Environmental Outlook: "The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature" by David Haskell
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-12-04/environmental-outlook-forest-unseen-years-watch-nature-david-haskell
(Photo courtesy David Haskell)
Forests cover more than 30 percent of the world’s land surface. They are home to a variety of living organisms, but much of what happens in the woods is a mystery to humans. Inspired by the mandalas of Tibetan monks, biologist David Haskell set out to better understand forest ecology: he visited the same spot in the Tennessee forest every day for a year. His days were spent quietly listening and observing. What he found was a thriving biological world of plants, animals and insects, all bound together by a shared ecosystem. On this month’s Environmental Outlook: “The Forest Unseen.”
Guests
David Haskell
professor of biology at The University of the South.
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Read An Excerpt
Reprinted by arrangement with Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., from "The Forest Unseen" by David George Haskell. Copyright © 2012 by David George Haskell.
Comments
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...." experience the cold like the animals..." we don't have feathers or fur?
Thank you for such a lovely discussion!
I have had some lovely moments with animals and birds when sitting silently among the trees. My favorite recent experience was with a snake! I was sitting on a log in the woods writing, so there was so movement as my hand moved across the page, but it must not have been too disruptive. After a while of sitting and writing I looked up and noticed a three foot long black snake heading straight for me. I figured it would veer off once it noticed me so I just sat still and watched it. It didn’t veer off. It came directly for me and paused for a moment about an inch from my right foot at the base of the log I was sitting one. Again I figured it would veer off and wander away along the base of the log. Instead it came right up on the log beside me! It stayed there for a moment or two as I watched it out of the corner of my eye, not wanting to startle it, then it turned its head toward me, turned right back around, went back down the log and back across the ground from the direction it had arrived from.
It was an amazing, joyful moment of sharing with the snake. I was very grateful for its visit and will always remember it.
Birds keep warm by having a much higher body temperature, an integrated down overcoat, scales on their legs, a high metabolism, and fat reserves. This along with their fluffing, tucking, shivering, and roosting explains why they can survive the winter while the naked author of this book could not. You had me at "sat in the woods every day for a year" and lost me at "striped my clothes off". Really? Is it so hard to get published?
An outstanding subject. I studied alot like he did when I was a kid, raised in the city we would go out hunting, camping, backpacking and I took biology field classes offord by the game and fish state department. I love to sit and watch nature, it is very peaceful and incitful to life. Till this day at 48 I could just watch nature, clouds, lakes, rivers and anything all day. I always wish we could go back to horse and buggy for local transportation.
Thank you for sharing your studies.
Joy, before this summer I did not know some of what you explain (and more) about how birds survive--and don't survive--the winter, but I learned it from reading David's book, and I was highly entertained and challenged while learning it. I suspect my 7th and 8th grade earth science and biology teachers would be sad to know this, but frankly, the dry presentation of the facts as they offered them did not appeal to me. I also now know how moss holds water, and how lightning bugs mate and other things I never cared to learn about until they were presented in an engaging way by a talented writer. I'm glad you already know what you know, but there's a lot to be said for a scientist who can engage non-scientists like me and the majority of readers. We all need to know more about the world we live in, and I applaud David for reaching a broad audience with his unique combination of subject and style. It's a wonderfully written and informative book. You're missing out.
The DR Show is rebroadcast by my public radio station at 10 pm. Last night this particular program inspired me to dig out my college-days copy of Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and I read late into the night, re-experiencing my original thrill with and savoring her inspired descriptions of the natural world in her corner of Virginia. Am so thankful for people like Haskell and Dillard who can convey these stories with such effect.
I'm somewhat disappointed by the Mr. Haskell's interview and to some extent what I can read of the book. (You can read more of it at Amazon if you like to get the feel of a book before ordering as I do.) The premise sounds great. Then he spent most of the interview going on at length about the life cycle of a worm, how it lives inside another insect's body, etc. He didn't observe that in his forest, he read about that in science studies. Or what if felt like to be naked in the cold. That's observing himself, not the nature around him. Or how bees behave inside the hive, again not something he observed there. The chapters in the book seem to be similar, starting off with a bit of actual observation and then going off on a dissertation again. It sounds like he really got into being part of nature there, talking about how he could tell when hikers were near by, by the sounds of the animals, but it doesn't seem he's communicating much of that in his talk, or maybe in his book. I read another book years ago by an Amish farmer observing nature as he worked. That had a lot more observation in it. From the premise I was looking forward to this, and I'll find out if the book gives more than it seems, but so far, excited about the premise, left half disappointed with the content.
lies