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THIS WEEK IN
CALIFORNIA WILD

reviews

When white explorers and settlers first entered California and the West, they perceived lands filled with endless promise. The art they left behind now offers modern viewers a glimpse of this attitude. Drawn West collects 2,300 art pieces from this era, including nearly every type of two-dimensional art and graphic medium available at the turn of the twentieth century except photography.

Paintings, even of such mundane subjects as hydraulic mining, possess a sprinkling of magic dust that can fuel high expectations. Perhaps Victorian-era photographs would not have captured the irresistible grandeur felt by early visitors, or lured droves of fortune seekers to travel across the continent via wagons and trains or clipper ships. Instead, artistic visions of spectacular scenery, limitless resources, inexhaustible forests, impossibly abundant fields, and the chance of instant riches were what opened the floodgates of Euro-American emigration.

The book includes the work of the best-known and respected artists and publishers of the time: Albert Bierstadt, William Keith, Thomas Hill, John James Audubon, and Currier & Ives. But formal paintings and prints are only part of the visual banquet. Commercial illustrations depict catastrophes such as the near-perennial Sacramento floods and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Images of the gold rush, public executions, train wrecks, and Indian ambushes brought the headlines of the day to life. Cultures clashed, ships wrecked, and the media’s job—then as now—was to sell papers by glorifying the details.

More than a few artists became known for using creative license in their renditions of the West. An Albert Bierstadt painting entitled Lake Tahoe, California, 1863 shows the turquoise jewel of the lake shimmering in the late afternoon as a lone canoe paddles across the foreground. But the lake is too blue and the snow-capped mountains float too high above the clouds to be the Sierra I have hiked. An engraving by Louis Philippe Crépin, entitled Shipwreck of Messers de Laborde in the boats of La Pérouse in Port des François, California offers another fallacious view of the West. The artist thought he was depicting a shoreline in San Francisco Bay. However, his ship had been blown severely off course. The outsized scale of the mountains and details of the land were actually drawn from Lituya Bay, Alaska.

These artists viewed California the way some present-day people perceive Alaska. Yesterday’s California—with its “endless” forests and wealth of other resources—is today’s North Slope, a storehouse of “vast” oil reserves. But just as miners tapped out California’s gold within a handful of years, Alaska and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has no more than a few decades’ worth of oil to give.

Perusing the wild lands in this collection today, while living in a state at its human carrying capacity, makes it easy to imagine the pull of California’s pristine bounty on the imagination of the pioneers. These pieces of art illuminate the expectations, fears, and the illusionary forces that drive us more than they portray what California and the West promised to deliver.

Susan Schneider

Keeping Kids Wild

Richard Louv’s new book, Last Child in the Woods, opens with a chilling comment by a fourth-grader: “I like to play indoors better because that’s where all the electrical outlets are.” Louv uses such nakedly truthful statements by children throughout the book to drive home his central point: American kids are losing touch with nature, and whether or not you’re a parent, you should be concerned.

In his amiable journalistic style, Louv travels the country to interview families, teachers, and others to make his case. American society, he finds, is key-stroking its way toward a hyper-intellectualized, sedentary, and electronically-distorted relationship with nature, where children learn about the destruction of the Amazon rain forest on a computer but rarely explore their own backyard.

Louv claims that American society is actually “teaching young people to avoid direct experience in nature.” He argues that natural play outdoors is becoming criminalized, with tree houses outlawed in parks. Meanwhile, the vacant lot available for outdoor play to earlier generations such as his own has been developed.

Children have been forced indoors by lack of safe play areas and parental fear, so they spend hours surfing the Internet, watching television, or playing video games. The result: nature-deficit disorder, a condition Louv defines as “a diminished use of senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses.”

The fact that kids spend too much time in front of electronic screens these days isn’t news. But Louv doesn’t stop there. He illustrates how necessary playing in nature is to the physical and mental health of all human beings. He cites scientific studies that show how people heal faster and are less likely to fall ill if they have a window looking out on a natural scene in their hospital rooms or prison cells. He articulates how human creativity and genius originate in nature, and he profiles heroic people and programs working to restore children’s relationships to nature.

As a parent who has spearheaded an outdoor science program at my son’s elementary school, I devoured Louv’s book enthusiastically. Like Louv, I grew up playing unsupervised in woods and fields near my family’s house, and as an adult have become a concerned observer of urban children’s habits. To introduce city kids to nature, I have instigated the creation of nine gardens at two public schools. What Louv writes rings only too true for me. For the past ten years, I have encountered insect-phobic third-graders, soil-phobic adults, vandals, and erratic or nonexistent funding. While children have screamed “A BEEEE!” I have explained time and again that if it weren’t for bees and other pollinators, we’d all be dead.

Yet Last Child swims valiantly against its own tales of an ecologically disconnected society. The second half of the book proposes solutions and envisions a better future. Louv highlights green cities and calls for residential communities with open space where kids can build things. He also looks to places like Finland where natural play and improved academic performance are clearly linked.

Ah, if only Louv had spilled a bit more ink on the green schoolyard movement, which seems to be growing faster in this country than a well-watered zucchini in August. But no matter. Last Child in the Woods is a fabulous book. It’s helped me articulate the merits of letting kids explore nature in the school garden. I’m buying copies for the principal and other educators. It’s a great tool for any nature-minded person, short of a good shovel.

Christine Colasurdo

Editors' Recommendations

Gorilla Doctors: Saving Endangered Great Apes, by Pamela S. Turner. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 2005. 64 pp.; $17.00 hardback.

When mountain gorillas fall ill, a vet must travel to them through the isolated jungles of east-central Africa. With her engaging text and gorgeous photographs, author Pamela S. Turner brings young readers along for the ride.

The discovery of mountain gorillas in 1902 triggered so much poaching that the population nearly collapsed. By the mid-twentieth century, the mountain gorilla had become the rarest of the great apes. But instead of going extinct, tourist funds and dedicated scientists sparked a resurgence.

The gorillas are now in danger of being loved too much. Adoring tourists and local humans are infecting the gorillas with scabies, tuberculosis, and perhaps even measles. Enter the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project, a group of scientists dedicated to saving the majestic apes. Amid the steep ravines and dense foliage of Virunga Mountain, the group finds itself offering emergency care, vaccinations, and even foster homes for orphaned baby gorillas. The book offers a compelling look at an animal in desperate need of help and the humans who have come to its aid.