My new column is up at Bookslut and this month I focused on eco-titles that teens might enjoy. I included two YA novels (Girlwood and Write Naked), an ecology encyclopedia, an art book of fish x-rays from the Smithsonian, a memoir written by a Canadian naturalist and an anthology from Orion magazine. It was not an easy column to put together simply because it is not easy to find eco-titles for teens. There are tons of picture books on environmental concerns or nature but finding books that will appeal to teenagers (whether written for teens or adults) is not so easy. That is part of why I was so happy to have the Orion anthology (selected by Barry Lopez): The Future of Nature.

There are a lot of excellent essays in Future - as anyone familiar with the magazine would expect. There is everything here from a look at how Niagara Falls has been controlled, to the devastating affects of coal mining on reservations to the tragic impact of Chernobyl on people in Belarus. The scope is wide and there is certainly something here for every ecological interest - as a jumping off source for school papers or a study guide for homeschoolers, the book would be excellent.

There was one essay in particular, by naturalist Robert Michale Pyle, that really made me think though. "The Rise and Fall of Natural History" considers why the active study of nature is important and how it has fallen out of vogue in the past few decades. Pyle explains his own path into the field while also writing about men like Jean Agassiz, John Burroughs, the works of Teddy Roosevelt and Gene Stratton Porter and on and on. He explains how nature study thrived because it taught the concept of "essential nature literacy". The naturalists of the 18th and early 19th century in particular believed that children must learn about nature - that it was as significant as other subjects. This continued until after WWII, Pyle explains, and then, he believes, the rush for the "hard sciences" overwhelmed it. One provided a quantifiable education and the other was more ephemeral - less easy to prove as significant. Nature study got lost in the rush for math and chemistry; physics and calculus. "The objective of a nature-literate citizenry was quietly forgotten."

Pyle is quick to note contemporary naturalists who are doing great and significant work but he does point to a lack of college coursework available in the field and more than that, for younger children, the total absence of time for patient nature study. It is at best, he writes, when "happened regularly, often daily, and at every level." You can not gain an appreciation for the intricacies of the food chain or the interdependency of species from one field trip to the zoo or a two week unit spent growing butterflies in the classroom. It takes time and patience and a learned ability to watch and truly see nature around us. This is something our society has largely forgotten how to do, just as we have forgotten why that knowledge is so significant.

Pyle is a wonderful writer and his essay is one that I highlighted in my review. It is ironic that I should have written about him and so many other observers of nature at the same time though that an article was emailed to me concerning drilling in ANWR. Here is a bit of what Michele Bachmann, a Minnesota Congresswoman, had to say after flying over ANWR earlier this summer:

For far too long, Americans have been told by the environmentalist left that drilling in Alaska would hurt the abundant wildlife and natural resources there. This is simply not true. ANWR is a small part of the Arctic Circle in northern Alaska. Energy exploration would be limited to a small 2,000-acre lot with in ANWR. That is comparable to a postage stamp sitting on a football field. Visiting ANWR also revealed that almost no wildlife exists in the 2,000-acre area. It was flat arctic tundra with absolutely no trees in view. And, caribou and wildlife were nowhere near the possible drilling sites. Furthermore, we know that nine months out of the year this area is hidden under snow and ice and three months out of the year the area is covered in complete darkness.

It is not under "snow and ice" nine months out of the year and it is not in "covered in complete darkness" for three. There are shades of gray to the refuge that completely eluded Ms. Bachmann - along with nature that you can not appreciate in a fly-by. The Company used to fly Congressmen and Senators out to ANWR and it was amazing - they always saw what they wanted to see; they always missed what they didn't want to notice.

Studying nature is a task of patience; it is not for those who look only out of windows from a thousand feet up. Clearly Ms. Bachmann has forgotten what nature is, and like so many of us, she could not recognize its diverse value when it was right there in front of her.

[Post pic of caribou in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge 2003-2004.]