Listening to the World with Mary Oliver

January 23, 2019January 24, 2019 Dr. Dean

John Muir, The Unruly Mystic

January 18, 2019January 19, 2019 Dr. Dean

Thoreau: 7 January 1852

January 17, 2019 Dr. Dean

“It appears to me that at a very early age—the mind of man—perhaps at the same time with his body, ceases to be elastic. His intellectual power becomes something defined —& limited. He does not think as expansively as he would stretch himself in his growing days—What was flexible sap hardens into heartwood and there is no further change. In the season of youth methinks man is capable of intellectual effort 8c performance which surpasses all rules 8c bounds—As the youth lays out his whole strength without fear or prudence 8c does not feel his limits. It is the transition from poetry to prose. The young man can run 8c leap—he has not learned exactly how far—he knows no limits—The grown man does not exceed his daily labor. He has no strength to waste.
17 January 1852, Journal 4: 265-66

How Beauty Is Making Scientists Rethink Evolution

January 10, 2019 Dr. Dean

Now, nearly 150 years later, a new generation of biologists is reviving Darwin’s neglected brainchild. Beauty, they say, does not have to be a proxy for health or advantageous genes. Sometimes beauty is the glorious but meaningless flowering of arbitrary preference. Animals simply find certain features — a blush of red, a feathered flourish — to be appealing. And that innate sense of beauty itself can become an engine of evolution, pushing animals toward aesthetic extremes. In other cases, certain environmental or physiological constraints steer an animal toward an aesthetic preference that has nothing to do with survival whatsoever.
New York Times

Arborists Have Cloned Ancient Redwoods From Their Massive Stumps

January 10, 2019 Dr. Dean

Yale Environment 360

A team of arborists has successfully cloned and grown saplings from the stumps of some of the world’s oldest and largest coast redwoods, some of which were 3,000 years old and measured 35 feet in diameter when they were cut down in the 19^thand 20^th centuries. Earlier this month, 75 of the cloned saplings were planted at the Presidio national park in San Francisco.
The initiative is run by the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, a nonprofit working to reestablish ancient redwood forests to help combat climate change. Coastal redwoods, which can grow an average 10 feet per year, sequester 250 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over their lives, compared to 1 ton for an average tree.

What are the natural features which make a township handsome?

January 10, 2019January 10, 2019 Dr. Dean

What are the natural features which make a township handsome? A river, with its waterfalls and meadows, a lake, a hill, a cliff or individual rocks, a forest, and ancient trees standing singly. Such things are beautiful; they have a high use which dollars and cents never represent. If the inhabitants of a town were wise, they would seek to preserve these things, though at a considerable expense; for such things educate far more than any hired teachers or preachers, or any at present recognized system of school education.
Thoreau, 3 January 1861 Journal XIV: 304

One Man’s Retreat From Civilization into the Woods Of Vermont

January 8, 2019January 8, 2019 Dr. Dean

(To The Best of Our Knowledge)

Howard Axelrod was accidentally blinded in one eye in a freak accident when he was in college. Disoriented and depressed, he retreated to an off-the-grid cabin in the Vermont wilderness. He stayed there, alone, for two years. His memoir about his period of renunciation, “The Point of Vanishing,” was named one of the top ten memoirs and a best book of the year.