Mis Libros Favoritos

Day 9: Estos son mis libros favoritos. ¿Por qué? ¡Porque los puedo leer en español! Yes, I'm working on Spanish again, and I'm progressing far better than with any previous attempt. Why? First of all, I have been using several different methods of learning, including DuoLingo's quirky, semi-functional website, as well as following several "comprehensible input" teachers on YouTube. I refer to Google Translate for pronunciations and definitions of unfamiliar words, and sometimes type in paragraphs so that I can read them aloud along with the robotic voice, improving on its inflection. However, the thing which is making the most difference in my learning curve is that I am reading books on subjects dear to me, specifically birds, plants and the sciences. Relevance matters! I am not the least bit interested in hotels, taxis and airports, but I find that I retain more if I can infer meaning from context when reading that a bird's wing ("ala") is flat ("plana") on the underside ('por debajo") and curved ("curva") on the upper surface ("por arriba") so that the pressure of the air which passes over the top is less than that which passes underneath, thereby giving the bird lift. This is what is meant by the phrase "acquiring a language," as opposed to learning its grammar and vocabulary by rote. I'm sure I will have many more opportunities to discuss the fact that a fifth of a bird's body cavity is occupied by air sacs than I will have chances to repeat DuoLingo's phrase, "My dog doesn't shower every day."

Special Gifts, Special Friends

Day 63: I think Santa must have decided I've been nice this year because I can't believe he dispatched two pair of special elves to the wrong address, not when their gifts were so obviously meant for me. "Flowering Plants and Ferns of Mount Rainier" came from my Team Biota partners Joe and Sharon; "Flora of Mount Rainier National Park" and "How to Identify Mushrooms to Genus" were brought to me this afternoon by Arnie and his wife Sara. The two plant books are old, and are therefore a ticket to a fantastic ride through the taxonomic forests of yesteryear. The mushroom book is magnificently illustrated to guide students of mycology through the differentiating features of fungal genera, in detail most field guides lack. I have many hours of brain-work ahead of me here!

Mis Libros

Day 151: Years ago when I first started studying Spanish, I purchased as many "kid level" natural history volumes as I could find at Powell's Books in Portland Oregon. I was surprised at the depth of many of them, the scientific vocabulary certainly beyond anything American children of equivalent age would be reading in English. When I bogged down in grammar and gave up hope of becoming fluent, I shelved them, seldom taking any one of them out to read. I've picked them up again now, and although I've now surpassed the reading level for many of them, the two encyclopedias continue to entertain me.

While discussing this on Facebook last night, I was grumbling that DuoLingo's constant drill of easy sentences like "The elephant is grey" and "My daughter eats an apple" were getting rather old, considering that I've advanced well beyond that in the course. I posted a paragraph from the "Enciclopedia Mega Naturaleza y Ecología" you see at bottom center. It read, "Más de 50 especies de grandes mamiferos viven en la sabana. Casi todos son herbívoros: antílopes, gacelas, jirafas, elefantes y búfalos, constituyen las presas de los carnívoros, como los felinos, y de los necrófagos, que se alimentan de cadáveres (hienas, buitres)." I managed to read all of that without resorting to the dictionary, although I rather paused a bit over "necrófagos" until my head sorted it out from Latin.

This morning, I had a reply from Kevin which absolutely cracked me up. FB followers will already have read the exchange, but I post it here for your amusement: "First of all, I'm a bit peeved at Facebook for giving me the 'Automatically Translated' version first, with a tiny, gray 'original version' link at the bottom, instead of showing it to me the way the original author wrote it. So I read your note first in English, and did a double-take when you said (or seemed to say) '...the prey of the carnivores, like cats, and ghouls, which feed on corpses...' Ghouls? On the savanna? And then you said 'I rather paused a bit over 'Ghouls' until my head sorted it out from Latin.' Ghouls? Latin? THEN I saw the 'original version' link, read it in Spanish, and saw the word in question: 'necrófagos,' which, like you, I readily disassembled into 'corpse-eaters.' Yes, almost every machine-translator I checked reduces this to 'ghouls,' except Oxford's Spanish dictionary, bless them, which offers up the scientific term that matches the context: necrophagous. Yes, 99.9% of the time in general parlance 'necrófagos' will mean ghouls, in the context of Halloween or Hollywood. Unless you're a scientist, like us, in which case those auto-translators (ahem, Facebook) will inspire una ceja arqueada."

Fables And Feathered Friends

Day 98: The Russian language has always fascinated me. I suppose part of its appeal lies in the Cyrillic alphabet's unusual characters, several of which look like Roman letters but have different pronunciations. Over the years, I have made several attempts to learn the language, but with no way to practice with another person, I've only come to the point of being able to limp through reading simple children's stories silently to myself and singing a few folk songs. That said, in the process of building up a small library, I also accumulated a nice collection of trinkets and china made in the old USSR, as well as an electric samovar which had to be rewired for US current.

Birds are a recurrent theme in many Russian stories, most notably the Firebird, a magical creature somewhat similar to the Phoenix, but smaller birds also play roles in many tales. They may be messengers, magical or otherwise, interacting with humans, or they may simply be anthropomorphized characters who join with other talking animals in the traditional style of the fable to accomplish a task or teach a moral lesson.

Birds are popular in design and decor, and as toys such as the key-operated wind-ups shown here. The three smaller birds in the photo shuffle along on their feet, pecking the ground as they move. The larger one's tail and wings flutter, and its head turns from side to side as the beak opens and closes.

Journey Journals

Day 76: There are many adventures in these pages of trail notes, although they only cover two decades of hiking. The texts are often too personal to permit access to other readers, and the art...well, let's just say that my talents lie in other fields. The penmanship is appalling, but when you take into consideration my normal penchant for unreadable notes-to-self and add in writing by flashlight with frozen fingers, some of it requires extreme effort even on my part to decipher.

Singly, these journals are widely travelled, at least in my definition of the phrase. You'll find a climb of Mt. Shasta in one, obscure geysers in Yellowstone National Park in another, and the deep backcountry of the Olympic Mountains in a third. For the most part, though, they chronicle a repetition of footfalls, thousands of miles...thousands, I say...walked within a stone's throw of home.

If the art is poor, it is good enough to jog the memory. The outline of a rock, the silhouette of a tree, the rise and fall of a ridgeline horizon...these have been executed with attention to detail. The sharp spires of the Tatooshes are recognizable, if not their faces, and the planes of fractured stone and sweep of a branch allow me to say, "That's the rock at the end of Switchback 3," and "Ah, this was that trip to Indian Bar when I saw the bear damage."

That said, as I grew older and the distances to destinations seemed to turn longer and harder, my time for sitting down to sketch and write shortened accordingly. I found myself making notes at home after a trip was done, even though I'd carried the current journal with me in my pack. It felt like cheating, that, so I abandoned writing in favour of arriving at my goal. Thus "A Wildwood Journal" ends as it began, not at any particular point in my backcountry career, nor upon the occasion of a particular event, simply as the rambles of restless feet and a spirit bent on adventure.

Best Of The Shelf

Day 268: We all have our favorite books. Mine just don't happen to be fiction, biographies, collections of poetry or historical accounts. Nope, my favorite books are field guides, and I have them on a variety of subjects ranging from rocks and minerals, weather phenomena and animal tracks to birds, wildflowers and mushrooms and the more specialized category of lichens.

Among habitual users of field guides, the best resources are generally referred to by author's name. "Brodo" is the North American lichen expert, "Sibley" and "Roger Tory Peterson" ("Roger Tory" for short) the bird men. "Mark Turner" is my go-to guy for Washington wildflowers, alongside "Pojar and MacKinnon." Backing up the hard copies, I also have Sibley on my Kindle Fire, ready to use in the field when some warbler crosses my field of vision.

It always pays to cross-reference. Species names change. Microseris alpestris may appear in one reference with the same plant identified as Nothocalais alpestris in another. These changes often reflect the growth of knowledge about the plant or bird/animal. Taxonomy is a science unto itself, and a little Latin goes a long way in helping the field scientist track a particular specimen down. What shape are the leaves? What is the growth habit? Chances are good that the nomenclature will refer to an identifying feature.

For my nickel (and often a more substantial dip into my bank account), field guides are the best books you can add to your library, even if all you do is look at the pretty pictures. Better yet, learn to use the keys and start exploring the fascinating world which exists all around you. Grab your binocs and magnifiers and let's go on a field trip!