Protecting Public Lands

My last entry ended with a call for supporters of the public good to summon their strength and defend public lands against exploitation by private interests. Just a few days later, I found myself on a hike with a group that has already joined that fight.

I didn't have the Legacy Forest Defense Coalition of Washington (LFDC) in mind when I wrote last month's blog entry, but it was clear early on in their hike through a forest that had been hastily sold for clearcutting by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (WSDNR) that the organization's environmental work was exactly the kind of thing I meant.

The LFDC employs two strategies that are particularly important in protecting public lands. First, they challenge forest sales that violate WSDNR's own policies regarding the preservation of old growth timber. For example, after the sale of the forest I was touring had been fast-tracked late in 2024 by Hilary Franz, WSDNR's outgoing commissioner, LFDC asked for and received a restraining order against the logging of the forest. The organization is now in court to overturn the sale.

The second important strategy LFDC uses is bringing people together to protect these public forests. By organizing and guiding the hikes through the forests, LFDC establishes relationships and collective power around the issue of protecting public lands. The hikes also help connect people with these shared forests.

If we are going to succeed in pushing back against the private exploitation of our public lands, we should look at the model used by LFDC for guidance.

Long Time, No See but Suddenly Heard

I experienced a remarkable moment this week when I heard a common nighthawk.

Before this week, my last sighting of a common nighthawk occurred in 2021. However, the moment I heard the bird's call on Tuesday evening, I knew what species it was without even looking. 

After I thought about it, I realized that the instant recognition of the sound showed how special the common nighthawk's call is to me. I must know it by heart. As a result, despite the fact that I don't hear it on a regular basis, I can immediately snap into awareness of it.

I've always loved common nighthawks. They have a unique look and a mesmerizing sound. Perhaps the irregularity with which I see them contributes to their specialness, yet I am still astonished at how quickly that call the other night pulled me into its world. It's as if common nighthawks have claimed a place in my unconscious.

A long time passed for me between sightings of common nighthawks, but the sudden impact of hearing the bird's call is timeless.

Changing our Parameters

As I followed the news of the terrible wildfires in Los Angeles, I thought back to reading How Nature Speaks: The Dynamics of the Human Ecological Condition and its definition of nature.

According to Yrjö Haila and Chuck Dyke, the editors of the book, nature is the parameters of what is possible. The Los Angeles fires and their devastation suggested to me new parameters for what is possible and what is not possible.

It is pretty clear that we can and have changed what is possible in terms of wildfires, droughts, and storms. By releasing tons of greenhouse gases, we have warmed the planet, expanding the parameters and therefore the power and impacts of such phenomena.

In return, our expansion of these parameters has received a response from the phenomena. As Haila and Dyke would argue, our actions sent a message to the climate, and the climate engaged with that communication through its parameters. Specifically, the climate is now putting tighter limits on where and how we can live. The increased likelihood and strength of climate-related disasters means that humans will have to adjust to these new parameters. Some areas will likely no longer support the population sizes they once did; others may prove entirely incapable of fostering human life.

We've changed the parameters for nature, and that includes ourselves.

A Strong Sense of Place

One of the things my connection to the environment has given me is an understanding of how valuable a sense of place can be.

A sense of place helps you understand where you belong, and it can guide you to where you're going. In addition, it can provide stability when the rest of the world becomes unstable. The grounding it offers can even keep you out of some undesirable circumstances.

Sense of place can also mean something a little different but equally as helpful. If people are attuned to their surroundings, they can determine if those surroundings are a good fit for them. In essence, people can listen to what places have to say and use that information to make solid decisions and form lasting connections to environment.

Sometimes, when a sense of place is strong enough, a person finds harmony in the world.

Matters in My Own Hands

My recent experiences volunteering for Conservation Northwest's Cascades to Olympics program have produced a lot of lessons, and one of the most important realizations is the power of action over politics.

Even as a kid, the environment and animals mattered a lot to me, and I wanted to translate that into actions that would make for a better world: less pollution, more environmental protections, and protection of other species.

I suppose it was inevitable that my concern for environmental issues would lead to an interest in politics and how political action influenced the environment. However, I came to place too much emphasis on this aspect of the environmental movement. Because I did so, I became disheartened when the politicians of the United States failed time and time again to address global warming. That disappointment began to weigh on me in very personal ways. Feeling powerless is not a good feeling, especially when important issues like global warming are left unresolved.

In early 2023, I began volunteering to clear wildlife corridors for the Cascades to Olympics program, which highlights the importance of southwestern Washington state for wildlife in the region. By reconnecting portions of habitat, the program helps species get where they need to go and find more suitable habitat as the climate changes.

Almost instantly, I felt better. The physical activity of improving the corridors was a good outlet for my frustration at the country's political failures. It was also a chance to connect with others and build community. Perhaps most importantly, it allowed me to translate my concern for the environment into tangible work that could make a difference right away in a place that meant a lot to me.

While I was volunteering last week, I spoke with Conservation Northwest's project manager, and he noted how a lot of people in the area are becoming interested in helping with the program. He said he thought one reason was that participating in it gave people hope in what otherwise seems like a hopeless situation. That's when I realized exactly why volunteering on the project had made me feel better. I said, "You know, I think working on this project has done more to help animals prepare for global warming than any politician who has ever received my vote."

Political action isn't a waste of time, but when it comes down to what's most important, it's sometimes best to take matters into your own hands.

I Wonder Why

A negative and growing trend in recent years raised a perplexing question for me: Why would anyone travel out of their way to trash or deface public lands?

To be honest, I haven't really found a sufficient answer to that question. However, in pondering it, I did realize that littering, dumping, or tagging on public lands, including parks, wildlife areas, preserves, and hiking trails, destroys more than just the environment of those spaces; it also destroys a shared commitment.

I don't know why people leave litter or graffiti in out-of-the-way public spaces. (It seems like a lot of effort to make when the same things could be done without having to drive anywhere.) No matter the reason though, these actions undermine our sense of connection to the defaced places, the commitment we make to caring for the places, and the societal bond that forms through such commitments. 

Maybe that's the point of leaving that trash or graffiti. If it is, I'm still left with my question: Why?

A Simply Powerful Vision

Habitat connectivity involves so many factors and such large spaces that it is easy to forget how simple the idea is at its core.

The work Conservation Northwest is doing to preserve and restore connections in habitats across the state of Washington certainly involves a lot of challenges and considerations. That's what makes the organization's projects so impactful.

Still, as the video below demonstrates, habitat connectivity is a basic need for wildlife that can be addressed if we make a slight adjustment in how we think about the environment and our place in it.

Figuring out the details of a specific habitat-connectivity project might require strategy and planning, but incorporating the concept of connectivity into our vision for how we live and interact with the other inhabitants of the environment isn't that difficult. No wonder the concept is so powerful: It has far-reaching impacts, but its foundation is simple.

Just look at Conservation Northwest's successes so far and think about how much the simple concept of habitat connectivity has produced.

A Friendly Reminder

When I heard the news that Forterra had helped conserve a Girl Scout camp in Grays Harbor County, I thought to myself, "I know that place!"

Sure enough, Camp Klahanee, for which Forterra recently purchased the conservation easement, is the camp I was invited to visit by my cousin's Girl Scout troop in 2006. The news of the purchase brought back memories of my trip to the camp and why I had been invited there in the first place.

In late 2005, at my cousin's request, my mom and I gave a presentation to the troop about Finland. It was a fun evening as we shared information about the country and our experiences there. The next summer, the troop invited us to Camp Klahanee as thanks for our presentation. Set in a forest, the camp is beautiful and quiet. We had a great time at the troop's picnic.

As the Forterra press release explains, "Klahanee" means "friendship" in the Chinook language. Thus, the news was a friendly reminder of some happy experiences from the past and of the importance of conserved land in providing space for community building. Through a partnership with the Polson Park and Museum Historical Society, Forterra has ensured that Camp Klahanee will continue to serve as such a space.

A reminder that our environment offers us opportunities to grow and connect is a great way to end one year and look ahead to another.

How a Spider Says Goodbye

I've only seen two dead yellow garden spiders, but each one taught me some things about how to say goodbye.

The very first garden spider I ever saw built its web on my parents' front porch when I was 14. I thought it was cool, and I enjoyed seeing it there in the morning. However, I didn't realize how vulnerable it was to cold weather, so I was surprised and saddened to find it dead one chilly fall morning.

I never had the chance to say goodbye to that first garden spider, and I didn't see another until six years ago. Since 2017, I have seen a lot of garden spiders, but none of them built their webs near a house, so I didn't see them after they had died.

This fall, a yellow garden spider built a web on my house. It even placed its egg sack under the eaves. After laying its eggs, it remained on the house for several weeks. Then, late last week, the weather turned cold, dropping into the 30s and 20s at night. Because of my experience with the first garden spider, I knew what would soon happen to this one. After the first cold night, it was still alive, but it was moving slowing, so I decided to say my goodbyes.

As I looked at the spider's egg sack and then at the spider, I realized that the eggs were its goodbye. It had done what it needed to do to fulfill its life (maybe that's why it didn't seem distressed by what I'm sure it knew was about to happen). The eggs were protected under the eaves, promising more garden spiders next year.

I told the spider that she had done a great job securing her eggs, that I was glad she had chosen this house as the place to put them, and that I would look after them. Then, I said I would miss her and told her goodbye. The next morning, she was dead. I was sad, but this sadness was different than the kind I experienced when I was 14. Although I was saddened by her death, I wasn't unprepared this time. I knew that in our own ways, we'd both said our goodbyes. As a result, I felt a loss but not a total bereavement.

We can all learn something from how spiders say goodbye.

A Not-So-Hazy Connection

As I saw reports this week of Midwestern skies filling with smoke from the Canadian wildfires, I experienced the feeling of returning to that area in my mind.

Having spent five years teaching at the University of South Dakota, I remember when wildfire smoke turned the skies of Vermillion, South Dakota, orange-pink in the spring of 2016. That smoke was also from Canada though I think it was from the western part of the country. I remember thinking how wildfire smoke can provide a strong connection between people as we deal with the impacts of global warming.

This year's Canadian wildfires have been sending smoke far and wide for months. In early May, I looked out my window in western Washington and saw that familiar yet strange tint of orange-pink in the evening light. As it turned out, that color was courtesy of smoke from western Canada. Later, smoke from eastern Canada darkened skies on the East Coast of the United States.

When the smoke zeroed in on the Midwest, I felt like I was back in South Dakota. I could see myself looking up into the open, hazy sky of Vermillion. It was a powerful feeling.

Through its impacts on air quality and our senses and health, wildfire smoke provides tangible connections to global warming and between people who are hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Gordon Lightfoot: The Voice of Co-presence

Some voices resonate with you from the first moment you hear them. For example, I still have extremely clear and vivid memories of singing along to Gordon Lightfoot's "Ode to Big Blue" as a child.

However, to me, Lightfoot and his music represent more than simply happy memories from childhood. I think "Ode to Big Blue" touched a tuning fork that had already been developing in me, and in doing so, it left a reverberating effect that's lasted to the present day. Although the song is not one of his most well-known works, it shares with essential Lightfoot hits like "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzergerald,""Ghosts of Cape Horn," and "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" themes about human respect for and co-presence with the non-human parts of our environment. 

I would even argue that Lightfoot used his music to contemplate his place in the environment. Songs like "Triangle," "River of Light," "The House You Live In," and "Too Many Clues in This Room," while expanding out to address societal and existential questions, maintain a rooting in environmental elements. It's as if, like many artists, including William Wordsworth, Emily Brontë, Henry David Thoreau, Thomas Hardy, and Willa Cather, Lightfoot needed environmental elements to help him process and articulate his ideas. If that was the case, I can certainly relate, and it helps explain why his music spoke to me in such a powerful way.

It wasn't just that Lightfoot sang about the environment though. The way he sang about it also struck a chord with me (probably before I even fully understood why). As a child, I knew I liked "Ode to Big Blue" because it was about whales, which were among my most favorite animals. What I discovered later was that Lightfoot's music emphasized the connectedness and co-presence of humans and non-humans in the environment. In his songs, human action is inextricably tied to environmental causes and effects. If the "lifeblood" of the Canadian wilderness supplied the means for that country's economic development in "Canadian Railroad Trilogy," then the avaricious whaling depicted in "Ode to Big Blue" demonstrated the impacts that such economic development has on the environment in turn. The emphasis on these connections challenges the typical Western understanding of humans being separate from nature. 

Just as importantly, Lightfoot never sugarcoated the connection between the human and the non-human, producing a sense that while often beneficial to humans, the environment demands respect. The personification of Big Blue demonstrates Lightfoot's sense that a whale exists on equal standing with a person. Meanwhile, the power of the natural world and its ability to wipe away human life in an instant runs through "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," "Triangle," and "Ghosts of Cape Horn," leaving a jarring lesson about taking the environment for granted. In some ways, this point of emphasis might reinforce the traditional Western understanding of nature as something to fear. Yet because Lightfoot also sings about co-presence and connection with the non-human, even the scarier non-human elements garner more respect than fear in his songs. If we are part of the larger environment, we must recognize the threats it can pose, but that doesn't mean we have to wage war on it as an adversary.

As it turned out, in my adulthood, my work as a scholar of environmental communication would explore many of the same themes Lightfoot's music did. I learned that he and I shared a worldview, and I gained an even greater appreciation for what he was saying in "Ode to Big Blue." In fact, an unmistakeable line of thought runs from the first time I heard that song to how I perceive and act within our environment today. 

Gordon Lightfoot died on May 1. I am very sad the world lost him, but I expect that his music and his voice will continue to influence the way we think about and interact with the non-human environment for a long time.

Goodbye, Gordon. Thank you for singing my song!

Do You Know Where Your Migratory Bird Is?

Just in time for fall migration, the National Audubon Society has unveiled a great tool for understanding the journeys and challenges migratory birds face twice each year.

Bird Migration Explorer shows where species can be found at certain times. It also allows people to make larger connections by revealing other places a species they have seen can be found. Additionally, the tool has the ability to support conservation initiatives by allowing people to plan ways of helping birds make the difficult journeys. For more information, watch the video from the National Audubon Society below:

Birds have always served as great ambassadors for wildlife and the environment because people tend to encounter them more frequently than other types of wildlife. By offering the Bird Migration Explorer, the National Audubon Society helps people expand the impact a bird sighting has on them. To access the tool, click here.

Through this tool, we can learn more about birds, the interconnectedness of our environment, and our environmental influence.

Connections and Relationships

Building connections and relationships has always been crucial to social causes. Its importance continues to grow as the bonds linking society fray and rupture.

In its efforts to undertake conservation projects in southwest Washington, which I previously blogged about here, Conservation Northwest is taking steps to ensure such connections and relationships have strong roots.

On July 20-22, the nonprofit organization will co-host the Southwest and Coastal Washington Connectivity Summit. The summit will bring together nonprofits, tribes, government agencies, land owners, and businesses to lay the groundwork for future efforts to ensure habitat connectivity and address ecological issues like global warming. This will be the first summit on these issues in southwest Washington, but the plan is to continue holding them every two years.

This year's event is in Ridgefield, Washington. However, it can also be attended virtually.

I'm very excited to see the potential of the relationships that come out of these summits.

Getting Closer

A special conservation project took a step closer to fulfillment this month.

In late 2019, I blogged about a proposal to expand the Davis Creek Wildlife Area Unit, a piece of Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) land very close to my heart. Happily, the proposal was accepted a few months later, and WDFW began looking for funding to make the land purchases that would support the project.

At its most recent meeting, the Fish and Wildlife Commission approved the purchase of a 94-acre parcel, which represents about a quarter of the total proposed 416-acre addition to the Davis Creek Unit. Additional parcels will need to be purchased before the entire project is complete, but the acquisition of this piece is great news. The exciting vision of preserving this area now feels closer to reality.

Any conservation effort is important to me. However, because of the close connections I talked about in the 2019 post, adding to the Davis Creek Unit touches me just a little more. It's also a special experience to see this project develop from a proposal to the acquisition phase.

I would like to thank the Fish and Wildlife Commission for allowing the expansion of the Davis Creek Unit to move forward.

The Non-Human and an Expanded Notion of Social Change

Perhaps social change in this era needs a change in what we think about as social. Two recent examples of individuals connecting with the non-human world provide clues for how that might happen.

Without question, we face some massive and serious social and environmental issues. These include our ability to address global warming, mass extinctions, increasing poverty, and a deterioration of the social bonds and institutions that bring people together and build communities.

At the same time, we struggle to generate the kind of momentum that produces the changes required to address these issues. In fact, the breakdown of social bonds and institutions likely feeds into that struggle, creating a vicious circle of unsolved problems and declining abilities to solve them.

After reading about two individuals who discovered strong connections with the non-human world and went on to become important forces for change on both social and environmental issues, the thought occurred to me that one of the obstacles impeding change might be that our definition of what is social should be expanded to include the non-human world. In other words, issues like global warming are so far-reaching that to address them adequately, we must bring all hands, paws, wings, roots, and whatever else on deck.

Connections with the non-human world can provide the kind of spark necessary for successful social change. The stories of Rodney Stotts, a falconer from Virginia, and Bob Russell, a landowner in rural Washington state demonstrate the power these connections have. In the case of Stotts, an early experience with conservation and a subsequent connection with birds of prey inspired him to centralize conservation in his life and help others enjoy and benefit from the same kinds of connections. His work has allowed people to rethink their place in the world and find second chances and catharsis. For the 63-year-old Russell, a chance encounter with a determined salmon on his property in November 2014 launched his commitment to conservation and prompted him to become an advocate in his community.

Importantly, the efforts of Stotts and Russell indicate how inspiration from and connection with the non-human world can serve as catalysts for actions that help rebuild the social bonds so crucial to the process of social change. Many factors currently limit our ability to produce social change, but one that isn't often talked about is that we might not be considering how vital non-human entities are to the effort. Possibly, these non-human entities can become partners in the process, helping us begin, facilitate, and optimize the activities that generate social bonds, form communities, and yield the changes we need.

From now on, when we think about what is social, we would do well to think about more than just humans.

Wild Assumptions

The human tendency to insist that animals or other non-human parts of the environment lack some trait or ability happens so frequently that even people who have challenged it sometimes end up doing it.

Our assumptions about what is human and what is wild or wilderness have deep roots. Consequently, they can guide our reasoning no matter how much we try to overcome them. In addition, they tend to result more from our own limits in perceiving the world around us than from the shortcomings of non-humans. This creates major problems for the conclusions we reach because flawed assumptions constrain our ability to assess questions about non-humans and the environment sufficiently. Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-human World, a new book by Emma Marris, provides an example of this.

Marris makes an admirable and good-faith effort to challenge dominant ideas about the relationships between humans, other species, and the environment. However, the discussion presented in the book about the idea of intrinsic value contains some arguments that require further examination. They are limited by the same constraints about the traits and abilities of non-human entities that Marris works so hard to challenge.

Those who support the idea of intrinsic value argue that the value of something exists independent of the valuation of a valuer. For example, a tree has value in and of itself regardless of what value humans might put on it. This idea is used to support arguments that non-humans have the right to exist and that human activity jeopardizing that right is unethical.

While allowing that individual non-humans have intrinsic value, Marris questions whether species as a whole and entire ecosystems have it. This argument centers on the assumption that species and ecosystems are not conscious agents trying to survive. At this point, Marris begins to exhibit that old human tendency to discount the capabilities and characteristics of the non-human.

According to Marris, "The individual living things alive today are here because their ancestors survived and reproduced. And thus each one has inherited many ways of surviving and reproducing. Their goal-directed nature is a product of the brute force of evolution. Individuals that don't try to live and reproduce don't have babies. Those that do, do, and pass on their 'trying' genes. Sometimes selection can act on tightly coordinated groups, like ant colonies, when the whole colony survives or dies together. But 'species are too diffuse and their individual members too uncoordinated and independent from each other for them to constitute an entity on which selection might operate,' (Ronald) Sandler says. They have no goals. If they have no goals, they can't be helped or hindered." Then, Marris applies the same logic to ecosystems, arguing that they lack goals, including the desire to persist.

With regard to species, these claims, especially the quote from Sandler, are incredible. It is difficult to accept the assumptions that species are not "coordinated" and "have no goals" after watching geese migrate, European starlings fly as one big mass, insects mate over streams in the tiny window of time in which they live, or salmon return together from the ocean to spawn. In fact, when the Elwha River was dammed, the individual salmon would constantly bump into the base of the dam in an attempt to follow their instincts to continue upstream. This behavior continued for decades until the dam was finally removed. Clearly, the salmon had a goal in mind. This goal could not have been the result of uncoordinated, individual decisions because the individuals that returned to the river decades after the dam was put in place had no personal knowledge of what was past the structure. Rather, the goal was the product of a species coordinating itself through collective instincts in its drive to survive, a drive that propelled individuals to the point that they would repeatedly throw themselves against solid concrete in vain. The quote from Sandler also seems to disregard the research showing that dolphins possess a social intelligence that allows them to experience each other's experiences, a degree of connection that humans can hardly imagine. And therein lies the central problem of these claims from Marris and Sandler about intrinsic value: They are limited by the human ability to perceive and imagine what is happening in the non-human world. These limitations constrain the conclusions the two writers make.

Demonstrating how assumptions can lead to flawed logic and questionable conclusions, Marris seems to use the claims about intrinsic value to invert the process of evolution. Positioning reproduction as the "product" of evolution, which the writer refers to at other points as a "selector," creates the impressions that evolution is (1) the driving force (rather than a result of reproduction and adaptation to environmental conditions) and (2) an omnipotent agent with the ability to decided the fate of species. In other words, Marris, who is reluctant to grant agency and consciousness to species and ecosystems, apparently has no problem granting these things to evolution. First, evolution is a human concept that is used to explain how species develop and adapt within their environment. It is not an agent of that environment. Second, evolution is the product, not the driver. As life adapts to the planet's different parameters through reproduction, species evolve. No omnipotent "selector" determines this process. Instead, it's a continuous interaction between life and environmental parameters. I would further argue that species play a central role in this process by supplying the drives that organize migrations, mating, and other social interactions. The species are trying to survive. Otherwise, their individual members would be so uncoordinated that life on this planet would have likely been dead on arrival.

Proving intrinsic value in ecosystems presents stronger challenges. Because of human limitations, it is quite difficult to see how entire landscapes might be coordinated and trying to survive. This is why Marris can say ecosystems do not move as units. On this issue, the work of Suzanne Simard, which can be read in Finding the Mother Tree, proves useful yet again. (I previously blogged about that book here.) In showing how entire forests are linked in consciousness and communication through fungal networks, Simard provides strong evidence for the kinds of agency, coordination, and desire to survive that Marris denies to ecosystems. The connections Simard describes go beyond a particular species and far beyond individual members of those species. Furthermore, they show how entire ecosystems respond to environmental signals, sharing resources and information that allow for decisions meant to facilitate survival. As Simard demonstrates, these decisions can even include the ecosystem moving as a unit as changes in the climate make one area unsatisfactory or turn other areas more favorable. Trees moving beyond what once was the tree line represents one such example, and of course, the species linked to those trees follow. In addition, dying trees will share their accumulated knowledge of how to survive with other trees before they die, and such sharing can involve more than one species. These phenomena sound a lot like coordination and a desire to survive that extend to the level of ecosystems.

In Wild Souls, Marris raises important points about animal rights and human attempts to control the entire environment. However, the arguments the book presents about intrinsic value are central to its overall message and need further attention and development before they can be accepted.

All told, it is always worth keeping in mind how human assumptions about the non-human world influence our perception of and perspectives on it.

The Child and the Mother Tree

As a child, I had the fortunate experience of receiving my first bits of education from a forest; years later, I'd discover the science of that knowledge in Suzanne Simard's Finding the Mother Tree.

Because the teachings of the forest reached me before social constructs about the non-human world had much chance to mold my perspective, I was free to imbibe that information without a strong human filter. Put simply, I just experienced what was happening in the world around me. It didn't seem weird at all to think of trees as conscious and connected.

After being exposed to more societal ideas about what trees represented to other human beings, I struggled to reconcile the fundamental differences. It just seemed like other people were experiencing something completely different when they couldn't imagine trees as more than lumber growing out of the ground for human consumption. The more I heard what others had to say about trees, the more rare my perspective appeared to be. Such isolation can create doubt, and I wondered if my sense of the forest came largely from my ability to anthropomorphize.

Simard's research in forest ecology dispelled my doubts. Several years before her book's publication, I read a news article that explored how she had produced evidence that trees communicate with each other through fungal networks. For someone with the childhood experience I'd had in the forest and an interest in using environmental communication to break down barriers between humans and the rest of the environment, the research clicked with me; so as soon as I saw that Simard had published Finding the Mother Tree, I bought it.

Reading the book was like having the pieces of my earlier experiences in the forest forged together in solid confirmation. I realized that much of what Simard found through her research closely resembled the lessons my childhood self had absorbed from the trees around it (maybe it was a powerful and unmitigated form of learning through direct experience, or perhaps their fungal network had reached me too). I learned a lot from Simard as well and breezed through the book.

If you are like me and have suspected since you were young that forests included more than a collection of individual plants, or if you are looking for information that can expand how you think about our environment as a whole, I highly recommend Finding the Mother Tree.

A Radical Book

For those interested in communication about the environment, Radical Wordsworth: The Poet Who Changed the World by Jonathan Bate is pure poetry.

When I first read William Wordsworth's poetry as an English major in college, it clicked with me. I understood what he was saying, and beyond that, I recognized a perspective on the world that meshed with mine. My mind couldn't help but attach green colors to his words and images. As a result, when I found out about Bate's biography of the poet, I bought it instantly.

Along with focusing on Wordsworth's most revolutionary work, the book revisits earlier definitions of the word radical to expand our sense of the poet's impact. In particular, the definition of "implanted by nature" contains great importance for students of environmental communication. The biography certainly gives a sense that much of Wordsworth's power as a poet sprang from his feelings of connection with the environment.

Bate makes clear that among the other radical tendencies and sentiments exhibited and expressed by Wordsworth in his early poems, the way in which the poet depicted the environment became his most revolutionary and lasting effect on the world. Wordsworth didn't just challenge dominant understandings of our relationship with the environment, questioning portrayals that granted people power over nature or separated them from it entirely; he prompted us to see connections to all aspects of the environment, no matter how small or obscure. In Bate's estimation, the poetry set the groundwork for movements that promote animal rights and conservation, including the creation of national parks.

By tracing today's language about the environment back to Wordsworth and through the people he influenced such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and John Muir, Bate lends great support to his contentions about Wordsworth's importance to the modern environmental movement. He goes so far as to argue that national parks, which have long been called "America's best idea," were actually Wordsworth's idea, and the case Bate builds for this claim is compelling.

I would argue that Bate could have gone even further in establishing Wordsworth's impact on environmental communication. More than simply generating the language to advocate for national parks as basic conservation, Wordsworth preceded the later discussion of national parks as places of ecological importance, which has only gained momentum in recent decades. In addressing the role of every single part of the environment, including the elements we don't typically think of as grand, charismatic, or influential, Wordsworth pushed us to think on a larger scale, and his pen strokes can probably be seen in things like the studies showing wolves' impacts on stream bank erosion in Yellowstone National Park.

Bate might also have extended the discussion of Wordsworth's radical repercussions by examining the poet's influence on Emily Brontë. Scholars such as Stevie Davies and particularly Edward Chitham have shown how Brontë read heavily from Wordsworth's works and often took up his themes. In analyzing the epitaph Wordsworth wrote for Samuel Taylor Coleridge's son Berkeley, Bate looks at language that echoes in Brontë's Wuthering Heights. Describing someone in a grave, Wordsworth writes, "No motion has she now, no force / She neither hears nor sees / Roll'd round in Earth's diurnal course / With rocks, & stones, and trees!" The imagery brings to mind Brontë's depiction of Catherine Earnshaw in her grave, and the words are strikingly similar to those used by Catherine when she compares her love for Heathcliff to "the eternal rocks beneath." Given the argument I made last year about Brontë using imagination to turn the grave imagery into a transformative experience of the connection between people and their environment, I have to conclude that Wordsworth's poetry planted some seeds for such ideas from a woman who arguably surpassed him in radicalness.

Even though I wish Bate would have taken up the points about Brontë and the ecological aspects of the national parks, his biography of Wordsworth is very good, and anyone interested in the environment should check it out. To borrow some popular 1980s language, it's radical!

An Intimate List

My 2020 birding list fell quite short of past efforts, but along with its abbreviated nature, it also carried an intimate feeling.

A Bewick's wren, one of three
wren species I saw in 2020.

After logging 118 species in 2019, 139 in 2018, and 120 in 2017, I only recorded 81 in 2020. Faced with COVID-19 restrictions, I never traveled far and didn't attend any outings with birding groups. Instead, I concentrated on my local populations. All that meant a smaller total of species for the year.

As it turned out though, I felt a special closeness to the birds I did see. They were around all the time, and I didn't have to work to see them. Of the 81 total species, 79 of them were seen in a four-mile radius, and the other two were within a 20-mile radius. What is more, I didn't add any species to my life list, and I saw all 81 in familiar spots. That might sound bland, but it wasn't. Rather, a bond developed: These birds and I shared the same habitat, and we could count on seeing each other. I think it gave me a deeper understanding and appreciation of life in my immediate area.

Even with a list full of the usual suspects, I can single out some highlights. I saw three very different owl species: the northern saw-whet, the great horned, and the barred. Also, I tallied five species of woodpecker, including the red-breasted sapsucker, the pileated woodpecker, the hairy woodpecker, the downy woodpecker, and the northern flicker. In the same field, I logged both a tundra swan and a trumpeter swan. I had opportunities to see Townsend's warblers and hermit warblers in my yard. These were among seven species of warbler I sighted. Additionally, I had three types of flycatcher in the area.

I may not have set any records or broken new ground with my 2020 birding list, but I certainly got to know my closest avian neighbors, and they are a big part of how I'll remember last year.

What the Flaws in "Macbeth" Mean for Environmental Communication

Macbeth isn’t “a tale told by an idiot,” but it does have a flawed understanding of the environment, and we must learn from those flaws to improve environmental communication.

A fundamental problem in Macbeth arises from William Shakespeare’s depiction of natural and unnatural. It’s a false dichotomy that perpetuates and expands on the flaws in science’s “laws of nature,” flaws highlighted by Yrjö Haila and Chuck Dyke in How Nature Speaks: The Dynamics of the Human Ecological Condition. Having “laws of nature” requires the conclusion that when those laws are broken, something “unnatural” is done. In other words, these laws imply that a separation exists between what is natural and what is not natural. This is one of the main ways we end up seeing humans and nature as distinct from each other. 

In Macbeth, Shakespeare goes to great lengths to present the title character’s usurping of the Scottish throne as an affront to nature. He does this to protect the “divine right” of kings to hold power, a move intended to curry favor with James I. In this way, the King Duncan of the play and his line embody the “laws of nature,” which, when broken, throw Scotland into an unnatural state of turmoil. As Lady Macbeth’s doctor says, “Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles.”

For Haila and Dyke, nothing, including deeds and troubles, can be unnatural. Nature is simply the parameters of what is possible. As a result, they argue “that nature’s speech means nature’s presence in everything we humans do.” Killing someone, whether they are a monarch or not, is no more unnatural than not killing them. Humans have simply determined that killing, in most circumstances at least, is morally wrong, and that is where people who study environmental communication must pay special attention.

To argue that some action humans take is “unnatural” is an untenable position. It responds to a question of fact (whether something is true, if it exists, etc.), and that question has only an answer in the negative, setting up the person making the argument for failure. No matter how many human elements are involved in an activity, whether it’s hiking a mountain, emitting carbon pollution, clearcutting a forest, or producing chemical toxins, it can never be unnatural because the environmental parameters allowed for it.

We can still argue against certain actions because of their potential environmental harm, but we must avoid statements based in the issue of what is “unnatural.” For example, if we want to stick with questions of fact, we can argue that an action will create chaos in the environmental system or that such chaos will cause harm to the system. Unlike the claim about unnaturalness, these claims of fact have the potential of being proven as true. We can also examine questions of value (whether something is good or bad, moral or immoral, etc.), which is what Shakespeare seems to have tried to explore with the issue of unnaturalness in Macbeth’s actions. We can claim that some action we take within our environment is immoral (like driving other species to extinction). This, like the questions of fact about systemic balance, is also a question that can be investigated with the potential of the claim emerging victorious.

As compelling of a play as Macbeth might be, it represents a faulty line of thinking about the “laws of nature,” and if we want to improve our communication and understanding of our environment, we must choose lines of inquiry that diverge from the idea of unnaturalness.