the forest stays low, creeping up the valley: like advancing forces, but that hill isn't taken -- season after season.
Advancing Forest [Tanka]
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Category Archives: Wilderness
In Tall Grass [Free Verse]
Do you feel unease, walking in tall grass? Visceral tension? A primal impression from a time when a wounded beast [on its belly, & with labored breath] retained enough energy for one last lurch to impale its hunter? A raspy groan or bloody burble, and the jerky wave of the grass might be all the warning one got before The End.
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DAILY PHOTO: Valley to Khangchendzonga
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Mossy Tough [Haiku]
rolling stone: no moss?
it thrives in cold, flowing streams
of Himalaya
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BOOK REVIEW: Forest Walking by Peter Wohlleben & Jane Billinghurst
Forest Walking: discovering the trees and woodlands of North America by Peter WohllebenMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
Out: April 26, 2022
Wohllebenâs âThe Hidden Life of Treesâ was one of those rare books that profoundly changed the way I looked at the world, and so I was eager to read his forthcoming work. This book is at once narrower in focus (i.e. intended to appeal to the North American market, specifically,) but also much much broader (i.e. reflecting upon not just the trees but the other species that reside among them as well as how humans can best get around within the forest.) It might seem strange for Wohlleben (a German forester) to do a book on the North American forests, and I suspect thatâs one reason that his one-time translator / editor (Jane Billinghurst) became his co-author. [I donât know where Billinghurst is from, but she does add many North America-specific vignettes to the book.]
Like âThe Hidden Life of Treesâ this book is packed with intriguing insights into woodland environments. The twenty-one chapters arenât explicitly divvied up, but thereâs a clear logic to the grouping of chapters. An opening chapter focuses on the importance of having a multi-sensory experience in the woods, and then chapters two through five are concentrated on trees and their various parts.
Chapters six through eight explore species that work on, with, and against trees, with particular focus on fungi and other species that break down and recycle forest material. Chapters nine and ten turn the attention to how to help kids get the most out of their forest experience. The next couple chapters consider how to get the most of seeing the forest at unconventional times, i.e. night and during varied seasons. Then there are a few chapters investigating how to observe other lifeforms of the forest, particularly animals and insects.
Several chapters follow that explore how humans can survive and thrive in wooded ecosystems, including everything from wilderness survival / primitive living skills to dressing to save oneself from ticks and chiggers.
I learned a lot from this book. As I mentioned, itâs full of intriguing little tidbits about the forest.
The opening sentence of the bookâs Introduction did mention it being intended as a book one would take into the forest with one, and I would say itâs not that book at all. Itâs the kind of book one reads before going out (and probably returns to after coming back) but itâs just not organized in such away to make it worth lugging around (i.e. itâs not like a field guide â set up to allow one to rapidly find what one is interested in on the fly.)
That said, youâll learn a lot from reading it, and Iâd highly recommend it.
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Digesting Civilization [Haiku]
jungle engulfs,
swallows, and digests
once proud buildings
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BOOK REVIEW: The Secret World of Weather by Tristan Gooley
The Secret World of Weather: How to Read Signs in Every Cloud, Breeze, Hill, Street, Plant, Animal, and Dewdrop by Tristan GooleyMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
Out: April 8, 2021
A couple of weeks ago, I was reading an article discussing the numerous types of human intelligence. While I firmly believe that the traditional notion of intelligence is sorely inadequate, the social scientist in me is always skeptical when social scientists try to pack up human experience neatly into boxes [because, often times, human experience is anything but neat — thus resulting in categories that arenât mutually exclusive, are overly partitioned, or are insufficiently partitioned.] So, I donât know whether I believe that the current scheme, which suggests there are eight types of intelligence, is a good one or not. [Getting to the point here, I promise.] For instance, Iâm not sure whether ânaturalist intelligenceâ [one of the eight categories] is really a different kind of intelligence, or just a different field of application. What I do know, is that â either way â it is worth trying to improve oneâs understanding of nature, and â also — this book will help you build these faculties.
Tristan Gooley is the Sherlock Holmes of the natural world, taking note of often subtle cues to better understand the overall picture of whatâs going on in nature. This particular book examines what we can determine about weather using the variety of clues offered by the natural world â ranging from obvious weather signs like clouds to more obscure indicators such as animal behavior.
The book consists of twenty-two chapters. Many of the chapters are focused on weather phenomena like clouds, winds, fog, precipitation, dew, etc. Some chapters are about natural elements that provide indicators about what might be expected, e.g. the shape of mountains as they influence wind patters, the differential heating effects of different surfaces of the planet. And some chapters discuss specific ecosystems and their recurrent weather, e.g. forests or cities.
The book contains many graphics, mostly drawings and diagrams used to visually depict ideas that are not readily grasped through text descriptions. The book also contains notes, a bibliography, and suggested further readings.
Iâd highly recommend this book for anyone who spends time outdoors or who wants to learn more about doing so. Gooley uses stories, analogies, and interesting facts skillfully throughout the book, building a work that will teach one a great deal in a fun and interesting way.
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BOOK REVIEW: 100 Things to Do in the Forest by Jennifer Davis
100 Things to Do in a Forest by Jennifer Davis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Iâm a big fan of any book that works to get people to experience nature. The more times I see someone on a cellphone walk into a wall or a pole, the more this is true. [BTW: If you are thinking to yourself, âIâve never seen a single soul walking into anything while on their phone!â then you are among those who are walking into things. (Or, maybe, you live in a cave.)] At this point, Iâm pretty concerned about the continued survival of our species because of the lack of awareness that time in nature cures — one way or another.
This book takes a crack at the problem by coming up with a hundred activities of varying kinds that one can do in nature, the intent being to make it appealing for the segment of the population who have no idea what to do once they get into the woods and / or who may have a bit of angst about the experience. The book shifts philosophy from what has long been the mainstream view defined by the mantra: âtake only photos and leave only footprints.â This isnât to suggest that Davis is condoning wandering around tossing trash about or randomly uprooting plants. On the contrary, she advocates being a good steward of nature, but with the provision that nature can take more individuals plucking flowers or the like (and that if more people were vested in nature through such activities, they would ensure that the large-scale threats were stopped.) Iâm not sure how I feel about this philosophical shift, but it does make for intriguing food-for-thought.
The activities are of varied types. I would classify them as campcraft (e.g. knot tying or knife use,) personal development (e.g. meditation and yoga), and crafts projects. One might get the feel this book is geared toward kids, but the author clearly tries to reach a broad demographic. The ideal demographic might be adults with children who are looking at what to do to make a trip to the woods compete with the hot sensory injection of modern urban life. While itâs not a particularly advanced book, I did learn a few new things. Furthermore, I felt that most of the activities suggested were potentially beneficial. There were a couple exceptions. The first is one in which one categorizes things in nature as opposites (which I object to on the basis that humanity does far too much stuffing of things into arbitrary groupings already, and I feel it has negative consequences.) The less psychological and ethereal objection was the candle-lit trail. (Which I primarily object to on the basis that â even placing tealights in glass jars the book suggests â a fire hazard is created by putting jars on loose leaf and needle litter which is spongy, uneven, and often highly flammable. A secondary objection is that carrying enough glass jars to make it work would be ridiculously awkward and risky for a person walking around in the dark in the woods. But 98 or 99 suggestions that remain are still likely to give one something useful to think about.
The book has artwork here and there throughout. Some of this art is ornamental, but other pieces are functional, in support of teaching activities such as knot-tying that are difficult to convey through text.
If youâre looking for a book of activities to perform in nature, this one is worth checking out. The activities are pretty simple, but because they are of several different classes of pursuit, even someone experienced in the woods may learn something new regarding meditation or crafts.
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DAILY PHOTO: Red Flowers, Chennagiri Hill
DAILY PHOTO: Kashmiri Tarns
Taken in August of 2016 on the Sonamarg – Naranag Trail.
the !n(tro)verted yogi 