Journal of a Sabbatical

April 21, 2000

raining skies

Today's Reading: Thoreau's Country by David R. Foster, today's journal entries for 1855-1861 from the Thoreau Home Page, The Flight of the Condor by Michael Andrews

Today's Starting Pitcher:
rained out in Boston

I took advantage of the gray rainy day to sleep in, laze about, and finish reading Thoreau's Country. Wicked good book. It's organized around Foster's essays on changes in various aspects of the New England landscape followed by excerpts from the supporting entries from Thoreau's journals. The major thing I gained from reading this book in addition to the journals is that Thoreau was a good observer of the social/cultural landscape. I'd already marveled at his detailed descriptions of flora and fauna and weather, but his eye for historical land use patterns was equally impressive. A heck of a lot of knowledge about forest succession and historic land is embedded in the 2 million or so words of Thoreau's journals, and yet modern foresters had to rediscover a lot of it for themselves. Thoreau has always been thought of more as a literary figure than a scientist, so it's not surprising that this major stuff was overlooked. Anyway, I highly recommend Thoreau's Country. It answered a lot of the questions that have come up for me in reading the journals and also confirmed some of my glimmers of insight about what New England was like then. Just think of a Massachusetts without deer, beavers, turkeys, black flies... all things so familiar to me. Mind-blowing.

After my plover warden shift yesterday I browsed for an hour at Olde Port Book Shop. Domino was asleep on a chair but chirped at me anyway when I walked by. I petted her a few times, to which she responded with more chirping without even opening her eyes. Domino talks in her sleep?

I would have thought Domino would be more talkative today because the shop was closed yesterday. Last week when I was there on Thursday after its being closed Wednesday Domino talked my ear off and rubbed against me the entire time. I came away with two books on that trip: Uttermost Part of the Earth by E. Lucas Bridges and Thoreau's Excursions from the New Riverside Edition.

Today a couple of things caught my eye: a book of stories by W.H. Hudson Tales of the Pampas, and yet another history of the New England forests --- oh and something in the nautical section about Portuguese naval disasters, which doesn't exactly fit into the Merrimack River theme - but I resisted buying them. There were more W.H. Hudson books than I remember being there before but all of them were fiction - none of the bird books. There is enough John Marquand around to fuel the Marquand revival if only I can spark it.

My weakness is not just for used books lately though. I ordered a book from amazon.com the other night (Wednesday) about my favorite tree Metasequoia glyptostroboides or dawn redwood.

I first saw a dawn redwood at the Arnold Arboretum years ago (in fact I think it may have been so long ago that my grandmother was still alive - we're talking decades here). It has beautiful red bark, but much smoother than that of the giant sequoia, with which everyone is familiar. The dawn redwood sheds its needles in winter too - weird for a conifer. The needles are softer-looking than those of the more familiar redwoods, kind of droopy. Anyway, what little info about it was on the plaque at the arboretum intrigued me but I never really looked into it - though I visited that tree frequently.

But that was before I met Zsolt, who told me the story of how this tree known to science only from the fossil record was found still living in China in the 1940's by a paleobotanist from California. Imagine being a paleobotanist and finding one of your fossil specimens alive after 25 million years! Imagine trekking across China in search of this living fossil. Great story. It stuck in my mind long after, and when I found out someone had written a book about it, I had to have it.

Speaking of Zsolt, I worked a lot on the IDRI web site Wednesday too instead of hanging out drinking coffee or reading all these books ... I've finally got the vegetation profile for the Douglas fir looking almost like I want it to.

In other news: Somebody wants the bluetarp domain name. Never in a zillion years did I think anybody would want that name! To sell or not to sell? That is the question.