Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Cabin to Cabin


In the back of my thoughts has been the suspicion that there is some similarity between the Creek and Walden Pond...not me and Thoreau...but the Creek is waiting back there for some Thoreau...


There's plenty of "Muirs" roaming the Valley and the High Country....they tend towards the sublime and grand...while Thoreau goes bananas over the minutia...


These thoughts from reading a Smithsonian article about Walden Pond...and it tells how Thoreau kept a careful journal of Walden Pond and the surroundings, and now the journal, and another kept by a devotee of Thoreau after Thoreau died, is of interest to the scientists studying global warming.


Lemego see if I can find that article online...and another story I'm reminded of...brb...following is what I call a "side by side"...


quotes


The upright citizens of Concord, Massachusetts, didn't think much of young Henry David Thoreau. The cabin on Walden Pond, the night in jail for tax evasion, the constant scribbling in journals-it all seemed like a waste of a perfectly good Harvard education. Even more mysterious was his passion for flowers. "I soon found myself observing when plants first blossomed and leafed," Thoreau confided to his journal in 1856, "and I followed it up early and late, far and near, several years in succession, running to different sides of the town and into the neighboring towns, often between twenty and thirty miles in a day."


Teaming up with Thoreau


One hundred fifty years after the publication of Walden, Henry David Thoreau is helping scientists monitor global warming


* By Michelle Nijhuis
* Photographs by Richard Howard
* Smithsonian magazine, October 2007



Biologist Joseph Grinnell was a world-class researcher, but he wasn't always the most pleasant of traveling companions. "We'd be sitting in camp, and we'd both be skinning," recalled naturalist Ward Russell, who spent years helping Grinnell trap, skin and otherwise document the wildlife of California. "Pretty soon, he'd throw a rat over to me, and he'd say, 'Here, Russell, finish this one up,' and he'd just ... pick up his notebook, and start writing."
Despite his dubious camp etiquette, Grinnell's devoted record-keeping led to one of the most famous datasets in modern biology. During their travels throughout California between 1904 and the late 1930s, Grinnell and his colleagues snared or shot more than 20,000 mammal, bird, reptile and amphibian specimens, took about 2,000 photographs, and filled 13,000 journal pages with erratic penmanship and beautifully detailed observations. Their portrait of the natural diversity of California remains unmatched in its scope and depth.



Global warming stalks Yosemite


Retracing the steps of a meticulous early 20th century biologist, researchers find that some of the park's tiniest residents have moved a startling distance uphill



end quotes


Well, I'll have to step it up to team up with these guys! Anyway, the pic for tonight's gotta be Thoreau's cabin...brb...


Oh, here's a site with a free downloadable card model of the cabin..


I've had in mind too some other 'cabin dwellers' ...for sometime later...
DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
Oct. 14, 2007




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