I could not be more proud of our new book. It is, in reality, a project 10-years in the making. I first started cooking up the idea when I finished Conifer Country in 2012 based on the fact that a natural history had never been written for the Klamath Mountains. Around 2015, during a winter gathering, I proposed an outline to a group of friends and asked who wanted to help write the book with me. Justin Garwood raised his hand and the rest is now history!
Why Natural History?
Writing a natural history happens with definable landscapes. For it to be comprehensive, regional boundaries defined by geology, ecology, and climatic patterns—or realistically all three—create a space wherein a natural history emerges. The Sierra Nevada’s granitic boundaries have produced numerous natural histories. Other regions of the West that have their own natural histories include Daniel Matthew’s Natural History of the Pacific Northwest Mountains that weaves climate and ecology. A new tome, Mountains of Nevada, by David Charlet, uses political boundaries to define an entire state’s flora by way of 300+ mountain ranges. Lawrence R. Walker and Frederick H. Landau use climate to tell A Natural History of the Mojave Desert. The list goes on. These books are exciting because natural history is foundational in building and maintaining the human relationship with nature. The written relationship of natural history in the western world started with Charles Darwin and Alexander von Humboldt. Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Annie Dillard, Peter Matthiessen, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and others have continued these traditions—today, I believe we are experiencing a natural history renaissance.
Our Natural History
With the help of 34 co-authors we are now better connected to the natural history of the Klamath Mountains. Climate, soils, fire, and geology connect all living things across space and time. From those connections to the land, interpreted by the First People in the beginning and built upon by western scientists who followed, the deep knowledge for this place is helping to reinvigorate relationships to the land and with each other. In this bond, we all have something to offer—and even more to the mountains and rivers and forests. We will continue to share our current knowledge and better understand what those before us have done and thought. Through these connections, we can only hope that some of our old approaches and understandings fade away and a better path for place-based connection and stewardship continue to grow.
The Natural History Institute defines natural history as the “…practice of intentional, focused attentiveness and receptivity to the more-than-human world, guided by honesty and accuracy.” Justin and I present our honest and accurate work for the Klamath Mountains.
The first comprehensive regional natural history is here!
