Today is Charles Darwin’s birthday, and hardly anyone has done more for the true understanding of us humans and our world than this good Victorian gentleman. He completed the revolution begun by Copernicus centuries earlier, by establishing clearly that in addition to our planet not being the center of the cosmos, we humans are merely one species of many on the planet, formed by the same processes that form the other species, and in no way exceptional. He established this not by any stroke of genius, but “the old fashioned way,” as the old Smith Barney ad goes. Consider: Read More
Living and Writing in the Natural World
A New Year, by China and the Moon
February 8, 2013
Day after tomorrow is the Chinese Lunar New Year, which means tomorrow is New Year’s Eve, and it’s time to be putting up the lanterns and thinking about the menu. The Chinese way of celebrating the new year is very different than our western one, and because of the differences their celebration has survived thousands of years and precipitates the greatest annual human migration on the planet. There’s a good reason for that. Read More
Rhythms of a Human Life
February 5, 2013
A roaring bonfire in the middle of an almond orchard, talk about the stages of life, lots of wine and crystalline stars in the night sky—we must be in California! And so we were this past weekend, as we helped a friend of my wife observe her 60th birthday. A human life, like forests and planets and dreams, has a certain rhythm and track to it, and we were celebrating. Read More
The Second Rung
January 30, 2013
We can’t all be frolicking deep in the High Sierra backcountry every summer. That’s heaven, and I’ve done it, but not all can. Perhaps your experience is limited, perhaps your fitness is not adequate, perhaps you’re too darn old to heft 40 pounds of pack mile after mile (here I raise my hand), maybe you’ve got young kids, or maybe you want to work your way up to the Peak experience. These days of late winter I find myself peeking ahead in the calendar to summer, and thinking that it’s time to start making plans and reserving spots in campgrounds and on trails. What’s available to us in terms of this second rung of outdoor adventures? Read More
Lazarus Species 1: the Coelacanth
January 23, 2013
Three days before Christmas in 1938, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer received a phone call from a friend who had trawled up a weird fish off the South African coast that morning, and knew she was interested in such things for her museum. She soon arrived by taxi at the dock. "I picked away at the layers of slime to reveal the most beautiful fish I had ever seen," she said. "It was five foot long, a pale mauvy blue with faint flecks of whitish spots; it had an iridescent silver-blue-green sheen all over. It was covered in hard scales, and it had four limb-like fins and a strange puppy dog tail." And oh yes. It had been extinct for 65 million years, she would learn later. Read More
John Muir's Window
January 15, 2013
After tossing for hours last night as I wrestled with things in my head, I opened my eyes, noted it was two in the morning, and glanced out my window. Since I keep the blind levered to allow me unimpeded views outside, I could clearly make out the black lateral branch of our large walnut snaking across gray-black sky, and the branches of the oak behind it. Through the branches shone two large stars (planets, probably) and a myriad of other stars. I felt better, seeing these reminders of the grand spectacle of which I’m merely a very small part. And I thought of the windows in John Muir’s bedroom, which I had stood before three days ago. Read More
Snow Caves and Crampons
January 7, 2013
Yesterday we passed into the Small Cold interval in the traditional Chinese solar calendar, which with the succeeding Great Cold interval comprise the five weeks in the heart of winter. Here in the Sacramento Valley of northern California, it’s easy to maintain the habit of being outdoors that the Taoists of China and our own John Muir so heartily recommend—we rarely deal with snow or sleet. But if you’re in Maine or a similar place, or live at 8,000 feet anywhere, the outdoor life throws you some challenges in the winter. Embrace them. Read More
Deep Ecology and Confucius
December 28, 2012
Having just about wrapped up my most recent novel, Sherlock Holmes in Egypt in 1923 figuring out who poisoned the discoverer of King Tut’s tomb, and incidentally how King Tut himself had died three thousand two hundred years earlier, I turned this week to research for my next book, and was reminded of the second verse of Confucius’ Analects (written a mere two thousand five hundred years ago): “Isn’t it a joy to greet friends from afar!” Read More
The Great Darkness
December 21, 2012
Today is the Winter Solstice, where due to the 17 degree tilt of the earth we in the northern hemisphere have only 9 and a half hours of light but 14 and a half hours of darkness tonight—the longest night of the year. The occasion has been marked and celebrated for millennia by the Taoist tradition of China, and more recently by various people of environmental leanings. Both these disparate groups are convinced Read More
Surviving Trauma
December 19, 2012
First the tingle, then a definite itch. Unbelieving, I looked down at my left arm last night, the inner elbow. There it was. The line of red welts of the worst of the seven jellyfish tentacles that had “stung” me eighteen months earlier in the waters of Hawaii. Eighteen months ago! I hadn’t been bothered by it for some months, but here it flared up again, and, amazingly, the welts were still active and doing their thing. Two things to note: Read More