Taller than the Trees

A red-tailed hawk, two French volcanologists, and Dr. K walk into a bar...

I must confess: I was not a great science student. I didn’t have a facility for biology or chemistry the way I did for the humanities, so there was never even a remote chance that I would go to medical school or become a scientist of any kind.

But my inability to comprehend scientific concepts hasn’t stopped me from developing an appreciation for the natural world. One of the great pleasures of moving back to New Haven in 2020 was having easy access to walks and hikes in East Rock Park, just down the street from my house. In fact, those opportunities to burn off energy and clear my head in the woods were downright essential when anxiousness from the pandemic or stress from my job threatened to overwhelm me that summer and beyond.

So it was with great pleasure this past week that I happened to engage with works that centered on the natural world and how humans interact with it. I may not fully understand some scientific concepts, but I can certainly dig stories involving nature. I hope you find these discoveries pleasing, too.

(By the way, this week’s headline was inspired by a Thoreau line that I thought was apt: “I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.”)

On to the list…

---

The Best…

…Book I Read This Week

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us (Random House, 2022), by Ed Yong

When I work on my laptop, I often sit by a bank of south-facing windows on the ground floor of my house. I like to set up there because I enjoy looking through those windows to see the flora and fauna in my backyard (it’s a small urban yard, but it’s pretty nice).

In terms of fauna, I usually see squirrels running and jumping around like lunatics, plus an array of birds flapping about, including robins, blue jays, cardinals, and the occasional Baltimore oriole, all of which, incidentally, inspired the names of major league baseball teams (don’t forget about the Brooklyn Robins of 1914-31, predecessors of the Dodgers). But it was a rare treat a few days ago, when I looked outside and saw a large red-tailed hawk, nobly sitting atop the bare branch of a tree in my yard.

I had seen one of these hawks in East Rock Park a few months ago while on a hike with friend AC. But my perspective had changed rather dramatically since then, because in between the two sightings, I had read An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, by Ed Yong.

The book is a fascinating and illuminating look at the way animals perceive the world through their senses — which is almost always quite different from the way we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste our world. Before I read this book, when I glimpsed that first hawk, I would have assumed that the bird saw colors in the park the same way that I did, tasted food the same way that I did, heard sounds the same way that I did. I am, after all, a human (species: homo sapien-narcissist).

But Yong, a Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer, explains that animals all live in their own “perceptual world,” that they sense and experience their surroundings in various unique ways. He borrows the term Umwelt to refer to this perceptual world, and he tells stories about the different Umwelten that scientists have uncovered in a wide variety of species and habitats. So now having read the book, when I noticed the hawk in my yard (pictured below), I had a greater appreciation for the bird’s distinctive senses. And I felt more like a part of nature rather than a true homo sapien-narcissist.

The scientists who've discovered this stuff — true obsessives — are miraculous to me. They seem to study purely for the sake of answering questions, and exist, unlike most of us, outside the insatiable needs and demands of capitalism. (I’m sure research like this could not be done without public funds, private fundraising dollars or other sources that are very much part of our economic system. But on the surface, anyway, there is an appealing purity to their work.)

Some concepts in the book were too complicated for a remedial science student like me to comprehend. And some sections can get a bit dense. But Yong consciously refrains from staying in those rabbit holes or thick forests for too long. His writing is infused with a sense of wonder that makes the book a pleasure to experience. I’m glad it — as well as my new fine-feathered friend — found its way into my Umwelt.

Hawk photo: Daniel Fleschner

---

…Documentary I Watched This Week

Fire of Love (2022) — Directed by Sara Dosa
Streaming on Disney+ (in the National Geographic section)

I’ve visited three volcanoes in my life. As I stood on the edge of each one, looking into their craters, I couldn’t help but wonder: What would happen if it started erupting right now? Would I be killed instantly, standing here? Would I be able to outrun the lava? Am I wearing the right shoes for this? Should I be stretching my hamstrings? 

Katia and Maurice Krafft, a married pair of French volcanologists, didn’t ask those questions. I can safely assume this because when volcanic eruptions were underway anywhere in the world, they ran toward them. They didn’t ask themselves the questions of petty bourgeois travelers. No, they just grabbed their cameras, some provisions, a tent, a pair of metallic outfits that resembled spacesuits (no big deal), and headed for the burning ash clouds and lava.

Their story is told in Fire of Love, a 2022 documentary that consists almost entirely of footage and images they shot at various volcanoes in the 1970s, ’80s, and early-’90s. This footage is beautiful, terrifying, awe-inspiring. And their relationship — built on mutual love and volcanic obsession — is unique. Knowing that any day on these molten rocks could be their last, Katia and Maurice were as philosophical as they were French (and they were oh so French). This film, directed by Sara Dosa, does utter justice to their lives, and has been nominated for an Academy Award.

Click here to see the trailer.

(For further viewing, Werner Herzog himself directed something of a companion film, The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft, a dreamy, musical ode to the couple. Like Fire of Love, it was also released last year and is available on Disney+.)

---

…Surfing Article I Read This Week

“Off Diamond Head,” by William Finnegan — The New Yorker, May 25, 2015

All of this thinking about nature prompted me to revisit this New Yorker story from 2015. I remember reading it when it came out and appreciated not only William Finnegan’s young obsession with surfing but also the depiction of his uneasy adolescent integration when he, at age 13, was transplanted with his family from California to Hawaii.

Finnegan would expand on this story — and his obsession with riding waves — in his Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life (2016), a book that I highly recommend if you’re interested in memoirs, surfing, and/or great travel stories.

Finnegan’s writing helped inspire me to try three different outdoor adventure activities while I visited Australia in 2019. I mean, when in Rome, right?

Scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef and skydiving in the Outback near Uluru were both smashing successes.

For my surfing adventure in Byron Bay, I took an introductory class, during which I got up on my very first try. Hey, I must be a natural!

I then proceeded to fail on every single successive attempt for the rest of the morning. In fact, I didn’t even technically make it to the end of class before formally retiring from the sport, concerned that if I kept going, my back might not last the six more weeks required at that point to reach my 40th birthday. That’s it for me, folks!

I have no regrets about the one and only surfing expedition of my life, and I’m more than content now to experience the sport through the eyes of great storytellers like William Finnegan rather than through my own.

---

…Physics-Defying Video I Saw This Week

MetsRewind @metsrewind

1985 @Mets: The average attendance for hoem games at Shea Stadium was 34,005. In the 18 starts Dwight Gooden made at home that season, the @Mets average attendance was 40,072. #LGM

One last item from the world of science: Dwight Gooden, the first pitcher I ever loved, seemed to defy the laws of physics with his curveball, an Uncle Charlie so regal it was dubbed Lord Charles. (For you physicists out there, don’t bother trying to explain the science behind the pitch to me. I didn’t take physics, and as established earlier, I won’t understand what you’re talking about.)

This video is a mash-up of ridiculous Dr. K curveballs from 1985, one of the most dominant pitching seasons in major league history. Man, that pitch and that pitcher were great that year. Sigh.

---

One other non-science bonus thought:

I’m enjoying two new series that premiered this past week — Poker Face (on Peacock) and Shrinking (on Apple TV+). I’m not going to write about either in detail until I see how their full seasons unfold, but so far I’m having fun spending time with stars Natasha Lyonne and Jason Segal, respectively.