Book: Stones for Schools by Greg Mortenson

Given that Greg Mortenson has been prominent in the public discourse recently after a 60 Minute segment which challenged much of what he has written, I finally finished this book (I had read most of it off and on the during the previous six months) with a certain puzzlement about Greg and this whole mega-story.

This continues the previous Three Cups of Tea in which Greg stumbled into Korphe in Pakistan and "the subsequent chain of events through which a lost mountaineer eventually came to discover his life's calling by fostering education and literacy in the impoverished Muslim villages of the western Himalayas."

So what is reality in this story? It is an amazing tale and I am inclined to give Greg the benefit of the doubt and reserve judgment at this point as Nicholas Kristof wrote that he would do. I just cannot think the Greg Mortenson has messed up so badly as to be incredible.

In the northeast of Afghanistan, there is a long, narrow piece of land that extends eastward to China for about 150 miles. It is called the Wakhan Corridor. To the north is Tajikistan and the Pamir Range, to the east China, and to the south the Hindu Kush and Pakistan. Bozai Gumbaz is a very remote village in the eastern Wakhan, about 25 miles from China, and it is there that Greg wishes to build a school for "The People at the End of the Road." It is a formidable task but then the whole project is. The vision and determination of one man, the power of one (and then thousands of supporters) and how schools got built in this politically troubled, geographically rugged area fill the pages of both of Greg's books.

So we will see, perhaps, what was/is reality and what may have been something else entirely. Of course I hope that the bones of this hugely inspiring story are solid.

Book: A Supremely Bad Idea by Luke Dempsey

subtitled "Three Mad Birders and Their Quest to See It All."

Luke is introduced to birds by two of his friends (a married couple). They are originally from England but now live in NYC. One day, they are all together at Luke's second home in Pennsylvania and his friends see a Common Yellowthroat. Luke is the novice and can't see through the binoculars at first, but then: "Oh my! Wow! Are you kidding me? Wow!"

And so they all begin birding together. They make periodic trips all over the US, and this is the wonderfully funny account of what they find, of their friendship, where they go, and the people they meet on their quests. Birding is a strange passion, I suppose. The author says that "I can't log how many times I've seen a blank stare, even a twitch of an eyeball, when I admit that, yes, I love to look at birds. With strangers, I can go from mildly interesting to completely written off in about a second and a half."

But for those of you who are seduced by birds, and even if you're not, this book will probably make you laugh out loud--more than once.

Esther was in Michigan last week and I took her on my favorite trail. Her cell phone kept ringing until she turned it off. It has a loud obnoxious ring. She was carrying a blue Crown Royal bag with batteries, phone, etc. The bag had a hole in the bottom and the batteries kept falling out on the trail. But, she settled in after a bit. We saw Common Yellowthroats, close enough to see even without binoculars and (I think) she may have progressed a bit along the spectrum of birding from a starting point of barely being able to distinguish a robin from a cardinal to the far end of being able to confidently ID Empids.

She actually started a list: the glorious male Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Cardinals, Baltimore Orioles, a Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Goldfinches, the constantly singing House Wrens nesting in my yard, along with several other species. She will figure out the doves and parrots she sees all the time in Florida, and she bought a small feeder with seed cakes to take home with her. Should she accept this challenge, she will be the fourth (of six) sisters who carry around binoculars, buy bird books, take birding hikes, go to birding websites, visit sewage lagoons and beaches and marshes.

Book: Catching Heaven by Sands Hall

Catching Heaven in a novel set in the Southwest with three narrators: Lizzie and Maud (sisters) and Jake (a musician and friend of both Lizzie and Maud). There is a lot in this novel; it is worth reading. It could have been what I call a "zuzu" novel but it rises above cliches and facile characterization. It's a lovely piece of writing, evocative, with credible story lines and characters (for the most part).

In spite of the title, it is not saccharine. It is a wonderful melange of Shakespeare, country and western bars and music and cowboys, Native Americans, kids, the different ways of artistic expression not dependent on big cities, relationships (of course...what novel isn't?), families, friendships, living and dying.

Amy Tan says "Rich, warm and utterly satisfying...a wonderful debut from a first-rate storyteller." It is that....

Book: The Magnetic North by Sara Wheeler

It took me a long while to read this book as I read others in between and, as a result, I don't have the most coherent memory of much of it. Still, I finished it tonight. It is an account of the modern Arctic. Sara Wheeler begins most of her nine chapters with a pie-shaped wedge of map, the center of the "pie" always being the North Pole but with different geographic perimeters in each chapter: Russia, the Scandinavian countries, Canada, Greenland and Alaska.

"In Nuuk I saw a pair of nylon panties pegged on a washing line next to a row of curing seal ribs...There was the twenty-year-old Inupiat woman with two children; almost everyone in her family was drunk almost all the time; she had never been out hunting; she ate Western junk food and watched The Simpsons." This theme recurs, sadly, throughout the book in many places.

There are towns with names like Ittoqqortoormitt where "a girl in Wrangler jeans and Nike sneakers drinks Coca-Cola with her sealskin-clad grandmother."

Ms. Wheeler loves the Arctic. Along the way, she tells some history; she tells of the amazing explorations and men who ventured into and through and on the ice, many of whom perished. She says of the Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen that he was "an intellectual giant as well as a natural poet" and the author considers him the "presiding spirit of my Arctic story." Of course, I now want to read more of Nansen.

There is a chapter on Greenland, and Wheeler rooms with US scientists working there. Tiny flowers bloom in the Arctic, and she speaks of reindeer, musk oxen, narwhals, mineral exploration, the Lapps, geoscience, pollution, global warming and the extremely brutal gulag on Solovki, an island in the White Sea; she travels the Dalton Highway in Alaska with Jeannie, a lady trucker, and tells of Bob Marshall and John Muir and their experiences in the north.

Each page is filled with a meandering rich narrative, most of it about the land and people (natives and others) who find themselves above the Arctic Circle at 66 degrees north.

I feel I should have taken notes; there is so much of interest in this book in addition to what I have already mentioned. For instance, there is book An African in Greenland by a young self-educated man from Togo by the name of Kpomassie, who finds himself in Greenland after eight years of working his way north from Africa. He did not wish initiation into the cult of the python which was to be his destiny and which prospect was the impetus for his flight from Togo. He writes:

"In the eyes of an Eskimo hunter, the Arctic world with its vast, frozen expanses, its barren, snowy peaks and great, bare plateau--all that drab, white, lifeless immensity of little interest to an African like me--becomes a living world."

So a hundred or more vignettes of the Arctic fill the pages of this book; it is the "next best thing" to traveling there oneself writes Erica Wagner of The Times (London).

Birds: A May Morning

Today, May 10, 2011, was a wonderful day to be out on the trail hoping for glimpses of the amazingly lovely warblers, many of which migrate through Michigan this time of year. Some stay and nest and some continue north. The first two weeks in May are the best time to see them as they are preparing for breeding and nesting and are in glorious adult plumage and are actively on the move. They are all colors and combination of colors: chestnut, yellow, blue, blue-gray, black, red, orange, olive, rust...A casual walker / hiker would probably not notice them, but once seen, they truly are unforgettable. They are jewels moving in the trees.

Perhaps the movie, The Big Year, starring Steve Martin, Jack Black and Angelica Huston, and opening in theaters on October 14 of this year will introduce and explain the world of birding to those who are puzzled or bemused by birdwatchers.

This morning, the first birds I saw were a mother wood duck with six ducklings paddling behind her. A few days ago, Canada geese families with their goslings were all over the trail, and at one point, a male came hissing at me rather than let me walk on by his kids. I retreated and let them have the high ground. All the parents stood guard lifting and lowering their heads and necks with open silent mouths, while the yellowish, fluffy young stumbled here and there, bumped into weeds, wandered off, generally clueless.

Warblers flit mostly...rather oblivious of humans with binoculars. But they often flit for minutes or hours in one area, so the trick is to be adept with binoculars. It really isn't that hard with a bit of practice. Often warblers are in the treetops but today on the Stu Visser Trail (aka Pine Creek Trail), they moved about mostly lower and were easily seen, especially on the bridge over the rapids. This phenomenon is called a fall-out and is probably due to weather conditions. Today was a warm but overcast day. Warblers migrate at night and many that were seen probably arrived fairly recently. One never knows for sure what the day will bring, but a fall-out like today is mesmerizing. I saw:

1. Blackburnian.

2. Magnolia.

3. Yellow-winged.

4. American Redstart.

5. Yellow.

6. Common yellowthroat.

7. Chestnut-sided.

8. Bay-breasted.

9. Wilson's.

10. Palm.

11. Black and white.

12. Myrtle.

13. One of the Waterthrushes. (There are both the Northern and Louisiana Waterthrush possible here in Michigan, and they are similar and hard to separate unless one has good looks at them, but this bird moves unobtrusively in the mud of creek banks and wet spots and is often difficult to see well.)

Yesterday I saw:

12. Blue-winged.

13. Northern Parula.

14. Myrtle.

15. Nashville.

16. Cape May.

A few weeks ago I saw the quite uncommon (for Ottawa County):

17. Cerulean.

And on my birthday, May 11, I saw:

18. Canada.

19. Mourning.

20. Black-throated Blue. This is a lovely bird, dark blue, black and white and I got good looks at it mid way on the east side of the SVT. It was crubbing about at low level, often relatively in the open. In fact, most of the warblers I saw this wonderful spring were not in the canopy and were quite easily seen. Twenty warblers!

Book: Birds in Fall by Brad Kessler

I found Birds in Fall a perfect novel; it reminded me somewhat of The Elegance of the Hedgehog which I also thought was perfect.

The characters, the physical geography (an island off Nova Scotia), and the story are all wonderfully written. I don't want to give anything away so am not going to say much about the book but Annie Dillard says: "Once in a blue moon a book like Birds in Fall comes along...."

It is whole unto itself...with a beginning, a middle and an end. In evocative and graceful prose, the author tells a story that left me satisfied.

Caspian Terns

Terns are like elegant gulls; in fact, there ARE Elegant Terns, but one would probably have to go to Baja to see them. Terns have black caps, white bodies, often red or bright orange bills and black or red legs. They are slimmer than gulls and stand on shorter legs.

Tiscornia Beach Park is on the north side of the channel of the St. Joseph river where it empties into Lake Michigan in Benton Harbor. I knew terns hung out there while migrating. It was very close to Sarett Nature Center where I birded the last day of April this year (like yesterday), so I went there on the way home and saw 125 to 150 Caspian terns and one much smaller tern, most likely either a Common or a Forster's. Through the binoculars, the smaller tern looked like a baby with 125 parents. It was sweet.

They were all on the beach just north of the channel, and I could approach closely through the dunes to the east. It was FINALLY a sunny and warm day in Michigan although the beach was deserted which suited me.....and the terns.