The names of things

Anenome patens, we call it Pasque Flower, a name that seemed just right this year, because I took this photo on Easter Sunday.

Like a lot of men, I often find myself asking forgiveness of the woman who puts up with me. What I have noticed lately with my wife is that when I am too obtuse to realize I have goofed up, she gives me a look that lets me know. Hard to describe, but it’s one of those graceful things a woman seems able to manifest without a lot of forethought.

Yesterday morning Karen joined me on a morning walk in the city and we stopped to listen to a junco singing from the top of a spruce tree. She said something about all the “fir trees” in the neighbourhood. Rather than outright correct her, I thought I would be more gentle, skilful, even a bit inclusive, and ponder aloud, “Odd, isn’t it that we have hardly any actual fir trees in the whole city, and spruce trees everywhere but we still call them ‘fir’. Hmmph. Strange.”

Turning to Karen I saw her face flash from incredulity to the Buddha who suffers fools inclined to say one too many times that a paddle and an oar are two different things. I opened my mouth to make apologetic noises but was stopped by another look.

“Don’t even bother,” the look said. And so I didn’t.

Then spent the rest of the day wondering why the names of things matter to me, apart from their obvious utility as merit badges for the know it all and convenient handles for communication. Why not just have direct, unmediated experiences of each thing in its thingness, each being in its (inter)beingness? Why let any “spruce” or “fir” intervene between our apprehension and the green cone of branching, prickly matter shooting up from the lawn?

Naming seems like the most human of acts. Yes, dolphins can recognize one another by unique signature whistles, but can they refer to one another by repeating that whistle? Other animals use non-linguistic communication to recognize their own offspring of course, but naming allows more than recognition; it allows for reference. A name makes it easy for me to tell you about a subject that is neither you nor I.

Pasque flower again next to a piece of limestone sprinked with lichens I cannot name though the yellow one is likely a Xanthoria

We have no way of knowing whether any other animal can stick a referent on something and use it in language, but it seems unlikely. Interesting too that in Creation myths, it’s usually man and not God or nature that does the naming of the myriad forms. There is a built-in arrogance there, and assumption of primacy or dominion, but perhaps it is not unfounded. For a primate with very dependant offspring travelling in extended family clans, the capacity to use words to differentiate and tag the differences must have been a tremendously helpful advantage. A few hundred generations later, however, these naming hominids have taken the adaptation to the hubristic extremes now threatening the planet’s life systems.

Even as we homogenize the earth with the bland over-culture of our desires writ large, we are losing the names of the things. Entire indigenous languages have been extinguished and degraded so that the names of places and creatures most intimately christened by human tongues are lost to our wisdom. Prairie school children not very long ago would learn the names of several birds and wildflowers as part of the curriculum, but that is gone. A fifth-grader today can recognize and name twenty corporate logos, but would be unable to put a tag on the red-breasted bird yanking worms from his front lawn.

Science and faith seem to agree that we live in a relational cosmos, a universe where things are intimately interconnected and wonderfully complex. Naming helps us to participate consciously in and to make some sense of that relationality. Even revel in it if we choose. But it does something else too that could perhaps help us renew our relationships, the oh so crucial ones that might keep us from destroying the earth. In traditional narratives of romance between two people or religious narratives of blessing between Creator and created, the saying of a name is a deep expression of love.

In our hearts we understand that we can only love what we know and only know what we can distinguish within the many forms that surround us. To love a child is certainly to love all children, but paradoxically, to love a child is also to recognize that child as unique, to say its name.

I may never be privileged to see creation from the mystic’s or the quantum physicist’s perch and know that all is truly united in a singular flow of matter and energy, despite the illusory spin of time and space. Like most people, I am caught in an ego that sees itself as real and distinct and looks outward on a lot of other creatures that seem very real and distinct too. I confess to enjoying the distinctions and am endlessly curious to know more of what it is that makes one being a little bit different from another.


this time of year on the prairie, every willow that looks like this is a "Pussy Willow" and maybe that is name enough

Issues on grassland I am following

Grasslands National Park, East Block
I did a fifteen minute radio interview the other day with Michael Short who does an outdoors program played by AM radio all over Alberta. We were talking about the Tax Recovery Lands issue in Alberta, where the Stelmach government seems determined to find a way to hand thousands of acres of ancient grasslands over to those who would like to plough it. (The program ran on April 17, but you can listen to the interview here. Go to the 6:50 point in the show and you should find the interview. It is a bit tricky though, because there seems to be an overlay of some other interview and every second time you click on the zone where my interview is (approx 6:50 to 20:26) you get the other interview. Click again and you should find the TRL discussion.)

But that is only one attack on prairie wildness that has come to my attention in recent days. Last week there was an editorial published in both the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix and the Western Producer, written by the Reeve of Churchbridge, arguing that in fact destroying wetlands and ploughing most of the prairie under has brought more wildlife to the countryside. Take a look at it here and then keep your eyes out for a letter sent in response by Lorne Scott, Reeve of Indian Head.

Finally, the day before yesterday, I receieved word that the National Energy Board is considering a new gas pipeline that will be built right across some of the last large pieces of native grass in the province. If you have a moment look at some of these documents:

1.Draft Scope of Factors for the Environmental Assessment
2. Project description prepared for the NEB
3.NEB’s notice of public hearing on the project.

Does it cross native grassland? Here is what the project description document says:

Within Saskatchewan, habitat of high potential for listed species and other species of management concern includes native prairie and shrub/treed habitats, wetlands, riparian systems and valleys, and coulees. Land traversed and in the vicinity of the proposed development within Alberta is cultivated and is therefore of lesser value to listed species.

Worrisome. The doc also says on page 30 that the pipeline goes through Wildlife Habitat Protection Act lands (which begs the question of what the Sask Environment people are doing or not doing). Pipelines leave a big scar and will undoubtedly introduce weeds that will degrade the prairie.

With all of the cultivated cropland we have in this province they should be able to find a route through land that has already been destroyed!!

I see nothing in these documents about mitigation. Can they rip up miles and miles of native grassland, displace native species of plants, ruin habitat for species at risk, introduce invasive species, and then do nothing to make up for the loss? Don't they have to do some native grassland restoration work on equivalent acres they purchase or at the very least purchase conservation easements on other pieces of native grass that match the amount they destroy?

We are going to need Saskatchewan people to speak up at the hearings this fall, request intervenor status if they can (deadline is May 17) and ask the hard questions.

Photo Post: Burning Bluestem, 2011

Four of us (Sylvie, Rob, Karen and I) headed up onto the prairie at Cherry Lake this past Sunday to do another spring burn.


We like to do it in spring when there is still enough snow on the ground to protect the woods and give us options for control. In most of these shots you can see that our grassland is never far from woodland, which is typical for prairie in the Aspen Parkland Ecoregion.


This year we bought a fancy drip-torch to light fires. Fire boss Rob let me hold it long enough so I could look important in a photo.


But this is what the unskilled labour was doing most of the time--sweeping out the fire edges once we had burned as far as we wanted to. (In a better photo you'd be able to see how keen Karen was at this job because I don't let her do it at home very often.)


I just like this shot Karen took.


This is what it looked like when we were done. We were burning mostly Little Bluestem grass and brome at the base of our biggest, south-facing slopes, stopping the fire when it rose up to the more xeric grasses at mid-slope.


The whole time we were working, there was a kettle of red-tailed hawks circling just south of the column of smoke rising from our valley. The image above shows how they appeared to the naked eye--there were fourteen in all.


Here is a closer look with the telephoto lens. In the bottom left corner you can see that one of them is a Turkey Vulture.


They stayed for hours in roughly the same piece of sky, leading us to wonder if they had some instinctive attraction to burning grassland or whether there were warm updrafts from the fire that were fun to ride.


One, a typical Borealis Red-tailed Hawk, wheeled close enough for this shot.


Not Dick van Dyke, but this sweep loves the soot and the smoke of a prairie fire and the thought of crocuses rising just below the ashes.

Landscape of the Soul: Courtney Milne

image by Courtney Milne, from his Pool of Possibilities

Last night, in a theatre with 100 other people, I was immersed in a symphony of light, shadow, colour, movement, and song that achieved what the best of human art aspires to: a reflecting back to the Creation something of its own beauty. The late eco-theolgian Thomas Berry often said that "human consciousness is the universe reflecting back on itself" and that our creativity in art and science is the Cosmos celebrating itself in conscious awareness.

In his life and death, Courtney Milne, one of the prairie's great artists and mystics, joined in that Cosmic celebration more than anyone I know. Courtney died just last August, leaving us with his photographs and wisdom to accompany us on our own creative paths. Seeing his work again last night on a large screen in a multi-media presentation, illumined by a choir singing poems to life and to the earth, was incredibly moving. All of us gathered there could feel it, our hard edges blurring just a bit, a flow of energies we don't often acknowledge binding us together in a shared experience that seemed, for lack of any better word, liturgical.

The choir, focussed, balanced, and singing and moving with great mindfulness and accord, was conducted by Jean-Marie Kent, a visiting professor at the University of Regina. The music she selected worked seamlessly with the dance of Courtney's imagery put together by Gerald Saul and David Gerhard. A luminous spirit shone through the whole experience, a spirit well familiar to those who knew Courtney and his work.


image by Courtney Milne, from his Pool of Possibilities

The Mendell Art Gallery is putting together a solo exhibition of Courtney's Pool of Possibility work this summer. Perhaps there will be a way to recreate something from last night's performance at the show's opening.

To learn more about Courtney's most recent work, the beauty he found in his own backyard and the wisdom it engendered in his heart, please visit the Poolof Possibilities website. Courtney's partner Sherrill Miller maintains the site, which I recommend to anyone looking to find creativity, insight, and soulfulness in their days.

During the last year of his life, Courtney gave me a year's subscription to an e-calendar of his poolside wisdom and daily photographs. Spending a few minutes each day with Courtney at the Pool of Possibilities always brought me down to earth, reminding me I have a body and a soul and some responsibilities that go along with them.


image by Courtney Milne, from his Pool of Possibilities

In Defence of Alberta's TRL Land

Some of the grassland in Alberta's TRL land could look like this if the deal goes through

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about the Alberta government giving 130 square miles of the province's Crown native grassland to two rural counties. These "Tax Recovery Lands" are part of Alberta's natural heritage and for thousands of years have supported rich ecological communities characteristic of the northern Great Plains. Communities that are among the most endangered on the continent.

In the past few weeks, Alberta conservation organizations have been issuing news releases, sending letters and emails, and pressuring the government to come to its senses and stop the giveaway scheme. And a scheme it is, for the motive behind this move is both political and tactical. The Stelmach government in Alberta is turning up some of the worst popularity figures of any Conservative government in that one-party province's history. They are hoping that giving land away to rural counties will win them back some support. But buying votes may not be the primary purpose of the giveaway.

It is not a coincidence that this strategy of giving away TRL came up shortly after their efforts to sell a large piece of native grassland in the region were thwarted by a public outcry. The land was to be converted to irrigated potato crops for a potato chip corporation. "Potatogate" people called it because the Stelmach government came under sharp criticism for proposing the sale. Conservationists now believe that this TRL deal is an attempt to out-manoever opposition by passing the land into the hands of counties who only answer to their local rural ratepayers and will do what they like with the land--sell it to the highest bidder and let them turn it into centre-pivot irrigation farmland.
If this is not what is happening, then why won't the Alberta Government come clean and declare exactly what pieces of land will receive some kind of protection and what pieces will be sold without any restrictions? Why won't they tell their citizens whether any environmental assessment has been done on the TRL lands that are included in the deal? With no disclosure, no transparency, and no consultation, can anyone fault us for suggesting that something nefarious is going on here?

Adding to the breach of public trust, there is the issue of the Alberta's "South Saskatchewan Land Use Framework," which the government says will ensure “a healthy economy supported by our land and natural resources; healthy ecosystems and environment; and people-friendly communities with ample recreational and cultural opportunities”.

Albertans were promised that this would be in place for effective land management. But in the middle of the process the government decides unilaterally to just hand off 130 square miles of grasslands vital to prairie biodiversity. Land use plans full of empty promises and motherhood statements about healthy ecosystems will not do much for the Sprague's Pipits or pronghorns who find the landscape has been turned into irrigated cropland.

The bottom line is that the Alberta Government is putting at risk an enormous piece of prairie habitat and the many plants and animals that depend on it. The stretch of grassland threatened by this deal is roughly the same size as the Columbia Icefields and larger than Elk Island National Park.

Here is a map an Alberta friend sent me showing (in bright green) the sections that are being given over to the counties.



No matter where you live, I encourage you to let the Alberta Government know what you think about this boondoggle:

Write a letter or email to the Premier and to his Minister of Sustainable Resource Development. Here are the addresses:

The Hon. Ed Stelmach
Premier of Alberta
Room 307, Legislature Building
10800 – 97th Avenue
Edmonton, AB T5K 2B6
Email: premier@gov.ab.ca

Honourable Mel Knight
Minister of Sustainable Resource Development
Alberta Legislature Building
10800 – 97 Avenue
Edmonton, AB
T5K 2B6
Phone: 780 415-4815
Email: srd.minister@gov.ab.ca

Moose on the erstwhile prairie

Bryan Schlosser, Regina Leader-Post

While most of our original prairie ecology is in rapid retreat, woodland creatures have been moving out onto the plains for many decades, taking advantage of habitat they find in farmyards and prairie towns. The white-tailed deer may have been the first to come out onto the prairie and find it hospitable. The raccoon, three species of arboreal squirrels, and the red fox have followed. Strangest of all, over the last five to ten years, moose have joined the mix of forest fauna now living on the erstwhile prairie. The highway from Saskatoon to Regina now has several moose-crossing signs.



You see moose in cropland, in farm shelterbelts, and on the edge of human settlements wherever there is enough cover for them to get by. Oddly enough, though, the moose seem to avoid the natural landscapes on the prairie--whether it is open grassland or wooded coulees. At Cherry Lake, where our land joins onto several thousand acres of poplar and ash-filled ravines, creeks, lakes, and upland prairie, we have seen only one moose in our six years. (It was last spring. As we crossed the creek in the bottomland, my daughter Maia and I heard a loud crashing sound. I looked up in time to get a quick glimpse of a moose's hind end heading east and turning back I could just make out the last of Maia disappearing to the west.)

And so it was not surprising when moose started coming into the city of Regina, attracted to the wooded landscapes in Wascana Park. Every winter several are spotted in Wascana Centre and it has been a treat seeing their spoor when we go for a ski or a walk in the park.

A week ago, Karen and I walked around Wascana lake. We saw a couple of white-tailed jack rabbits (a true prairie species now far more common in the city than in the surrounding land which is cropped so intensively there is not enough cover for a jack to survive).

Then we spotted a red fox crossing the ice to Spruce Island in broad daylight.


At several spots along the shore of the lake we found moose droppings. Most were between the shore and Spruce Island, but the largest pile was directly in front of the Legislative Building, though I doubt the moose was editorializing.

A young man I know who is a waiter at The Willows Restaurant in the park says that they often see two moose crossing the ice toward Spruce Island after dark. Sometimes they make an announcement and the patrons get up from their tables to go to the window and watch the world's largest antlered mammal heading for its bedding site in the city.

These two Wascana moose have been the talk of the town this winter, particularly for those who frequent the park. Neither of them has caused any trouble, though one reportedly does not flee from people. This characteristic made it easy for Conservation Officers who tried to tranquilize it this week and accidentally killed it with perhaps too large a dose (here is the news item in today's paper).

The officers of course were just doing their job. The authorities (from the City or from Wascana Centre?), wanting to avoid blame or litigation, were worried about people getting too close to a habituated moose and perhaps taunting it or causing it to turn on them. That could happen, perhaps, and, yes, moose are known to be unpredictable at times, but usually not in winter when there are no young calves around. People do stupid things in the presence of large wild animals to be sure, as tourists to Canada's mountain parks demonstrate every summer. But couldn't we try to find ways to live with a moose or two in the little scraps of wildness we tolerate in our urban park? Couldn't we just for once take a little chance, if not for the good of the moose then for the rest of us who like having the moose around?

As a prairie conservationist, I wish we could find a way to restore and foster some prairie ecology in Wascana Park, but our European love of woodland has turned it into a funky urban forest and artificial wetland. And as funky urban habitat goes, Wascana is pretty darn good. It brings a lot of wildlife into the city, including a couple hundred species of birds each year, many of which are in decline. If we try, and don't think first of insurance, ass-covering, and lawyers, we can find ways of coexisting with these wild woodland creatures. After all, they arrive here because we have created an island of habitat in a wasteland of industrialized agribusiness. Whether it is a Black-throated Green Warbler looking for landfall during a long migration or a moose needing somewhere to browse and shelter for the winter, all of our wildlife are struggling to survive in a world we are making less habitable all the time. Finding ways to share our urban wildness with them is the least we can do.

Chan Robbins, the oldest Albatross, and a tsunami

photo courtesy of USGS

I know, an albatross is about as far away as you can get from a grassland bird, but this is a bird story I could not resist posting.

A week ago, Stuart Houston sent me an email about a Laysan albatross that banding records prove to be the oldest known wild bird in the world. Stuart has inspired a lot of people to take their passion for nature seriously and it was his suggestion that led me to write Grass, Sky, Song in the first place. As an elder statesman of the ornithological world, he keeps in touch with some of the great bird men and women of his generation all over the planet. The email about the albatross was in fact addressed to Chandler S. Robbins, who is one of the greatest bird conservation biologists of our era. Robbins worked for the US Geological Survey for sixty years at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Maryland.

This is the man who started the continent's most important bird census, the Breeding Bird Survey, back in the '60s. Without the BBS, we would not have the data to show that bird populations and distribution are changing. Writers and bird people like me rely on the BBS to bring the story to the public.

Robbins was also the bird conservationist who saw to it that Rachel Carson's work would not go in vain. In 1972, an effort led by Chandler Robbins succeeded in getting DDT banned in the United States.

He also wrote one of the most important field guides of the modern era, The Golden Guide's Birds of North America. Covering the entire continent in a small book easily kept in the pocket, this guide has been a favourite of birders for fifty years and has never gone out of print.


image of Chan Robbins courtesy of USGS

But back to the albatrosss. What is the connection between the sixty year old albatross and Chan Robbins?

Stuart knew it the moment he saw the article in the New York Times.
In the email to Chan, Stuart says

An Albatross sixty years old has a high chance of having been banded by that indefatigable and almost indestructible Chandler S.Robbins.

He was right of course. The world's most venerable bird was banded by the world's most venerable living bird bander and conservationist. Chan Robbins banded that albatross as a nestling in 1951. The bird is now 60 and still producing young. Chan is 92 years old and still working on behalf of birds.

The albatross, named Wisdom by USGS staff years ago, is nesting on Midway Atoll in the Pacific between Hawaii and Japan. As we all know, the earthquake last week send tsunami waves washing onto islands all over that region of the pacific. Midway Atoll is a very low island and the nests of the albatrosses who depend on it would be most vulnerable to high waves. On March 11, shortly after the quake, a five foot high wave hit the island destroying thousands of nests.

Today, I received this astounding message in my email from none other than the grand old man himself:

Late word from Midway is that "Wisdom" and her chick survived the tsunami, although thousands of other chicks were washed away.

Chan

Chandler S. Robbins
USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center

Sure, I was just one of the people in the cc field of the email when he responded to Stuart, but it was a thrill to see the name "Chandler S. Robbins" sitting in my in-basket this morning.

The sixty-year old albatross and her chick live through a tsunami, and the news comes from the ancient one who knew her when she was herself a nestling. Meanwhile the world waits to hear what will happen to the people of Japan, with another earthquake expected and several nuclear reactors out of control.

It all feels like a strange resolution to Coleridge's great Rime:

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all."

The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone; and now the Wedding-Guest
Turned from the bridegroom's door.

He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow morn.