Near famous: ornithologist Alexander Wilson

For the past few weeks, my morning drive to work has taken me right by a Wilson's Snipe. The small shore bird, with its pebbly tan body and white chest and incredibly long beak, is always perched on a fence rail overlooking a damp field.

The beak makes the bird.

I looked the bird up and learned that these birds are shy, nest in well-hidden spots, use their long beak to probe soft earth for insects and worms, and have a special courtship flight that involves flying high in circles then making shallow dives to produce a distinctive noise. And, I learned they were named for Alexander Wilson, a man who's considered the greatest American ornithologist after John James Audubon, but who is definitely not a household name.

Wilson was born in 1766 in Scotland and started off on a weaving apprenticeship, though soon turned to writing poetry (some that was politically charged, most that was not good) and walking the countryside. After failing in writing and in love, he journeyed to America in 1794, settling near Philadelphia.

He began working as a schoolteacher, then in 1801, left his job over a second love affair gone wrong - this time with a married woman. He started teaching again in Gray's Ferry, Penn., and lived down the street from naturalist William Bartram. 

At Bartram's urging, Wilson decided to produce a collection of drawings of birds. He spent much time outside, alone, once journeying from Gray's Ferry to Niagara Falls. In 1806, he took a job at Roe's Cyclopedia and studied and drew birds in his spare time. He continued with his journeys through the forests, and in 1808, he published his first volume of ornithology, which included his drawings and notes on the behaviors and habitats of the birds.

He continued to travel, trying to garner subscribers for his volumes on ornithology, hitting towns from Maine to Georgia. At one point in February, he decided to take a small skiff down the Ohio River for 720 miles, floating to Cincinnati. By the end, his hands were stiff and unfeeling. He later rode through the thick swamps from Lexington to Nashville, battling dysentery and forests so thick there was barely the light of day.

He went on to publish his volumes, gaining national and international recognition. He took a final long journey north in late 1812, saying he was devoted to finishing his work, even if it killed him, which seemed to be prophetic as he died of dysenterry in 1813.

I love these stories of American naturalists. I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe because I enjoy the outdoors, and like to imagine what it would've been like to walk through a land where much of what you saw was still unnamed. Maybe because they're the ultimate adventurers, risking their lives and forgoing a comfortable existence in the effort of identifying the plants and animals around them. 

Maybe because, in a very small way, it reminds me a bit of writing. Setting off into the unknown. Not exactly sure of what you'll find. Going along for the journey anyway.

Hopefully writing won't kill me. Sometimes, especially in the middle of first drafts or tenth revisions, I wonder. But I do it anyway. And I know I'll discover something along the way.

__________

resources: wilsonsociety.org | xroads.virginia.edu

American Ornithology by Alexander Wilson | portrait of Alexander Wilson attributed to Thomas Sully

The Super Smart Crow

For a long time, I rolled my eyes at crows. They were just big black birds that screeched and cawed and messed with other birds' nests. But now I know better.

Crows are smart in lots of ways, with problem-solving skills that rival those of a young child (see my earlier post). One example of their smarts is their use of tools.

Almost anything can be a tool in a crow's beak. They even take advantage of cars, dropping hard-to-crack nuts at strategic spots on roads. Cars roll over the nuts, popping them open and saving the crow a lot of work.

New Caledonian crows are the only animal (besides us people) that are known to make hooks in the wild. They pull off a thin branch, then remove small bits of wood near the the joint that had connected the branch to the tree or bush. The resulting hook can then be used to forage for bugs.

In experiments, these crows quickly and instinctively fashion hooks out of wire to do things like lift a tiny pail of meat from a clear plastic tube. In one example, two crows were presented with a hooked wire and a straight wire. One crow immediately grabbed the hooked wire, which was needed to get a tiny pail with food from a tube. But then the second crow bent the straight wire, making a hook to get the food. Neither crow had seen wire before.

New Caledonian crows can also use tools to get other tools, completing complex series of tasks to get to their final goal. In the video below, a crow completes eight distinct steps to get to his treat.

I'm thinking about conducting my own unscientific experiment at my home. Maybe I'll set up a platform with hard-to-get food and a few thin wires. If I can get a few crows to stop by, I'll sit back and watch what they do. The crows around here aren't quite as clever as those New Caledonian crows. But they're still smart. And they might just teach me something in the process.

____

 pixabay.com

Accomplishment No. 1: Not Giving Up

A few years ago, I was lucky enough to hear author Ron Rash speak. With his easy Southern drawl and self-effacing humor, he described how he came to be a writer. I don't remember all the details, just this idea of him sitting in his house - maybe even the bathroom? - and writing and writing away, one story after another, all of it junk, none of it good. Here he was, trying to make a career out of something he, in his own words, couldn't even do well. And yet for the life of him, he couldn't quit.

Obviously, Rash, who has since written the New York Times bestselling novel Serena, along with other award winning novels and collections of stories and poems, stuck with it.  Kept going. And slowly, slowly, his writing became something better than good - it became something great.

It was exactly what I needed to hear. My own writing felt cumbersome and sloppy, unlikely to get me anywhere, and yet impossible to stop. But it was all too easy to entertain the idea of quitting. Who was I to chain myself to this thing that might never produce anything of worth, anything even good?

Every time I hear another author's story, it helps me remember that we all start somewhere, with the hint of an idea and a laptop or pad of paper, trying to scribble down a story, no idea of whether we'll actually succeed.

That idea is driven home in Rash's answer to the question of what was his proudest achievement to date in an interview with Tinge Magazine: 

"That I didn't give up, that I had enough faith in myself to keep writing when I was getting rejection slip after rejection slip. That's part of the deal. Too many writers who are good give up too quickly."

See that tree? A bristlecone pine. The oldest living single organism known. And a good image of persistence.

And for those of us who have been working away for years, still no luck finding an agent or publishing a book or selling a story, his reminder in that same interview that immediate success isn't always ideal might be just as helpful:

And see this path? This is what writing often feels like to me. A curvy trail through thick woods. Uncertainty at every step. And yet, you keep moving forward.

"I feel very lucky that what attention has come to me has come after thirty years of writing. It's often unhealthy for young writers to get a lot of attention. Too many distractions, and they may become too easily satisfied with the level of their work."

And finally, my favorite might just be his advice to writers: 

"Learn your craft, be patient, and - I believe this, although there are a few exceptions - if your work is good, somebody's going to notice. It may take a while. This is easy for me to say since, obviously, I have a New York publisher and my work is getting attention now, but often young writers worry too much about that. It's only human to want to break in and get the acclaim, but the main energy has to go into becoming a better writer."

Ahhh. Good words from a wise, writerly soul. Thanks, Ron Rash, for sharing your encouraging advice. And for sticking with writing yourself.

__________

Bristlecone pine photo: www.loc.gov

All quotes from Ron Rash, Tinge Magazine, Spring 2012

Hello, my blood

I nicked my finger on a knife

That day before dinner

and while the toddler howled and the dog whined

and peas boiled over and pizza burned,

I watched it:

thin red liquid line.

A few drops of blood.

Millions of erythrocytes – red blood cells.

A staggering loss

except that, at the same moment, 25 trillion red blood cells (minus these few million)

were speeding through my body.

Small disks without a brain or a powerhouse

because there simply isn’t room.

Not when you have a single job: pack yourself with oxygen.

One small red blood cell has 250 million molecules of hemoglobin clasping 1 billion molecules of oxygen.

They hold tight through arteries and blood vessels, until the capillaries, where oxygen – the unsocial, dissociative molecule it is – checks out, goes its own way, to where it’s actually needed.

Red blood cells are designed to not even use the oxygen they carry on their journey.

The body does not like to waste.

These millions of escapee cells, loosed by the slip of my knife will be quickly replaced.

Perhaps death to open air is preferred to being eaten by a phagocytic cell, which would’ve happened anyway after three or four months of constant service – clock in when you’re born and out at your death.

But it wasn’t just red blood cells lost in my carelessness:

there was water

and salts and proteins and hormones and wastes.

And there were the fighters,

those white blood cells always on patrol for enemies, ready to destroy.

Fingers crossed and prayers said they will only ever identify the

real enemies

otherwise, they might just take my whole ship down.

The dog howled again

and I picked up the toddler and

stuck my finger in my mouth

quelling the bleeding (knowing that platelets and fibrin were already doing their sticky work to plug the slender cut)

tasting that metallic, iron flavor

that is the cornerstone

of my life.

I turned off the peas, finger still in mouth,

then dumped the pizza into the trash

and called

for takeout.

__________

commonfund.nih.gov

nsf.gov, quantitative light imaging gallery

Ancient Art

I stood at the base of the red rock wall and stared at the 2,000-year-old artwork. And prompted by a question on an informational sign, I couldn't help wonder - Who were these artists?

The art I was looking at is thought to be from the Barrier Canyon Culture, and was painted on or etched into the rock at least two thousand years ago. These people were hunters and gatherers, who used stone and bone tools. They didn't have pottery, but they did have art.

Their pictures are breathtaking - strange shapes partway up the rock wall that look like people, true-to-size, with broad shoulders and tapered midsections. Some have dots or "crowns" above their heads. There are animals, too, and rows of lines, as though something was being counted or figured.

The pictures might represent a death or transformation into a supernatural or animal form; the animals might be spirit helpers to aid a shaman's journey into the beyond or the underworld. There's a lot we don't know.

But looking at this art, I couldn't help thinking about these artists, who may have had to travel long distances through the harsh canyon environment, all to make their pictures. What drove them to paint or etch? Were they were chosen or mentored or just couldn't help creating? Were they supported by the rest of the people, with food and other supplies? 

We'll probably never know. But there at the base of the canyon wall, with blue sky overhead and red rock to all sides, I felt grateful for these ancient artists. For they helped me to remember one thing that's still true: art is central to the human experience, to the human soul.

Gambel's Oak

You’ve likely walked by these scraggly trees, lichen nestled in the knobs and ridges of their dark bark. They’re the last trees to sprout green leaves in spring, forming a low, tight canopy overhead. By autumn, their leaves turn orange, complementing the golden aspens. And finally, as winter settles in, tangles of black branches are exposed, giving our woods an otherworldly feel. 

They go by many names: scrub oak, oak brush, white oak. Quercus gambelii, formally. Which in turn is shortened into their common name: Gambel oaks. 

That is the name that caught my attention, for it points back to a budding naturalist whose own life was cut short by a twist of ill fate. A twist not unlike the turning branches of the tree itself.

William Gambel was born near Philadelphia in 1823 to an impoverished Irish family; his father died when he was nine. At age 16, he joined naturalist Thomas Nuttall on a collecting trip in North Carolina. The trip sparked an interest in the world around him, and a few years later, Gambel set off for California, crossing the country by foot and observing plants and birds and other animals along the way. He was 18 years old.

He collected along the California coast and eventually returned to the east coast, became a physician and married, then decided to head back to California to begin his medical career – after all, it was 1849 and the Gold Rush was on. He made a plan with his wife: he’d establish his practice, then she would travel out to meet him. And finally, he began the long journey west with a small group of settlers for company.

But their pace was a bit quick for his liking: after all, there were so many species to observe and record. So Gambel made a fateful decision to join a slower-moving group. It would give him more time to collect samples. It would also turn out to be his demise.

The group was excruciatingly slow.  They didn’t make it to Nevada until the end of fall, and worry built as they realized winter was at hand. They were in bad shape.  The long autumn months had been dry.  Most of their cattle and horses had been lost.  But with no motel to check into, they pushed forward. They hit the eastern edge of the Sierras after the first snowfall and were certain they could make it no further. But onward they went. 

Somehow Gambel and a few others survived the treacherous mountains, reaching a gold-mining camp on the Yuba River.  But this was not the end to their struggles. For a typhoid epidemic had taken hold, working its way through the miners. Gambel, the good doctor that he was, stopped to help the sick. But his efforts were for naught as he soon caught typhoid himself and died. He was 26 years old.

His name lives on, in the scrub oak as well as Gambel’s Quail, mountain chickadee and a genus of lizard. It’s no wonder that, on early morning or late evening walks through stands of these low, twisted trees, I can’t help but imagine what it was like so many years ago, when so much land had yet to be explored, when every journey carried immense risk, and when so-called "small" decisions had the power to lead to life or to death. 

____

Richard G. Beidleman | California’s Frontier Naturalists

Killing the Butterfly

I love reading about how other authors write. How they start with the hint of an idea, and slowly, sometimes tortuously, shape it into a book. Often, it seems, there's magic involved. And yet the biggest part is always the sitting down and doing it.

Below, are thoughts on writing from novelist Ann Patchett, just a snippet from an incredible article. All quotes are from Patchett’s “This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage.”

Novelist Ann Patchett describes the process of thinking up a novel as the happiest time in her writing life. This yet-to-be-written book, though not a word has been set down on paper, is beautiful and piercing, the best novel yet.

And then, when she can no longer put off the actual writing, she sits down to write. And that's where it all falls apart.

“… I reach up and pluck the butterfly from the air. I take it from the region of my head and press it down against my desk, and there, with my own hand, I kill it.

It’s not that I want to kill it, but it’s the only way I can get something that is so three-dimensional onto the flat page. Just to make sure the job is done, I stick it into place with a pin. Imagine running over a butterfly with an SUV. Everything that was beautiful about this living thing – all the color, the light and movement – is gone. What I’m left with is the dry husk of my friend, the broken body chipped, dismantled and poorly reassembled. Dead. That is my book.”

This idea resonates with me completely. And, it’s been helpful. Because for awhile, when I experienced my inability to take a fluttering idea and portray it well on the page, I thought I had utterly failed. And I questioned whether I should forge on.

Maybe my idea wasn’t so great to begin with. Maybe my book wasn't the one I really wanted to write. Maybe I was never meant to write in the first place.

Patchett goes on to say that this feeling of failure can be a stopping point for many of writers. But it shouldn’t be. She herself still hasn’t figured out how to put that imagined idea down on paper without feeling as though it died in the process. But here’s what she has learned:

"I did, however, learn how to weather the death, and I learned how to forgive myself for it. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can’t write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing."

Because, she goes on to say, there is something just she has to say. And because through the process, she can “touch the hem of the gown that is art itself.”

Phew. Exactly the sort of encouragement I need to hear when I set out on a new project, and feel that my poor excuse at writing merely kills off ideas, instead of giving life to them. And yet, as the “death” of a caterpillar results in the “birth” of a butterfly, it's our job to travel through all of these stages.

________

pixabay.com

Apoptosis

Cells are programmed to do lots of things... including to die. Below is a tribute to apoptosis, the technical term for self-directed cell death.

Every day, bits of me

Are dying.

I don’t mean figuratively – like lost

Dreams, or hopes, or ideals –

This is not the scenario of a broken winged bird that cannot fly.

Rather, bits of me, quite literally, are dying. Constantly.

Have died every second of every day. 

Will keep dying. On purpose. As planned. For the good of the whole.

Every cell in my body

has a death switch

a big red button, or rather, a miniscule receptor

just waiting for the signal

to kill itself.

When the signal comes, whether before breakfast or after a bath, in the middle of a good movie or under a star-filled sky,

my cell is ready.

My cell already holds all of the components of self warfare.

Fifteen types of enzymes on pause, just waiting to do what they were created for.

And when it’s time, they leap to attention

soldiers on the front lines.

Some, like cytochrome C, are first used in life

Until the switch is flipped, and they become agents of death:

Chopping up DNA

Tearing apart organelles

Fragmenting bits of life

No mercy, no pause, no second guessing.

My chosen cell shrinks and blebs, its parts packaged neatly

In vesicles then left for the scavengers

Which engulf and digest, leaving

No trace behind.

The signal to die can come from a neighbor

Or from inside the cell itself:

If a cell’s DNA is damaged beyond repair, or its proteins have misfolded so much, too much,

Then the cell gives

itself

the signal.

Don’t cry over the death switch for it is

vital to life.

Diseased cells, infected cells, damaged cells,

Cells at the end of their functional life spans –

It would do no good for any of these to let go and simply deteriorate,

Leaking their bits of life all around:

Caustic digestive enzymes

Myriad strange particles.

Anyway, cell death has made me who I am: Without it, my fingers would still be webbed together

Flippers not hands.

Strangely, the death switch is most like a brake.

When the cell is living, the death switch is halting the process of dying.

Which means death is the default.

To be or not to be?

Each cell in my body must ask itself this question every day.

If the answer is not to be, then the work of apoptosis

Or falling off

Or death

Begins.

And life

Follows.

Thirsty crows and true fables

Remember Aesop's fable about the thirsty crow? The one that finds a half-filled glass of water, but isn't able to reach it's beak down into the glass to drink. Not to be discouraged, the crow gathers rocks and stones, dropping them into the glass and raising the level of water, until at last, it's able quench its thirst.

I read the fable at some point, probably in English class, and always thought it was a lesson in persistence and creative thinking. I didn't know it was a real phenomenon.

But it is. When presented with a similar situation - this time, with a bit of meat on a styrofoam disk floating in a tube of water for extra motivation - New Caledonian crows  drop in rocks to raise the water level until they can reach the meat.

Through a range of challenges, the crows prove their causal thinking skills. If researchers set out heavy stones and "imposter" styrofoam stones, the crows preferentially choose the the heavy stones that will raise the water level. And if crows are presented with two tubes with food, but one with an already high water level and the other with a low water level, they go first to the tube with higher water.

Crows are smart. Their intelligence rivals that of dolphins and orangutans, and is up there with that of young children.

I used to think of crows as pests. After all, they made a mess at dumpsters and ate Robin eggs and blared their loud "caws" in nearby trees. But now, when I see a crow, I watch carefully to see what it's going to do next. Because it just might be something really interesting.

____

some info from: Jelbert SA, Taylor AH, Cheke LG, Clayton NS, Gray RD (2014) Using the Aesop's Fable Paradigm to Investigate Causal Understanding of Water Displacement by New Caledonian Crows.

Life that glows

As a child, I loved watching fireflies light up the dark corners of our backyard. But I never thought to ask how a little bug could make it's very own light. 

Photo by Smoken Mirror on Foter.com

It turns out that making light all comes down to energy and some special molecules (luciferin, and the enzyme luciferase). Those words both come from the Latin "lucifer" or "lightbringer." You might recognize "Lucifer" from the Bible - he was the angel who wanted to be more powerful than God and ended up falling from heaven to hell.

But back to glowing things (which also include certain mushrooms and marine creatures): the luciferin molecule uses energy to react with oxygen, and the luciferase enzyme speeds it all up. Through the reaction, electrons in the luciferin molecule are excited, or have a little more energy than normal. When the electrons relax and go back to their normal state, that extra energy is released as light.

Amazingly, this whole process of bioluminescence is super efficient: most of the energy (up to 80 or 90 percent) is transformed into light. An incandescent lightbulb, by comparison, transforms less than 5 percent of the energy it receives into light (90 percent turns into heat), while LEDs come in at 20 percent. So while a lightbulb gets warm when it glows, fireflies and mushrooms do not.

For fireflies, the light can help attract mates and show predators they don't taste good. For mushrooms, a recent experiment showed the light may help attract insects, which then help spread the mushroom's spores.

Unfortunately for me, there's nothing glowing in the high rockies - I'll just have to Youtube glowing creatures to get my bioluminescence fix. Unless I can grow these myself...

______

image credits: Photo by Smoken Mirror on Foter.com