The Way of Natural History

Front Cover
Thomas Lowe Fleischner
Trinity University Press, May 1, 2011 - Nature - 204 pages
In this eclectic anthology, more than 20 scientists, nature writers, poets, and Zen practitioners, attest to how paying attention to nature can be a healing antidote to the hectic and harrying pace of our lives. Throughout this provocative and uplifting book, writers describe their various experiences in nature and portray how careful, and mindful, attention to the larger world around us brings rewarding and surprising discoveries. They give us the literary, personal, and spiritual stories that point a way toward calm and quiet for which many people today hunger. Contributors to The Way of Natural History highlight their individual ways of paying attention to nature and discuss how their experiences have enlivened and enhanced their worlds. The anthology is a rich array of writings that provide models for interacting with the natural world, and together, create a call for the importance of natural history as a discipline.
 

Contents

The Supple Deer
1
The Mindfulness of Natural History
3
Crazy about Nature
16
Noctambulism
29
Perceiving a World of Relations
42
Sauntering toward Bethlehem
53
The Grounding of a Marine Biologist
65
Lessons from 763
81
Music and the Natural World
120
Becoming a Neighbor
126
Long Silent Affair
137
Bear Sign On Joyous Attention
144
Yard Birds
151
Maintenance
155
A Natral Histerrical Feller in an Unwondering Age
160
Attending to the Beautiful Mess of the World
174

Notes toward a Natural History of Dams
91
Talking to Wild Things
101
Eyes of the World
103
The Gardener Gets Arrested
113
Witness to the Rain
187
Mind in the Forest
196
Contributors
213
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About the author (2011)

Robert Aitken was master of the Diamond Sangha, a Zen Buddhist society he cofounded with his wife. One of the elders of Zen Buddhism in North America, he published more than ten books, including Taking the Path of Zen, The Mind of Clover, and Zen Master Raven. Until his death in 2010, he was a longtime resident of Hawai’i.

John Anderson grew up in Britain, New Zealand, and California and currently holds the William H. Drury, Jr. Chair in Evolution, Ecology, and Natural History at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, where he has taught for over twenty years. He has studied marine birds and the relationship between cultural history and ecological patterns on Maine’s coastal islands throughout this time. He recently served as president of the Society for Human Ecology, and he is chair of the Human Ecology Section of the Ecological Society of America.

Paul Dayton has been on the faculty of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography for almost four decades, conducting research on marine ecosystems throughout the world—including kelp forests, rocky intertidal communities, and Antarctic benthic communities. He has served on numerous scientific advisory boards and has received many awards and honors, including the E.O. Wilson Naturalist Award from the American Society of Naturalists and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Western Society of Naturalists. He is the only person to receive both the Mercer and Cooper awards from the Ecological Society of America.

Alison Hawthorne Deming, professor of creative writing at the University of Arizona, is the author of three books of poetry and three books of creative nonfiction. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets. Her work often explores the boundary between artistic and scientific ways of viewing the world.

Cristina Eisenberg is a conservation biologist and nature writer who lives in northwestern Montana, where she studies wolves and other carnivores on both sides of the international border. She is a doctoral candidate at Oregon State University, where she has received many honors for her work, including a Boone and Crocket fellowship. She is at work on a book, Landscapes of Hope: Trophic Cascades and Biodiversity.

Wren Farris lives on a small farm in the Klamath-Siskiyou Mountains of far northern California. For several years she has managed and coordinated conferences and green events for Bioneers and other organizations. Her writing, which explores the connections between landscapes, poetics, and human relationship to place, has appeared in Orion, Mountain Gazette, and other periodicals.

Thomas Lowe Fleischner is a naturalist, conservation biologist, and teacher. The author of two books—Singing Stone: A Natural History of the Escalante Canyons and Desert Wetlands—and numerous articles, he is a professor of environmental studies at Prescott College, in Arizona, where he has taught for over two decades. Cofounder of the North Cascades Institute and founding president of the Natural History Network, he has also served on the board of governors of the Society for Conservation Biology and as president of its Colorado Plateau Chapter.

Dave Foreman, a wilderness and conservation visionary, is the author of Rewilding North America and Confessions of an Eco-Warrior and the eco-thriller The Lobo Outback Funeral Home. After working many years for the Wilderness Society, he cofounded the Earth First! Movement and became publisher of Wild Earth. He is founding executive director of the Rewilding Institute, based in New Mexico.

Charles Goodrich is a poet and essayist who worked as a professional gardener for twenty-five years. He is the author of the poetry collection Insects of South Corvallis and the essay collection The Practice of Home, and coeditor of In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. He

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