On Monday, July 27, 2015, the JLT Natural History Book Club will discuss The Living by Annie Dillard. We will meet at the Ilahee Preserve from 3:30 to 5:00. Contact Jean at jltnatural@saveland.org to RSVP and for directions, if needed.

The Living is a historical fiction novel of the first settlers in Bellingham Bay. Annie Dillard became acquainted with the area while living on Lummi Island for five years in the mid 1970s.

The book begins in 1855 with a group of white settlers watching the ship sail away as they stand on the beach at the edge of the dark Northwest forest.  Annie Dillard introduces us to various people in that area during the last half of the nineteenth century—pioneer farmers and loggers, native peoples of the Northwest, Chinese immigrants, railroad men, men seeking gold in Alaska, women from Eastern cities raising children in the newly settled Northwest.  The precariousness of life in the wilderness is revealed as we learn of the many hardships of pioneer life in the Northwest.

The Natural History Society Book Club will meet on Monday, June 22, 3:30-5:00, at the Ilahee Preserve shelter, to discuss  A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold.

In A Sand County Almanc, a classic of the conservation movement,  Aldo Leopold sets forth his idea of a “land ethic,” a responsible relationship between people and the land they inhabit.  His foreword begins, “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.  These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.”

This 1949 non-fiction book’s influence is comparable to that of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Thoreau’s Walden. 

RSVP to Jean for directions at jltnatural@saveland.org

The Natural History Society Book Club will meet at 3:30-5:00 pm on Monday, May 25, to discuss Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World, by Kathleen Dean Moore.

(From the Back Cover)

With the finely honed skills of an essayist, the heightened sensibility of a naturalist, and the carefully reasoned mind of a philosopher, Kathleen Dean Moore examines our connections to what we hold most dear. In a quest for the metaphorical holdfast – the structures at the end of seaweed strands that attach to rocks with a grip that even ocean gales cannot rend – Moore seeks to understand that which affixes her firmly to family and place. In twenty-one elegant, probing essays, she meditates on connection and separation: the sense of brotherhood fostered by communal wolf howls; the inevitability of losing our children to their own lives; her own mischievousness as she takes candy from her unwitting students on Halloween; the sublimity of life and longing in the creatures of the sea; her agonizing decision when facing her father’s death. She is joyous, playful, and mournful. As Moore travels geographically – from the Oregon shores to Alaska – and philosophically, she leaves no doubt of her virtuosity and range.

RSVP to Pat for location and directions at JLTnatural@saveland.org.

The Natural History Society book club will meet at 3:30 pm on Monday, April 27 to discuss The Final Forest, by William Dietrich.

This book, first published in 1992 as The Final Forest: The Battle for the Last Great Trees of the Pacific Northwest, was updated and rereleased in 2010 as The Final Forest: Big Trees, Forks and the Pacific Northwest. Readers may choose either version.

For location and RSVPs, please contact Pat at jltnatural@saveland.org  

The local battle scene of this book’s subtitle is Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, but the conflict raged, and still rages, over the entire Pacific Northwest, Washington, D.C., Alaska, and other locales that face the dilemma of preserving natural resources versus exploiting them. Dietrich, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, presents in an easy-to-read narrative style the point of view of various participants in this war, from the logger whose way of life is threatened to a biologist concerned with saving the Northern spotted owl. No easy solutions to the struggle between the forest industry and environmentalists emerge from this book, but hopeful signs include the increasing awareness on the part of Forest Service personnel and the logging industry that careless, sometimes ruthless, exploitation of the remaining old growth forest is no longer feasible or even possible.  Before Forks, a small town on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, became famous as the location for Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight book series, it was the self-proclaimed “Logging Capital of the World” and ground zero in a regional conflict over the fate of old-growth forests. Since Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist William Dietrich first published The Final Forest in 1992, logging in Forks has given way to tourism, but even with its new fame, Forks is still a home to loggers and others who make their living from the surrounding forests. The new edition recounts how forest policy and practices have changed since the early 1990s and also tells us what has happened in Forks and where the actors who were so important to the timber wars are now.  

William Dietrich, a former science writer for the Seattle Times, is the author of Northwest Passage: The Great Columbia River and Natural Grace: The Charm, Wonder, and Lessons of Pacific Northwest Animals and Plants, as well as popular fiction.Winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award

The Natural History Society Book Club will meet at 3:30 – 5:00 pm on Monday, March 23, to discuss Rachel Carson’s books about the sea. Choose from The Sea Around Us, Under the Sea Wind, or The Edge of the Sea. Feel free to read any (or all!) of these books, then come and share your impressions, reactions, ideas, and questions with other book club members.

Rachel Carson (1907-1964) spent most of her professional life as a marine biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. By the late 1950s, she had written three lyrical, popular books about the sea, including the best-selling The Sea Around Us, and had become one of the most respected science writers in America.

The Sea Around Us. 

This classic work remains as fresh today as when it first appeared. Carson’s writing teems with stunning, memorable images–the newly formed Earth cooling beneath an endlessly overcast sky; the centuries of nonstop rain that created the oceans; giant squids battling sperm whales hundreds of fathoms below the surface; and incredibly powerful tides moving 100 billion tons of water daily in the Bay of Fundy. Quite simply, she captures the mystery and allure of the ocean with a compelling blend of imagination and expertise.

Under the Sea Wind

In her first book, Rachel Carson tells the story of the sea creatures and birds that dwell in and around the waters along North America’s eastern coast—and the delicately balanced ecosystem that sustains them. Following the life cycles of a pair of sanderlings, a mackerel, and an eel, Carson gracefully weaves scientific observation with imaginative prose to educate and inspire, creating one of the finest wildlife narratives in American literature.

The Edge of the Sea

“The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place.” A book to be read for pleasure as well as a practical identification guide, The Edge of the Sea introduces a world of teeming life where the sea meets the land. A new generation of readers is discovering why Rachel Carson’s books have become cornerstones of the environmental and conservation movements.

Contact Pat at jltnatural@saveland.org for location and directions.