist Ian Miller who made the discovery. While out prospecting one day, Ian called me over to look at something strange—a large, isolated mass of convoluted black rock unlike anything else in the area. Ian speculated that it might be dinosaur coprolite and, having seen examples many years before in Montana, I realized that he was likely correct. We could see plenty of organic debris inside the irregular chunks of rock, and even some tunnel-like openings that may be dung beetle burrows. We will pass some samples onto the “Queen of Coprolites”, Karen Chin, at the University of Colorado, to nail down the identification. If we’re correct, Ian has discovered one of the largest known piles of dino poop!

Under Ian’s capable direction, we’re also getting a refined sense of the plants that lived alongside these dinosaurs, crocodiles, turtles and other creatures about 76 million years ago. This week, Ian’s crew collected hundreds of leaves from a single quarry, which will join thousands of others in the collections of the Denver Museum. Many of these leaves show evidence of insect damage, and we plan to undertake a study of these specimens to find out what kinds of insects were present. At another location, Ian and his Denver colleague, vertebrate paleontologist Joe Sertich, showed me a fossilized forest floor revealed in a river cutbank. Remarkably, ferns and other plants can be seen still standing vertically, preserved where they were buried by flooding sediments millions of years ago. We look forward to working up this site in the future.

Graduate student Joshua Lively with new turtle discovery

Back at the lambeosaur quarry, additional work yielded more bones of this giant crested hadrosaur. No skull yet, but we are hopeful here as well. In addition, while removing some of the overlying rock, University of Utah graduate student Jelle Wiersma uncovered a huge turtle shell, measuring about 80 cm in length. Turtle expert Josh Lively was on hand to make the excited identification—an unnamed species of the genus Neurankylus.

All in all it was an amazing week, and we were blessed for the most part with sunny skies. The persistent high winds, although a nuisance at times, kept the gnats down—an even greater blessing. Other natural wonders included assorted wildflowers, spectacular night skies, and an afternoon visit to camp from a young rattlesnake.

Badlands view from camp

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was the last major region of the lower 48 states to be mapped, and for good reason.  Today, this roughhewn and cliff strewn landscape is one of the last largely unexplored boneyards from the Age of Dinosaurs. We are fortunate to be among the first to unearth its many wonders. To date, more than two dozen new dinosaurs have been recovered from these rocks, along with fishes, amphibians, turtles, lizards, crocodiles, mammals, birds, plants, and other organisms [1]. I'll provide more updates in future posts.

      References

1)   Sampson, S. D. 2012. Dinosaurs of the Lost Continent. Scientific American, March, 2012: 40-47.


Images
Annular eclipse image: http://article.wn.com/view/2012/05/21/Solar_Eclipse_2012_Annular_Eclipse_Makes_Ring_of_Fire/ 
All other images by the author.

Wilding the Mind

I am very fortunate to live in the San Francisco Bay region of northern California. When not traveling, I head out several times a week and hike up into the hilly Marin Headlands, an extensive protected area that few would hesitate to call “nature.” The evergreen shrubs and patchy grasslands afford spectacular coastal vistas and erupt into a kaleidoscope of wildflowers come springtime. The plentiful animal spottings include red-tailed hawks, coyote, alligator lizards, quail, mule deer, rough-skinned newts, gray fox, monarch butterflies, ravens, and even the rare gray whale spout. Occasionally I’m startled by the last-second exit of a slithering garter snake or a bounding rabbit. Bobcats, in contrast, not infrequently sit a few feet off the trail, observing me in that classic disinterested feline manner as I stroll past.

 

Here, the greatest threats to human life and limb are tics and poison oak, or perhaps a sprained ankle. I’m told that mountain lions still visit the headlands once in a blue moon, but in six years I have yet to glimpse one. (Oh how I would love to see a mountain lion.) Encounters with other humans, although more common than deer sightings, are sufficiently infrequent that I feel I have escaped the anthropocentric world, at least for awhile. In short, my bipedal excursions into the hills come close to epitomizing the idyllic image of a nature outing—a gorgeous setting that replenishes body, mind, and spirit.

Yet, were I to have hiked in this same place 150 years ago—a span of only two human lifetimes—the experience would have been vastly different. It’s for good reason that California’s state animal is the grizzly bear. For thousands of years, local indigenous peoples lived (and occasionally died) under the daily threat of grizzlies. Bears were still a dominant force when Europeans arrived. In 1602, the Spanish maritime explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno elected not to land at certain points along the California coast because of the sheer numbers of these giant carnivores. As European settlements expanded in the ensuing centuries, the golden bears stood fast, killing livestock and wreaking havoc with the settlers. Somewhat ironically, given their name, gold was the bears’ ultimate undoing. Within 75 years of the discovery of this precious metal in California—a single human lifetime—the state’s grizzlies were wiped out, the final one in 1922. The last known human Californian to die in a grizzly attack was lumber mill owner William Waddell, in 1875. A creek in Big Basin Redwoods State Park still bears his name.

Often as I hike the trails near my home, I imagine how I would feel if there were a real chance of running into a grizzly—or wolves, which also lived here. Would I react differently to those rustling bushes? Would I pay greater attention to my surroundings? Would my sense of calm and relaxation be marred by that ever-present possibility of becoming an animal’s next meal? I’m quite certain that the answer would be yes for all of the above. Having spent a significant amount of time searching for fossils in the wilds of sub-Saharan Africa, sometimes in places where big carnivores like lions, leopards, and hyenas still roam, I can attest to the spectrum of emotions experienced when one is a potential link in the food chain. Living in cities devoid of big carnivores, we forget that people throughout almost all of human history have dealt with animal threats.

When our kind first arrived in the northern California area around 13,000 years ago—only 175 human lifetimes—they discovered a landscape more closely akin to the modern Serengeti than to present-day San Francisco. This was the tail end of the Pleistocene, the waning stages of the most recent Ice Age. The region was home to a bewildering array of impressive creatures: mammoths and mastodons, giant ground sloths and camels, broad-horned bison and condors, saber-toothed cats and dire wolves, American lions and short-faced bears. Of this mega-mammal menagerie, Arctodus, the short-faced bear, may have been the greatest terror. Weighing about 2,000 pounds and perhaps 13 feet tall when standing on its hind legs, this massive carnivore would have dwarfed a grizzly. And unlike modern bears, Arctodus was long-legged, built for speed. Imagine rounding the corner on a trail to find yourself face to face with such a creature!

California is not special in this regard. Wherever you live, you can be certain that an abundance of huge animals roamed in the not too distant past—a duration measured in centuries rather than millennia. Rarely do we consider the fact that we inhabit a biological anomaly, an impoverished shadow-realm in which big predators are few, prowling the fringes of our world. For all but a few short geologic intervals during the past 250 million years (following mass extinction events), oversized carnivores have been ever-present in the bulk of Earth’s ecosystems, both on land and in the oceans.

What happened to the wondrous Ice Age beasts in North America and elsewhere? We killed most of them. Yes, debate still ensues over the role of other factors, particularly climate change, but compelling evidence points squarely at us. Humanity originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago. In a major exodus that began about 60,000 years ago, we quickly spanned the globe, killing off most of the charismatic megafauna on every newfound landmass, whether island or continent. More recently, armed with boats and increasingly efficient hunting technologies, populations of whales and other sea-going giants have been depleted more than 90%. I don’t mean to imply that humans have never lived in harmony with their native ecosystems. They certainly have. But usually those ecosystems have first been depleted of their big-bodied inhabitants.

Nature in its full glory is messy and dangerous, equally worthy of joy and fear--and sometimes disgust. Parasites, maggots, and coyotes tearing apart week-old fawns are as much a part of the natural world as towering redwoods and soaring eagles. We humans came of age enmeshed in environments at once awe-inspiring and danger-filled. In the sanitized West, we have progressively lost both kinds of experiences, replacing them with a utilitarian substitute that views nature as the ultimate big box store full of commodities.

Today, a growing movement seeks to reinstate that ancient sense of nature as divine, spiritual, or sublime—a sacred ground of being to commune with. But in our earnestness to romanticize nature, we forget the fear factor that is equally a part of our wild heritage. What have we lost by rising to the top of the food chain and vanquishing the bulk of our competitors? What are we missing by living apart from most wild creatures? Given that virtually every ecosystem around the globe has been impacted by human activities, and generally not for the better, what kind of nature is still out there, and where can we find it? What kinds of experiences do we need to form a meaningful bond with nature?

I will explore answers to these questions in future posts. For now, I invite you to head outside and imagine a world in which you share the web of life with a bounty of other large creatures, some of them toothy and meat-loving. These days I regularly engender such thoughts as I wander through the headlands. I find that such machinations are slowly shifting my perspective, helping me see myself as embedded within nature rather than outside and above it.

Equally if not more important are periodic visits to wild places; places where humans are not in control, where nature is raw, untamed, maybe even dangerous. Nighttime walks are especially effective at awakening the senses and opening new windows of awareness. Such experiences will foster not only a sense of awe and wonder, but humility—a sense of something much deeper and more meaningful than our puny human-centered obsessions. Ultimately, the human-nature connection, and perhaps even the path to ecological sustainability, could depend on this periodic wilding of the mind.


Ok, time for another hike . . .

Image Credits (From top to bottom)

Images 1-3 come from the author

Image 4: www.thenaturalpatriot.org

Note: The above post was inspired in part by an excellent essay called “False Idyll,” written by J. B. MacKinnon and published in the May/June issue of Orion Magazine.

The Power of Story

A quick scan of today's online New York Times reveals the usual plethora of stories. Among them: News Corporation chief Rupert Murdoch seeks to deflect allegations that he bribed British officials; Pakistan test-fires a nuclear-capable missile; ethnic biases are now shifting in South Los Angeles; and a Dartmouth frat receives a 3-term probation punishment for hazing.


Why do hundreds of millions of people each day follow the news, read fiction, watch television, and line up to sit in darkened movie theaters? In a word, stories. Carefully crafted tales enliven our senses and capture our imaginations. Full of wonder and mystery, they transport us to far-flung places and remote times, allowing us to see through the eyes of another. That featured Other may be human or animal, real or fantasy. At their best, stories are priceless word-jewels with the power to create, sustain, and transform worlds.

In my last post, I argued that nature connection must be founded on “the 3 Es”: ecology, evolution, and experience—that is, a sense of how one’s place works and how that place came to be, informed by abundant, outdoor multisensory experience. Today, I would like to focus on the second E, evolution, which I use in the broadest sense of change over time; in short, the history of everything, from cosmos to culture. And it is the story within history, so to speak, that I’m most concerned with.

My confidence in the 3 Es approach is based in part on studies of hunter-gatherer cultures—for example, the Ache of Paraguay, the Hadza of Tanzania, the Hiwi of Colombia and Venezuela, and the San of southern Africa. Over 95% of humanity’s tenure has occurred in the guise of hunter-gatherers intimately tied to their natal habitats. In addition to being steeped in local communities—cultures, foods, and social relations—people in these foraging societies have possessed detailed knowledge of resident plants and animals. They have understood local rhythms—what month of the year a certain migrating bird arrived or a particular plant could be harvested. Much of this knowledge has borne the mark of scientific investigation, involving careful observation, experimentation, and hypothesis testing. Most importantly for this discussion, these peoples (and those in many other indigenous societies) report a deep sense of connection with the nonhuman world.

In our digital world deluged with shards of information, it’s easily forgotten that, as a species, we were literally raised on rich and vibrant stories. Oral storytelling was the primary means of sharing information for all but the past few thousand years, an eyeblink of humanity’s tenure. For our oral ancestors, stories were lyrical encyclopedias, repositories of practical knowledge and wisdom accumulated over centuries, even millennia. Spoken narratives were the cultural equivalent of genes, containers of information necessary for perpetuating the group. It should come as no surprise, then, that stories still have an almost magical effect on us. And whereas cyberspace is placeless, seemingly everywhere and nowhere, oral culture is inherently local.

The oral stories of indigenous peoples tend to embody all 3 Es, fostering a connection with local nature. They tell us where we come from and what it all means; in other words, evolution. Passed from generation to generation, myths and tales offer instructions on how to live in a given place: when, where, what, and how much to hunt; how to express gratitude for a successful hunt; which plants to seek and which to avoid; where to find water in times of persistent drought; in other words, ecology. And traditional storytellers convey their narratives not just with voice but with their entire bodies, typically outdoors in a multisensory milieu, often around a campfire. In other words, these stories offer meaningful experiences.

For most of human history, s­tories helped us not only to live, but to dwell, both in place and time (1). Through storytellers we learned of our kinship with other creatures and Earth itself. We saw how the ripples of our actions have cascading effects far into the future. For the world’s oral cultures, stories were the primary means of connecting with the land. Local plants and animals become protagonists and antagonists. Virtually every creature and place on the landscape—a chirping bird, gurgling stream, or gentle breeze—became sensate and was given voice. Once a story was learned, chance encounters with animal neighbors, or merely walking by a local landmark, brought to mind the associated narrative and its practical lessons (2). In this way, stories breathed life into people’s surroundings and provided deep meaning.

Most powerful of all stories are cosmologies, cultural narratives that explain the origin and ordering of the world. Throughout human history, virtually all cultures have been rooted to their native places by such narratives—from Raven bringing forth the light in Haida culture to the Genesis story of Christianity. Although the lives of present-day indigenous peoples and most followers of religious traditions are imbued by one cosmology or another, most of us living in Western societies today represent an historical anomaly, existing largely without one. This lack of an origin story contributes to the dearth of greater meaning and purpose experienced by many of us, feeding the dysfunctional human-nature relationship at the heart of the sustainability crisis.

Yet an astonishing and beautiful account of our deep time evolutionary history has recently emerged within science. Evolution, it turns out, is much more than Darwin and natural selection, encompassing no less than the history of the Universe. Variously called the Epic of Evolution, the Great Story, Big History, or (my preference) the Immense Story, this grand narrative has potential to unite humanity and root us in deep time.

But wait. If, as advocated for the 3 Es approach, ecology and evolution must be united to generate a sense of connection, how are we to weave the Immense Story—populated by billions of galaxies, stars, and planets—together with the delicate web of streams, rocks, spiders, and trees in our local places? After all, the former deals with the grandest scales of time and space, whereas the latter is concerned with the intimate nearby. Oddly enough, this question makes sense only to Westerners. For most indigenous peoples the world over, no dividing line exists between the cosmic and the local; all are part of the same community, the same story. Their cosmological sagas feature a variety of local denizens—the trickster raven, the wise mountain, the changeling butterfly. We would do well to emulate this approach.

Fortunately, potential protagonists abound. Look no further than a sunset or a clear night sky to tell of our close bond to the stars. A local mountain, desert, or slab of limestone makes an exceptional entry point into the story of Earth and the solar system. A stately oak or vegetable garden can help convey the saga of bacteria harnessing solar energy, whereas that croaking frog in early evening is a modern day reminder of our water-to-land legacy. A crow or robin serves as a great vehicle for telling the story of dinosaurs to birds. And an arrowhead or basket would make an ideal trigger for sharing the human chapter of the evolutionary epic.

The key is that all major innovations of the cosmic evolutionary epic—stars, planets, bacteria, plants, animals, and human culture—are still present in one form or another in every place. Each telling of the Immense Story, or parts of it, can be tailored not only to local nature, but to the age and knowledge base of the audience. Indeed anyone can construct their own version of the story, choosing local characters and themes most meaningful to them.

The story of everything can be told anywhere.

Carl Sagan had it right. We are star-stuff, made of matter forged within stellar furnaces. But the real story—the Immense Story—goes much deeper. We’re also Earth-stuff, composed of the same matter that comprises our planet’s crust. And we’re Life-stuff too, every one of our human cells the product of ancient bacterial mergers. You and all other animals exist today because of a deep time cascade of ever-more complex mergings, each one dependent on its predecessor: atoms combining to form heavier elements; heavy elements bonding to make chemical compounds; compounds meshing in symphonic harmony to create bacterial cells; cells lacking nuclei coalescing into nucleated cells; and nucleated cells uniting into multicellular life. This repetitive pattern of emergent unfolding is well defined. Sea stars could not have preceded bacteria, nor could there have been water prior to oxygen. 

Although certainly a creation story, the evolutionary epic is not a true cultural cosmology. Instead this science-based saga imparts a framework to be molded into a spectrum of cosmologies, each one informed by specific historical, cultural, spiritual, and ecological contexts. Indeed the Immense Story allows for an endless medley of interpretations and beliefs, with and without God(s). Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme have argued persuasively that this story must become a central element in re-defining the human-nature relationship (3). Yet, decades later, the Immense Story remains all but absent from Western culture, ignored by scientists, philosophers, educators, environmentalists, and spiritual practitioners alike. How can it be that we, who have access to by far the most rigorous and comprehensive story of the cosmos, do not use it to inform the arc of our lives?

The bottom line here is that connecting kids to nature isn’t only about getting them outside. We need to re-nature our minds as well as our environments. Once in awhile, put aside the storybooks and renew the sensuous art of storytelling using your whole body together with your voice. Ground some of these stories in local nature. Where did those fir trees come from, and why are they so tall? Who are the denizens of the local pond, and how long have they been there? Why did coyotes and rabbits survive the last Ice Age while mammoths and saber-toothed cats disappeared? Your local natural history museums or nature center will likely be happy to provide the necessary information.

Learn the basics of the Immense Story, and tell it to the children in your life—preferably around a campfire (“A very long, long, long, long time ago . . .”). Bring the Immense Story alive by rooting it in the natural history of local characters—for example plants, animals, streams, and hills. If the whole story seems too daunting, break it up into shorter narratives (4).

Educators, think about ways to insert the Immense Story into the core of the curriculum, combining it with ecology to scaffold learning. The all-encompassing epic of evolution makes a wonderful context for teaching science, starting with the big idea and hooking on new concepts as they’re encountered. Consider having students spend part of the school year working as a team to explore the geological, biological, and cultural history of the local town or region and then write their own story. Perhaps let them decide to how to convey that narrative, maybe in the form of a play, video, website, or walking guide for the community.

It’s time to restory the places we call home and, in doing so, forge meaningful connections with those places.

References

1.     Sanders, S. R. 1997. Most Human Art. Georgia Review/Utne Reader. September/October, 1997.

2.     Abram, D. 2011. Storytelling and Wonder: On the Rejuvenation of Oral Culture. http://www.wildethics.org/essays/storytelling_and_wonder.html

3.     Berry, T. 1990. The Dream of the Earth. Sierra Club Books, San Francisco; Swimme, B. and T. Berry. 1992. The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to Ecozoic Era. Harper Collins, New York.

4.     A series of books by Jennifer Morgan tell the Immense Story in kid-friendly fashion. The first is: Born with a Bang: The Universe Tells Our Cosmic Story (Dawn Publications, 2002)

Image Credits (from top to bottom)

1, 2, 4. Derived from National Geographic: http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/

3. Derived from NASA

5. www.noteandpoint.com