Wild Thoughts from Wild Places in Nature Calls

Sep 26, 2020 Kate rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction-tbr, science-writing, read-in-2020, essays, nature-writing

"In Wild Thoughts from Wild Places, award-winning journalist David Quammen reminds us why he has become one of our most beloved science and nature writers.

This collection of twenty-three of Quammen's most intriguing, most exciting, most memorable pieces takes us to meet kayakers on the Futaleufu River of southern Chile, where Quammen describes how it feels to travel in fast company and flail for survival in the river's maw. We are introduced to the commerce in pearls (and black market parrots) i "In Wild Thoughts from Wild Places, award-winning journalist David Quammen reminds us why he has become one of our most beloved science and nature writers.

This collection of twenty-three of Quammen's most intriguing, most exciting, most memorable pieces takes us to meet kayakers on the Futaleufu River of southern Chile, where Quammen describes how it feels to travel in fast company and flail for survival in the river's maw. We are introduced to the commerce in pearls (and black market parrots) in the Ara Islands of eastern Indonesia. Quammen even finds wildness in smog-choked Los Angeles -- embodied in an elusive population of urban coyotes, too stubborn and too clever to surrender to the sprawl of civilization.

"With humor and intelligence, David Quammen's Wild Thoughts from Wild Places also reminds us that humans are just one of the many species on earth with motivations, goals, quirks, and eccentricities. Expect to be entertained and moved on this journey through the wilds of science and nature."
~~back cover

The piece that really struck me and stayed with me is Before the Fall, which begins with an infestation of tent caterpillars -- an outbreak and crash event. "It's characteristic of certain types of animal but not others, Lemmings undergo outbreaks; river otters don't. Some species of grasshoppers do, some species of mouse, some species of starfish, whereas other species among the same taxonomic groups don't. An outbreak of woodpeckers is unlikely. An outbreak of wolverines, unlikely. Among those insect species inhabiting forests, ... only one percent ever experience outbreaks."

He goes on to point out that "the most serious outbreak on the planet earth is that of the species Homo sapiens. ... we've increased our population by a factor of five hundred since the invention of agriculture, by a factor of five since the Industrial Revolution, by more than double within only the last century -- and that there seem to be no natural limits in sight. Relative to other large-bodied mammals, we're a grossly abundant species in the throes of an exceptional, and seemingly unsustainable, episode of proliferation and consumption."

"This is a question, not an assertion: Is Homo sapiens an outbreak population, just reaching the peak of its curve? ... And if we are presently experiencing an outbreak, what does science warn us to expect?" What will the crash look like? ...more

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