(Unless otherwise indicated, the photos herein were taken by Raymond Wiggers and are
copyrighted by him. They may not reproduced or otherwise used without permission.)
Dear Friends,
Greetings from the author of the most delayed newsletter in history -- in my history, anyway. To the relief of both you and me, I am not going to issue an extensive Mea Culpa. But rest assured that the delay in presenting this issue was due not to sloth, alien abduction, or a lack of circulation of the vital humors. Instead, blame it on a host of other worthy projects and fruitful responsibilities.
To those of you who joined the the Natural History Exploration Guild or renewed your membership since the last newsletter came out, I offer this special word of thanks. The Guild grew in 2006 at an even faster pace than I'd hoped, and the results were so encouraging I've gone ahead and laid out an expanded schedule of events for the first half of 2007. (Incidentally, the schedule for the second half will be published soon.) My plan is to still offer some of the traditionally popular tour and courses -- the Redbud trip to southern Illinois (which is coming up in just a few weeks), the Architectural Geology of Downtown Chicago tour, and so forth. But also be on the lookout for some new subjects and venues that, I trust, will illustrate how geology, botany, ecology weave themselves together in all sorts of urban, suburban, and rural venues.
These offerings will take us from Bristol Woods in southeastern Wisconsin to Chicago's Graceland Cemetery and Fullersburg Forest Preserve in Oak Brook; and from the caves-and-covered-bridges country of southern Indiana to the secluded canyons and cliffs of little-visited nature preserves in the Upper Illinois River watershed. To see all that is currently scheduled, hop on over like a good March hare to the Tours and Courses pages. And remember that your support and participation are essential to the Guild's continuation as a source of innovative nature education!
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Of all the activities we pulled off in 2006, one one of my personal favorites was our late-September paddle down the Illinois and Michigan Canal, from Channahon to the Aux Sable Lock. This was the first of our waterborne natural-history jaunts run directly by the Guild without the assistance of another sponsoring group. The participants were great, the logistics worked perfectly -- and now expansive visions of exploring other streams -- from the Wisconsin to the Cache -- are clamoring for attention in the New Plans Department of my mind. I do have one May '07 date blocked out for our next canoe trip. I'd like to try Nippersink Creek in McHenry County, Illinois. I'll let you know as the details are worked out.
PART I. NONLINEAR SERMONS & SOLILOQUIES
A. The Treasure in Terra Cotta
In those most productive of solitary walks, those done on city streets, I sense that an old interest is becoming an obsession. As the days and years go by, my fascination with the way geology and the artistry of architecture interpenetrate grows to the point that almost every building, whether faced with brick, stone, or aluminum siding, lays claim to my attention. It is on the surfaces of these buildings, on the cladding of structures grand or humble, where I can read great stories of the profound and basic processes, the great engines of change on Earth.
In the last newsletter issue, I touched upon the Morton Gneiss -- also known as the Rainbow Granite -- in the first of a series on the geology of building materials. But as important as cut and shaped stone always has been, we shouldn't lose track of other geologically derived ornament of great importance to the history of architecture.
A century ago, one of the most popular and widely used materials for exterior building decoration was terra cotta -- Italian for "cooked earth" -- i.e., kiln-baked clay. Combining many of the virtues of heavier and more expensive cut stone, terra cotta could be produced from local lakebed or glacial deposits common in North Central states, shaped into intricate designs that matched an architect's greatest flights of fancy, and colored with a glaze to simulate jade, marble, and even speckled granite. (A good example of pseudogranite terra cotta -- know by its trade name of Pulsichrome -- can be seen in the Wiggers' Wonders section of the previous newsletter.)
Despite the immense artistic talent needed to transform an architect's sketches into intricate and enduring ornament, it's my claim that terra cotta is as much the province of the geologist as of the craftsman, architect, or art historian. For one thing, finished terra cotta illustrates what can be done with the magically cohesive and moldable properties of its basic constituent, clay -- the class of unconsolidated sediments composed of microscopic mineral grains shaped like tiny flagstones no larger than 0.002 millimeters in diameter. But if, as I contend, geologists deeply appreciate the significance of clay, they sometimes are at a loss for poetic metaphors worthy of its special nature. And so we return again to the artists, and particularly to that ancient guild of artists, the potters, whose hands have a special intelligence all their own in the handling of this yielding, sticky, fleshy substance that is one of the basic building blocks, literally and figuratively, of both civilization and the untamed landscape.
PART II. REVIEWS IN THE REALM OF NATURAL HISTORY
Books: Returning to the Source
Nowadays, the person who reads extensively in the the nontechnical natural-history literature can easily suffer both ennui and mental indigestion from a diet of too much derivative writing. Certain modern "science writers" suffer, too, but from a different pair of maladies. The first of these: the fact they never bothered to master even the basics of the sciences they describe. The other: that they make their scientific subject matter subservient to their own narcissistic prose, with which they acquaint the reader of their own precious reactions (and often those of their spouses, children, grandchildren, and great aunts) to forces and events approximately ten billion times more significant than their own exquisitely rendered egos. Introducing the human element and a first-person perspective into otherwise challenging subject matter is a laudable tool -- I use it myself all the time -- but too much authorial mirror-gazing can result in a science book almost completely devoid of science.
I am not sure I can offer an effective cure for those writers, whose condition, after all, is usually tertiary by the time they're picked up by the mass-market publishers. But for the jaundiced reader of their stylistic flatulence help is not just possible; it's usually immediately effective, if taken in large doses of lucid nature writing produced by one of the nineteenth-century masters of the genre. Of course, Thoreau comes to mind as an excellent antidote. So does John Wesley Powell. So does T.H. Huxley, and of course Darwin himself.
My own most recent return to the source has been one of my most enlightening experiences of recent years. I finally partook of the autobiography, essays, and shorter pieces of John Muir. I'm ashamed to say that I'd previously never read him at any length. Now I'm convinced that, in addition to being the founding father of this nation's conservation movement, Muir was one of this country's finest prose stylists. What a combination of close scrutiny, controlled lyricism, and higher vision that man had! Writing, as he so often did, of the Sierra Nevada, he noted:
PART III. WIGGERS' WONDERS
(Dedicated to to the Principle That Whatever
Springs to Mind Must Be Worth Something)
PART IV. THIS ISSUE'S PARTING QUOTATION
With kind regards,
Ray Wiggers
By the Waters of Vermilion, There We Sat Down, Yea, We Chilled Out. This view of the Vermilion River near the Route 178 bridge north of Lowell, Illinois (a few miles south of Starved Rock State Park) illustrates the high-water conditions that persisted into the midsummer of 2006. Here, on a hot afternoon, local folks take advantage of the cooling waters riffling over the riverbed of Ordovician dolostone bedrock on the crest of the large buckle in the crust known as the La Salle Anticlinorium. Note the kayaker who has momentarily stopped for a chat.
A Perplexing Convexity. Among the various natural-history wonders of Shades State Park (one of our featured stops on this June's Indiana Natural-History Odyssey tour) is the Silver Cascade, a graceful and most unusual waterfall that seems to have been designed by a landscape architect with a passion for double curves. In fact, it's a natural feature, and its stream flows out of the dim confines of a canyon and over an outwardly bulging mass of Mississippian-Period siltstone, just down-stream from the park's famous Devil's Punchbowl. Geologists explain this unusual convex cliff profile as the result of the process of frost wedging. In winter months, water in the colder inner portions of the cliff expands and pushes the cliff outward.
Graceful Ghosts of the Forest Floor. Another sign of last year's ample rains was the botanical bumper crop of everything from mushrooms to less-than-common plant species. Here, in a bottomland woods in Lake County, Illinois there were an impressive number of wan Indian pipes (Monotropa uniflora). This arresting albino species has no need of chlorophyll; it obtains the sugar compounds it needs to thrive and reproduce not from photosynthesis but by tapping into nearby mycorrhizal fungi -- the soil molds that have a symbiotic relationship in with roots of other plants. As the taxonomic name suggests, each Indian pipe bears only one bell-shaped flower, as deathly pale as the rest of the plant, at the top of its stem.
Scenes of last fall's canoe trip on the I&M Canal. Above: Negotiating the first fallen-tree obstacle, just after departing from the McKinley Woods put-in at Channahon. Lower right: Guild members and other participants at the end of the cruise, at Aux Sable Lock.
These liverworts I'd seen occupied the vertical face of on a spray-glistened cliff in Minnesota, and at the time I photographed them they every bit as intent of propagation as my little orchid would be later on. But in the case of these cliff-dwellers, no flowers were involved. Indeed, the earliest flowering plants -- the earliest ancestors of the now-dominant line that includes Schoenorchis -- did not arise till some 400 million years after the liverworts' progenitors found their own method of producing and shedding spores successfully.
Yes, the evolutionary distance between my two favorite mini-plants is a vast one. Liverworts, in addition to being flowerless, lack stems, leaves, and true roots -- and are therefore often described as primitive -- the vegetative equivalent of a Model T. In contrast, orchids are highly advanced models sporting the latest design features.
But this issue of primitiveness -- which in our techno-culture is usually taken as something distinctly to be pitied -- is a deceptive one. Schoenorchis is one of thousands of orchid species that have, by plant standards, remarkably small native ranges and narrow climatic tolerances. Like a small but fancy sports car, it is an irresistibly eye-catching machine suited suited only to certain times and places. In contrast, the Model T was renowned for its ability to function as as an enduring generalist with an impressively long production run (from 1908 all the way to 1927, according to one source). So, too, with Marchantia. It has managed to survive in wet spots everywhere from the tropics to the arctic, over the course of untold millions of years.
While I suppose it's all a matter of one's viewpoint, I personally think that the ability to thrive in varying conditions is a virtue exceed by none other. So my admiration for the humble liverwort knows no bounds. But then a bit of ambiguity creeps into my outlook. As a member of a newly arrived and purportedly advanced species called Homo sapiens, I also must admit the human preference -- my preference -- for the flamboyant forms of brightly colored and fragrant flowers -- even if, in the case of my little Schoenorchis, they're easy to miss without the help of a magnifying glass.
A thriving colony of Marchantia polymorpha growing within the spray zone of the lower falls at Minneopa State Park, Minnesota. All plants have alternating sexual and asexual generations, but in those as anciently derived as liverworts, this fact is much more obvious. Most of what you see here is the sexual generation, but tucked under the heads of the umbrella-like structures is the spore-producing generation visible to the sufficiently inquisitive naked eye.
"Millions of Americans love science and have learned the feel of true expertise in a chosen expression. But we do not honor these expressions by categorization within the realm of science, although we certainly should. . . . If all these folks understood their engagement in doing science actively, democracy would shake hands with the academy, and we might learn to harvest a deep and widespread fascination in the service of more general education."
- Stephen Jay Gould, "Drink Deep, or Taste Not the Pierian Spring," in The Lying Stones of Marrakech
Participants on a Guild Redbud Special tour to the wilds of southern Illinois explore the top of the natural bridge at the Bell Smith Springs, in Shawnee National Forest. This year's Red-bud expedition departs on April 13th.
Detail of the "Teco Green" terra-cotta ornament on Louis Sullivan's National Farmers Bank in Owatonna, Minnesota. In the hands of the master craftsmen at the American Terra Cotta Company works in what is now Crystal Lake, Illinois, the ornate botanical symbolism of this master architect achieved full form.
Terra cotta can have special interest to the the geologist for another reason, too: it illustrates that subtle, insidious, and therefore fascinating process of structural decay known, with a terminological directness often absent in modern science, as weathering. Often confused with erosion, weathering is the sum of the physical, chemical, and organic changes wrought on rock, soil, and any other substance exposed to our frenetic planet's ever-mobile supply of air, water, salt, ice, and changing temperatures.
In the Chicago of the early 1900s, the American Terra Cotta Company and other leading producers of molded cladding took great pains to acquaint their customers with the dangers of mounting their ornamental slabs improperly on building exteriors. But even the most skillfully set terra cotta, originally so well secured with mortar and iron fasteners, finally succumbs to the various agents of weathering -- rusting, thermal stress, liquid-water absorption, salt-crystal growth, and ice expansion. When that happens, the lives of human passersby are threatened and the once-striking appearance of a notable facade is reduced to a vision of shabbiness and neglect.
While few modern buildings feature terra cotta in any quantity -- indeed, there is only one surviving architecturally oriented terra-cotta producer in the United States and none at all in the Midwest -- a vast number of historic-landmark structures are clad in glazed clay. Their preservation has spawned a new art and a new industry -- that of terra cotta restoration. For more on this intriguing topic, take a look at this National Park Service briefing sheet.
No other decorative material expressed the sugar-coated, goofball whimsy of 1920s commercial architecture better than terra cotta, as the left-hand photo of the Zamboni automobile dealership, also in Owatonna, Minnesota, shows. At right, a building on Chicago's South Michigan Avenue demonstrates the effect on terra cotta cladding (or rather on its metal fasteners) of decades of harsh Windy City weathering.
B. In Praise of Small Plants
Of all the cultivated orchids I have grown, praised, killed, brought to flower, or sworn at, none has ever won my admiration and affection more than my specimen of Schoenorchis fragrans. This species lacks a common name -- one indication that it's known only to orchidists on the egghead-botanist side of the horticultural spectrum. As a member of the Orchidaceae -- the family that probably boasts more species of plants than any other -- Schoenorchis can be considered one of the very latest designs in plant evolution, admirably adapted to life high in the the tropical-rainforest canopy, where its highly modified flowers turn their insect visitors into unwitting if amply rewarded dupes of its own will to reproduce. But the most astounding thing about this plant, at least to me, is its size (which I reconfirm with a ruler as I write this). From one leaf tip across its breadth to the other, it measures 3.5 centimeters, or about 1.4 inches. At their longest its flowers, measured singly when the plant was in bloom, were a little shy of 4 millimeters -- a little more than an 0.1 inch.
Last summer I was rewarded for a year's worth of daily misting, weekly soaking, and periodic, pathologic fussing with light levels. The Schoenorchis actually bloomed. To crib from the libretto of one of J.S. Bach's best cantatas,
No ear has yet heard,
No eye has yet perceived,
Such joy.
There was something in that combination of intricacy and diminution that won my heart. And it reminded me at once of another plant-in-miniature I'd come across three months earlier: Marchantia polymorpha, the common liverwort. True, this species sits at the other end of the evolutionary record -- in fact, its direct forebears were probably the first true plants to invade the land half a billion years ago -- but it too conveys a sense of multum in parvo -- much significance contained in a small volume.
Reading these grand mountain manuscripts displayed through every vicissitude of heat and cold, calm and storm, upheaving volcanoes and down-grinding glaciers, we see that everything in Nature called destruction must be creation--a change from beauty to beauty.
Hauntingly reminiscent of Krishna's delivering the Big Picture to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, these words are also those of a man of intimate and sustained exploration, whose excellent grasp of natural history invested his ideas with a sense of authority and authenticity rarely encountered, at least in any nonfiction writer besides John McPhee, in modern times. For those of you who have not already encountered Muir and nature writing in its freshest morning light, I commend John Muir: Nature Writings (Library of America hardback, ISBN 1883011248) to the delight of your soul.
My Schoenorchis fragrans in bloom -- here magnified to more than three times its true size.
