On the Importance of High-Altitude Bogs

This is kinda a continuation of Saturday's post on A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold.  This is adapted from an email that I just sent to my brother out on the left coast.

Along these lines of the importance of things wild and free, I am reminded of a thought I had waaaaay back in college in the early 70s when I was young and idealistic, and had just for the first time read the ecological classic A Sand County Almanac (Aldo Leopold). The bride and I had been backpacking at Otter Creek WV, northeast of Elkins, WV. Otter Creek, which has since been granted wilderness status, is a pristine watershed about 5 x 12 miles, and empties into a fork of the Cheat River a short way downriver from Blackwater Falls. 

[Gary's note: I was trying to insert an Otter Creek image here but the Blogger software seems to be hosed at the moment.  Click here to see some cool photos!]

Anyway, by around 1920, the entire state had been logged, including Otter Creek. But the old logging railroad grades still remain and are perfect for hiking even today. We had hiked one of the old grades up to a "hanging valley" within the watershed, wherein are found several high altitude bogs. These bogs contain more boreal plants and animals, ecological islands if you will, left behind when the last glacier retreated. 

In pondering the screwed up state of the world at that time (which, unfortunately, has not improved), I distinctly remember then having and writing down the thought, something like "If more people truly understood the significance of high altitude bogs, we would have no more wars."

I still kinda believe that today. If, say, the U.S. neocons who gave us the Iraq war, or ISIS, or the Boko Haram kidnappers in Nigeria, knew about and truly realized what gem this planet is--as exemplified by the small treasures of high altitude bogs--voila!  No more wars. 

The return of gray wolves to CA is another such treasure. And one that if fully understood in the context of a stressed and overpopulated Earth, should halt all of us in our destructive tracks and unite us in a full court press to literally and figuratively swap our swords for plowshares and stop our planet-destroying madness. 

These wolves and high altitude bogs should be sufficient wake up call, were we only to listen.  So that's why I still need to believe in the importance of high altitude bogs...and wolves. 

I'm sure that's more than you bargained for but we all need a bit of naive idealism, don't we?  We get it, and are wondering why the rest of the world doesn't.

A Sand County Almanac...and Ultrarunning

Earlier this week, whilst the bride was away with her ladyfriends, I spent a couple of days up at "my" shelter, the Reese Hollow Shelter, a backpacker's shelter which supports the Tuscarora Trail.

Typically when I go there it's all about chain saws, weeedwhackers, trail work and maintenance.  But last year and now this, I have resolved to just go there, perhaps putter a bit on a  couple of minor projects, but basically just chill with a good book, an adult beverage, and solitude.

I didn't see another human for two days.  All trail maintainers should be required to do this annually.

Anyway, the good book was A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold.  Here's what I have previously written about it back in 2009, actually the first post I did here at Mister Tristan (the blog, not the 7 year old human being), upon which I cannot improve:

Like a recurring pilgrimage, I have just completed my annual re-reading of the ecological classic, "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold. My initial reading was prompted some years ago by a college biology professor who recommended it. I became hooked, and for each of the last 30+ years, Leopold, who has been in his grave for 60years, speaks to me and touches me with new and different insights into the nature of things wild and free. I now see Leopold's writings in a way which he never anticipated, but would certainly have approved of--from an ultrarunner's slant.

I continually examine my motives for endurance running (since I spend so much time doing it), and have for some time held the belief that we as a "civilized" species are now so far removed from the moment-by-moment struggle for survival that formerly ruled virtually every waking minute, that we now create for ourselves various means to simulate that intensity. I presume we do this because of some deep-seated need to experience life on the edge, to grab for that gusto and intensity. Thus I run ultras, to physically and mentally go to the edge and see what I can learn there about myself. And I like best to do this running in areas that are preferably wild and remote because there I somehow feel more connected. Simplistic, perhaps, but I suspect not far off the mark for many of us.

The tie-in with Leopold? Here are a couple nuggets: "Physical combat for the means of subsistence was, for unnumbered centuries, an economic fact. When it disappeared as such, a sound instinct led us to preserve it in the form of athletic sports and games...reviving, in play, a drama formerly inherent in daily life." Also, writing about outdoor recreation: "Recreation is valuable in proportion to the degree to which it differs from and contrasts with workaday life."

And on wilderness, Leopold wrote: "Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility. The shallow-minded modern who has lost his rootage in the land assumes that he has already discovered what is important; it is such who prate of empires, political or economic, that will last a thousand years. It is only the scholar who appreciates that all history consists of successive excursions from a single starting point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values. It is only the scholar who understands why the raw wilderness gives definition and meaning to the human enterprise."

Anyone who values the notions of wilderness, solitude, self-reliance, and of communion with nature that many of us ultrarunners seek, as we use the backcountry as a route to our psyches or souls, should check out Leopold's book. It's commonly available in paperback in bookstores in the Natural History section.

Anyway, just go read the book.  I guarantee you will a better person for doing so.

Fragmented Habitats...and Ultrarunning

Here in south-central PA we have been "civilized" for some 400 years, meaning that we no longer have any large swaths of uninterrupted forests.  For example, when I run on the Appalachian Trail near my home, the AT corridor is typically a ridge top scenario and you are indeed in the woods...yet you'd be hard-pressed to travel a linear mile without crossing some sort of of jeep trail or a real road.

I've always thought that the lack of contiguous habitat has adverse effects on the critters and plants that can live there, and this study is one of the more recent that verifies that intuitive thought:

The new study, led by Nick Haddad, a professor at North Carolina State University, and co-authored by Laurance and others, found that fragmented habitats lose an average of half of their plant and animal species within twenty years, and that some continue to lose species for thirty years or more. In all of the cases examined, the worst losses occurred in the smallest habitat patches and closest to a habitat edge. The study also demonstrates, using a high-resolution map of global tree cover, that more than seventy per cent of the world’s forest now lies within one kilometre of such an edge. “There are really only two big patches of intact forest left on Earth—the Amazon and the Congo—and they shine out like eyes from the center of the map,” Haddad said.

Think about that and treasure those times when your running habitat more closely resembles the primeval forest.

More Fracking in PA?...and Ultrarunning

Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett continues to be an anti-environmental corporate stooge for the natural gas industry (AKA Fracking Central):

A recent quote from him in the Sierra Club newsletter:

When reporter Matt Paul asked for a response to the Sierra Club's statement that we should be protecting public lands and not exploiting them, Corbett responded: "...there is a huge source of natural gas underneath the state parks, that is the state's.  I don't believe in just leaving it there."

Fervently hoping that he will be only a one-term train wreck instead of getting reelected this year and continuing the damage.

The link to Ultrarunning comes of course from the risks of despoiling our beloved backcountry.  It would be wise to remember the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act of 1964 which established the National Wilderness Preservation System.

The bill passed the House with only 1 Nay vote, and the Senate 78-8, and was signed by President Johnson.  The first few words of the Act--even more true today than 50 years ago--read:

In order to assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas within the United States and its possessions, leaving no lands designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition, it is hereby declared to be the policy of the Congress to secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness.

Enough said.

Happy Birthday, Aldo Leopold...and Ultrarunning

[image credit here]

Saturday (11 Jan 1887) was the birthday of the person--Aldo Leopold--who more than any other shaped my views of the natural world. 

Mr. Merritt, a prescient college professor at my alma mater, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, was my instructor for an ornithology course, and recommended the book A Sand County Almanac to us (Merritt also posed the question "Why do birds sing?" and answered it thusly: "Because they are happy.").
 
Anyway, I got a copy, immediately read it from cover to cover, and make it a point to read it again every single year.  For me, A Sand County Almanac still remains the single most important--and interesting--book I have ever read.
 
From the Writer's Almanac, which recognized Leopold's birthday: 

He defied convention in his work. Assigned to hunt livestock predators in a New Mexico national forest, Leopold began to feel that these bears, wolves, and mountain lions shouldn't necessarily be sacrificed for the sake of local ranchers, and he made the point that removing them had a broader impact on the entire ecosystem. His philosophy ultimately came to argue that humans ought not dominate the land; he popularized the term "wilderness" to mean not grounds for outdoor activity but nature in its own, untended state.

After 15 years in the southwest — during which time he developed the first management plan for the Grand Canyon, wrote the Forest Service's first game and fish handbook, and succeeded in designating the nation's first wilderness area — Leopold started and chaired Wisconsin's graduate program on game management. In 1935, Leopold formed The Wilderness Society with other conservationists.

He bought a worn out farm for $8 an acre near the Wisconsin River, barren and nearly treeless from years of overuse and degradation, in an area known as the "sand counties." With his wife and children, he set about tending a garden, splitting firewood, and eventually planting more than 40,000 pine trees. The farm came to stand as a living example of Leopold's life work and ethic, that peaceful coexistence with nature could be possible, and that the same tools used to destroy land could help to restore it.

Anyway, give yourself a late Christmas present and go get A Sand County Almanac.  In honor of Leopold, I'll rerun my very first post ever here at Mister Tristan, from Dec 2009:

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

A Sand County Almanac

This is my inaugural post for this new blog, Mister Tristan.

Like a recurring pilgrimage, I have just completed my annual re-reading of the ecological classic, "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold. My initial reading was prompted some years ago by a college biology professor who recommended it. I became hooked, and for each of the last 30+ years, Leopold, who has been in his grave for 60 years, speaks to me and touches me with new and different insights into the nature of things wild and free. I now see Leopold's writings in a way which he never anticipated, but would certainly have approved of--from an ultrarunner's slant.

 
I continually examine my motives for endurance running (since I spend so much time doing it), and have for some time held the belief that we as a "civilized" species are now so far removed from the moment-by-moment struggle for survival that formerly ruled virtually every waking minute, that we now create for ourselves various means to simulate that intensity. I presume we do this because of some deep-seated need to experience life on the edge, to grab for that gusto and intensity. Thus I run ultras, to physically and mentally go to the edge and see what I can learn there about myself. And I like best to do this running in areas that are preferably wild and remote because there I somehow feel more connected. Simplistic, perhaps, but I suspect not far off the mark for many of us.

The tie-in with Leopold? Here are a couple nuggets: "Physical combat for the means of subsistence was, for unnumbered centuries, an economic fact. When it disappeared as such, a sound instinct led us to preserve it in the form of athletic sports and games...reviving, in play, a drama formerly inherent in daily life." Also, writing about outdoor recreation: "Recreation is valuable in proportion to the degree to which it differs from and contrasts with workaday life."


And on wilderness, Leopold wrote: "Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility. The shallow-minded modern who has lost his rootage in the land assumes that he has already discovered what is important; it is such who prate

of empires, political or economic, that will last a thousand years. It is only the scholar who appreciates that all history consists of successive excursions from a single starting point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values. It is only the scholar who understands why the raw wilderness gives definition and meaning to the human enterprise."

Anyone who values the notions of wilderness, solitude, self-reliance, and of communion with nature that many of us ultrarunners seek, as we use the backcountry as a route to our psyches or souls, should check out Leopold's book. It's commonly available in paperback in bookstores in the Natural History section.

 

Arbor Day Foundation Quotes...and Ultrarunning

Got a come-on to join the Arbor Day Foundation, I assume from having attended an American Chestnut symposium recently.

They are a worthwhile organization but my charitable and non-profit support budget is too limited to join.  Nevertheless, I truly loved the quotes that appeared in the greeting cards they included in the membership solicitation:

In wilderness is the preservation of the world. -- Henry David Thoreau

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks. -- John Muir

He who plants a tree plants a hope. -- Lucy Larcom

The link to Ultrarunning?  If you don't see it, you are brain-dead.

Wesley the Owl—and Ultrarunning

 

I recently re-read a wonderful book, Wesley the Owl, by Stacey O’Brien. It’s a true story about a young researcher at Cal Tech, Stacey, who fosters an injured barn owl from infancy thru his ultimate passing at the ripe old owl age of 19. She writes lovingly and compellingly of her lifelong relationship with Wesley. It’s full of love, science, spiritualism, and is just a delightful and memorable book.

Photo credit here.

You should go read it.

Here’s one example of the science part. Although I have a couple degrees in Biology, I never quite understood the Northern Spotted Owl issue from the Pacific northwest. Sure, I knew that logging was threatening this owl and I—of course—was on the side of the owl, thinking that those who favored logging were shortsighted and uninformed. But here’s why (from page 164):

Biologists were warning the public that the old-growth forests, a delicate habitat that can’t be replaced, were disappearing at an alarming rate. The streams and rivers were silting and warming up, destroying the salmon runs and the entire ecosystem because of the runoff from clear-cut areas. The apex predator of these forests, the northern spotted owl, was endangered. When the apex predator is thriving, then so is the environment. But when the predator is faltering, biologists know that means the entire system is falling apart.

Most of the loggers didn’t understand the “canary in the coal mine” connection and thought the entire issue was about saving the owls, rather than their habitat. Because the loggers had been told to stop destroying the ancient forests before the forests were completely gone, they would lose their livelihoods sooner than if they kept cutting down trees until the entire ecosystem went extinct. Focusing only on their own livelihoods, they didn’t want to be told what to do, got angry, and took it out on the owls….

They didn’t understand—or they just chose not to—and they reminded me of the buffalo hunters of the nineteenth century determined to hunt down every last animal. They failed to see that they were going to have to find something else to do anyway after the last buffalo was gone.

We who run trails and treasure them can learn a lesson from this analogy. Our areas that are wild and free are a precious—and finite—resource. Nobody is making any more wilderness. So that’s why we must fight tooth and nail to preserve what we have, set aside more threatened areas, and ensure that encroachments from mineral rights, logging, etc., are not permitted.

 

This issue is particularly germane here in PA where unrestricted drilling for the gas of the Marcellus shale formation is looming large.

 

 

Good Wilderness News for Ultrarunners

Per the Wilderness Society:

The Wilderness Society tonight applauded the passage of five wilderness and conservation bills in the U.S. Senate. We are hopeful that the passage is a sign of things to come in the House, as the previous Congress – the 112th – was the first since 1966 to not designate a single new acre of wilderness.

The states involved include Oregon, Michigan, and Washington.  Now, the measures will still have to obtain approval in the House:

All five have been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, and The Wilderness Society is hopeful that they will also become law this year. To see a full list of wilderness bills in the 113th Congress, visit: http://wilderness.org/article/113th-congress-wilderness-bills.

Image credit Wilderness Society and Harry Romberg

Yipee!!

Aldo Leopold: A Name You SHOULD Know

[image credit here]

I recently ran across a notification from the Also Leopold Foundation, here, that had established the weekend of 1-3 March 2013 as Aldo Leopold Weekend in Wisconsin.

Well, not being from Wisconsin, I missed it, but the notion is so worthwhile--setting aside a weekend a year to celebrate the life of, and to promote the philosophy of, arguably the most influential ecologist in U.S. history.

I re-read Leopold's classic A Sand County Almanac every year and it's time I did it for 2013 (first I must finish a re-read of an Arthur C. Clark sci-fi classic, Rendezvous With Rama).  But in honor of Leopold and to spread the word, I have a big trail overseers meeting at the end of the month for the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club.  I plan to donate 5 copies as door prizes.

Anyway, here's why the work and writing of Also Leopold are important.  And why, as an ultrarunner and a lover of the backcountry you SHOULD know his work.  The following from 2009 was my first post ever here at Mister Tristan (the blog, not the 5-year old human being).  Enjoy!

++++++++++++++++++

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

A Sand County Almanac

This is my inaugural post for this new blog, Mister Tristan.

Like a recurring pilgrimage, I have just completed my annual re-reading of the ecological classic, "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold. My initial reading was prompted some years ago by a college biology professor who recommended it. I became hooked, and for each of the last 30+ years, Leopold, who has been in his grave for 60years, speaks to me and touches me with new and different insights into the nature of things wild and free. I now see Leopold's writings in a way which he never anticipated, but would certainly have approved of--from an ultrarunner's slant.
I continually examine my motives for endurance running (since I spend so much time doing it), and have for some time held the belief that we as a "civilized" species are now so far removed from the moment-by-moment struggle for survival that formerly ruled virtually every waking minute, that we now create for ourselves various means to simulate that intensity. I presume we do this because of some deep-seated need to experience life on the edge, to grab for that gusto and intensity. Thus I run ultras, to physically and mentally go to the edge and see what I can learn there about myself. And I like best to do this running in areas that are preferably wild and remote because there I somehow feel more connected. Simplistic, perhaps, but I suspect not far off the mark for many of us.

The tie-in with Leopold? Here are a couple nuggets: "Physical combat for the means of subsistence was, for unnumbered centuries, an economic fact. When it disappeared as such, a sound instinct led us to preserve it in the form of athletic sports and games...reviving, in play, a drama formerly inherent in daily life." Also, writing about outdoor recreation: "Recreation is valuable in proportion to the degree to which it differs from and contrasts with workaday life."

And on wilderness, Leopold wrote: "Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility. The shallow-minded modern who has lost his rootage in the land assumes that he has already discovered what is important; it is such who prate of empires, political or economic, that will last a thousand years. It is only the scholar who appreciates that all history consists of successive excursions from a single starting point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values. It is only the scholar who understands why the raw wilderness gives definition and meaning to the human enterprise."

Anyone who values the notions of wilderness, solitude, self-reliance, and of communion with nature that many of us ultrarunners seek, as we use the backcountry as a route to our psyches or souls, should check out Leopold's book. It's commonly available in paperback in bookstores in the Natural History section.

 

 

The Peace of Wild Things...and Ultrarunning (part 2)

I originally ran this post 2 years ago on 4 Sep 2010. I'll repeat it here and expand upon the original thought:

The Peace of Wild Things...and Ultrarunning

Over at Hecate--who, seriously, is a witch--ran across a marvelous post that struck an ultra chord.

...as more and more kids grow up in urban areas, in families who don't belong to the class of people who can afford a trip to see the redwoods or wade along a deserted shore, or canoe down a river, it becomes increasingly important to help them find nature inside urban areas. Although large empty spaces are really wonderful, for many kids [and adults!] a rather small space will suffice. A community garden. A gated alley full of trees, and tomato plants, and pets. A park. A local Nature Center. A tree that becomes a special friend.

Or, we could take our kids and grandkids ultarunning. Fitness aside, our doses of trail running are sweet therapy for our souls or psyches or whatever it is that makes us "us."

 

=======

 

Update as of 4 Sep 2012:  I hate to play the "when I was a kid" card, but in the 1950s and 60s, there were TV and telephones, but by and large, you played outside unless it was raining.  Video games and the Internet were but a gleam in somebody's eye.

 

Now I fear that outdoor play is a vanishing trend, so whenever Mister Tristan (the 4-year old human being, not the blog) says he wants to play outside, we do it, regardless of the weather.

 

 

Money..and Ultrarunning

[photo by Gary, Chimney Rocks, Franklin Co. PA]

Via Firedoglake:

Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten.

       -- Cree Nation Tribal Prophecy

 

 

 

One of the beauties of our sport is that it can be cheap--just some running duds, trail shoes, a water bottle pack, and you're off to the backcountry.

Of course, should you choose to go high end with your gear and enter a lot of races, you'll quickly see a real drain on your checkbook.

And that's the beauty and simplicity of it all.  Just run.  On trails.  For hours.  But do what you should and must to protect our backcountry from those who would destroy it under the guise of progress.

Wesley the Owl—and Ultrarunning

Life is interfering with blogging...this is a repost; originally ran on 8 Jul 2010.

Just completed a wonderful book, Wesley the Owl, by Stacey O’Brien. It’s a true story about a young researcher at Cal Tech, Stacey, who fosters an injured barn owl from infancy thru his ultimate passing at the ripe old owl age of 19. She writes lovingly and compellingly of her lifelong relationship with Wesley. It’s full of love, science, spiritualism, and is just a delightful and memorable book.

Photo credit here.

You should go read it.

Here’s one example of the science part. Although I have a couple degrees in Biology, I never quite understood the Northern Spotted Owl issue from the Pacific northwest. Sure, I knew that logging was threatening this owl and I—of course—was on the side of the owl, thinking that those who favored logging were shortsighted and uninformed. But here’s why (from page 164):

Biologists were warning the public that the old-growth forests, a delicate habitat that can’t be replaced, were disappearing at an alarming rate. The streams and rivers were silting and warming up, destroying the salmon runs and the entire ecosystem because of the runoff from clear-cut areas. The apex predator of these forests, the northern spotted owl, was endangered. When the apex predator is thriving, then so is the environment. But when the predator is faltering, biologists know that means the entire system is falling apart.

Most of the loggers didn’t understand the “canary in the coal mine” connection and thought the entire issue was about saving the owls, rather than their habitat. Because the loggers had been told to stop destroying the ancient forests before the forests were completely gone, they would lose their livelihoods sooner than if they kept cutting down trees until the entire ecosystem went extinct. Focusing only on their own livelihoods, they didn’t want to be told what to do, got angry, and took it out on the owls….

They didn’t understand—or they just chose not to—and they reminded me of the buffalo hunters of the nineteenth century determined to hunt down every last animal. They failed to see that they were going to have to find something else to do anyway after the last buffalo was gone.

We who run trails and treasure them can learn a lesson from this analogy. Our areas that are wild and free are a precious—and finite—resource. Nobody is making any more wilderness. So that’s why we must fight tooth and nail to preserve what we have, set aside more threatened areas, and ensure that encroachments from mineral rights, logging, etc., are not permitted.

 

 

More Exit 29, Ultrarunning, and Wilderness

Here’s another Milepost 29 post on the heels of yesterday’s post.  As I drove up Interstate 81 as part of my daily 60-mile commute (today was my day to drive the carpool) I reflected that every single drop of gasoline that we use is based upon extraction technology and is a truly finite resource.  Now this is not a new fact, but today for some reason, I truly examined that fact and it really sank in for the first time.

Once we extract that last drop, it’s gone.  There’s no more.

That fact alone should make all of us and especially our leaders shudder.  Truth is, it’s kinda stupid to continue to base our entire infrastructure and economy on fossil fuels with no Plan B, but that indeed is what we are doing.  One would think that our leaders would be calling for a full-court press, like the concerted heroic effort that placed a man on the moon in the 1960s.  But one would be wrong.

I can’t solve the energy problem, but the finiteness of extractable fossil fuels contrasts starkly with the non-consumability (within reason) of wilderness. 

Wilderness (and I use the word loosely here to mean any backcountry in which we run), unlike fossil fuels, is non-consumable in the sense that whether 1 person or 1000 people view a waterfall, the waterfall is not diminished.  Within reason, given the constraints of physics and geology--erosion, soil type, etc.--most trails can tolerate few or many folks walking/running there.  In other words, wilderness persists without diminution. 

Wilderness is relative in the degree to which it contrasts to everyday life.  The beauty of ultrarunning is that it CAN be part of everyday life, thus inextricably tying us to wilderness.

Let’s let Aldo Leopold have the last word on wilderness:

Ability to see the cultural value of  wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility.  The shallow-minded modern who has lost his rootage in the land assumes that he has already discovered what is important; it is such who prate of empires, political or economic, that will last a thousand years. It is only the scholar who appreciates that all history consists of successive excursions from a single starting point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values.  It is only the scholar who understands why the raw wilderness gives definition and meaning to the human enterprise.

 

The Peace of Wild Things...and Ultrarunning

Over at Hecate--who, seriously, is a witch--ran across a marvelous post that struck an ultra chord.

...as more and more kids grow up in urban areas, in families who don't belong to the class of people who can afford a trip to see the redwoods or wade along a deserted shore, or canoe down a river, it becomes increasingly important to help them find nature inside urban areas. Although large empty spaces are really wonderful, for many kids [and adults!] a rather small space will suffice. A community garden. A gated alley full of trees, and tomato plants, and pets. A park. A local Nature Center. A tree that becomes a special friend.

Or, we could take our kids and grandkids ultarunning.  Fitness aside, our doses of trail running are sweet therapy for our souls or psyches or whatever it is that makes us "us."

 

Wesley the Owl—and Ultrarunning

Just completed a wonderful book, Wesley the Owl, by Stacey O’Brien. It’s a true story about a young researcher at Cal Tech, Stacey, who fosters an injured barn owl from infancy thru his ultimate passing at the ripe old owl age of 19. She writes lovingly and compellingly of her lifelong relationship with Wesley. It’s full of love, science, spiritualism, and is just a delightful and memorable book.

Photo credit here.

You should go read it.

Here’s one example of the science part. Although I have a couple degrees in Biology, I never quite understood the Northern Spotted Owl issue from the Pacific northwest. Sure, I knew that logging was threatening this owl and I—of course—was on the side of the owl, thinking that those who favored logging were shortsighted and uninformed. But here’s why (from page 164):

Biologists were warning the public that the old-growth forests, a delicate habitat that can’t be replaced, were disappearing at an alarming rate. The streams and rivers were silting and warming up, destroying the salmon runs and the entire ecosystem because of the runoff from clear-cut areas. The apex predator of these forests, the northern spotted owl, was endangered. When the apex predator is thriving, then so is the environment. But when the predator is faltering, biologists know that means the entire system is falling apart.

Most of the loggers didn’t understand the “canary in the coal mine” connection and thought the entire issue was about saving the owls, rather than their habitat. Because the loggers had been told to stop destroying the ancient forests before the forests were completely gone, they would lose their livelihoods sooner than if they kept cutting down trees until the entire ecosystem went extinct. Focusing only on their own livelihoods, they didn’t want to be told what to do, got angry, and took it out on the owls….

They didn’t understand—or they just chose not to—and they reminded me of the buffalo hunters of the nineteenth century determined to hunt down every last animal. They failed to see that they were going to have to find something else to do anyway after the last buffalo was gone.

We who run trails and treasure them can learn a lesson from this analogy. Our areas that are wild and free are a precious—and finite—resource. Nobody is making any more wilderness. So that’s why we must fight tooth and nail to preserve what we have, set aside more threatened areas, and ensure that encroachments from mineral rights, logging, etc., are not permitted.

A Sand County Almanac

This is my inaugural post for this new blog, Mister Tristan.

Like a recurring pilgrimage, I have just completed my annual re-reading of the ecological classic, "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold. My initial reading was prompted some years ago by a college biology professor who recommended it. I became hooked, and for each of the last 30+ years, Leopold, who has been in his grave for 60years, speaks to me and touches me with new and different insights into the nature of things wild and free. I now see Leopold's writings in a way which he never anticipated, but would certainly have approved of--from an ultrarunner's slant.