The Jefferson Land Trust Natural History Society book club will meet on Monday, September 24, 3:30-5:00, to discuss The Wonder of Birds: What They Tell Us about Ourselves, the World, and a Better Future by Jim Robbins.  We will meet at the Ilahee Preserve just off of Prospect Avenue near Kala Point.

Author Jim Robbins believes that humans’ relationship to birds is different from our relationship to any other wild creatures.  They are found everywhere and are our most vital connection to nature.  Through various stories of interactions between birds and humans, Robbins illustrates just how valuable birds are to humans, both ecologically and spiritually.  This book brings birds from the background of our lives into the foreground, showing us that we must fight to save imperiled bird populations and the places they live.

When:             Monday, August 27, 2018

What time:     3:30-5:00

Where:            Ilahee Preserve

Todd McLeish, Return of the Sea Otter (2018)

Science journalist Todd McLeish journeyed along the Pacific Coast from California to Alaska to track the status, health, habits, personality, and viability of sea otters–-the appealing species unique to this coastline that was hunted to near extinction in the 18th and 19th centuries. Now, thanks to their protected status, sea otters are making a comeback in California, Washington, and Alaska. McLeish writes of the sea otters as a keystone species in coastal areas, providing homes for a wide array of sealife.  Their comeback is an indicator of the health of the coastal ecosystem along the Pacific Ocean.

On Monday, July 23, the JLT Natural History Society book club will meet to discuss Saving Tarboo Creek by Scott and Susan Leopold Freeman. We will meet at the Ilahee Preserve from 3:30-5:00.

This book is the story of the Freeman family’s efforts  to restore damaged Tarboo Creek on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula—to transform it from a drainage ditch into a stream that could again nurture salmon.  That story is interwoven with universal lessons about how we can all live more constructive, fulfilling, and natural lives by engaging with the land rather than exploiting it. In the proud tradition of Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, Saving Tarboo Creek is both a timely tribute to our land and a bold challenge to protect it.

On Monday, June 25, 2018, the Jefferson Land Trust Natural History Society book club will discuss John Steinbeck’s classic The Log from the Sea of Cortez.  We will meet at Ilahee Preserve at 3:30-5:00.

(Directions to Ilahee Preserve — From Highway 19 near Port Hadlock, turn on Prospect Avenue toward Kala Point.  Then turn right on Creek View Lane.  Preserve and parking lot are at end of dirt road.)

This book is a day-by-day account of the specimen-collecting expedition in the Gulf of California taken by John Steinbeck and his close friend, biologist Ed Ricketts in 1940.  The book is a  blend of science, philosophy, and high-spirited adventure. The boat used for this journey was the Western Flyer,  now being restored in the boatyard in Port Townsend.

On Monday, May 21, 2018, 3:30-5:00, the Natural History Society book club will meet at the Pink House next to the Carnegie Library in Port Townsend. (We are meeting early in May because the following weekend is Memorial Day.)

The book selection for May is Mozart’s Starling by Lyanda Lynn Haupt.

Author Lyanda Lynn Haupt is already familiar to book club readers, as we have read two of her previous books — Crow Planet and The Urban Bestiary.

In Mozart’s Starling Lyanda Haupt describes the bond between Mozart and one of the world’s most common, and most reviled, birds.  That story is intertwined with Haupt’s own experience of rescuing a baby starling and  then living with that bird.  Haupt is a birder and a conservationist who well recognizes that the starling is an unpopular, nonnative, invasive species, as she relates her and Mozart’s relationships with individual starlings.

The book is a blend of memoir, natural history, and biography.  Like other books by Haupt, Mozart’s Starling encourages readers to examine humans’ awareness of their place in the world.

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