Baxter Troutman, Spirit of the Valley

1. chapter outline
1. Prologue
   1. Science
      1. Appalled at ignorance of the workings of my environment
      2. Pull things apart
   2. Mythology, culture, language, myth
      1. Vs. Dull accumulations of fact--"murder to dissect"
      2. Large syntheses--broad cultural continuums--style of book; continuums
   3. Marriage: soul and rationality
   1. Footnotes and bibliography contrast informal style
   2. structure of chapters is associational and logical
   3. textbook and memoir--the external world and the I; the mind and heart
   4. How is science similar to "poetry"?--an explanation--an account, a set of connections, making sense--the narrative of evolution--the why--back to the bible; a human imposition on the randomness of the universe. Science takes things apart, but also, like history, creates continuums--nothing more so than theory of evolution or the kind of science practised by Wilson that unites evolution and culture. But that's what she is doing as a student of Wilson (9-10)
   5. Theme of Expostulation and Reply and The Tables Turned--synthesis of the opposition there
2. Introd--The Valley
1. Mood and fog in Morro Bay-- journal and journey--escape--Walking; freedom, departure; come away
   1. Personified and intensified: miasma, mildew, shroud; cant see
   2. Clammy grasp; wizard of Oz; Strong arms of sun
   3. Prominent presence of "I"
   4. crucified oaks--warning [as in spartacus]--leading to resurrection?
   5. solitude
2. As companion--establishes territory--dog as bit of nature
   1. What's dog, named Mick, doing in each chapter
3. Buddhist/Taoist connection of things reinforced throughout--inexhaustibility of nature
   1. theme of inexhaustibility--things to write about, see and learn--plenitude of this place by the side of the road (12)
   2. "the spirit of the valley never dies...use it and you will never wear it out"--immortality also included
1. California named as place--sense of place --[Muir, Austin]
   1. Navaho story--three dawns; emphasis on time structure--shape shifting indefinable period; see you tonight to stars 13--time of day emphasized. Mythic framework for the book of science and mythology (14)
   2. Surprise of Mick eating groundsquirrel--roadkill--death and life
   3. Somnolent, dreamy...back in time to myths and history of California--etymology back to heat...hot furnace
   4. California and dreaming--Many myths
      1. History of state is myth of Amazons--hotland--etymology
      2. Humor of roadkill and amazons--tossed to hungry creatures
      3. Theme of killing for natural reasons
      4. Story of Cortes--history--Spanish conquerors searching for paradise
      5. California dreaming--gold, Hollywood gold=dream gold
      6. California is natural paradise--eden--because of most endemic species
      7. The land encompasses all species and all its human history--science and poetry=history and myth
   5. Many forms of paradise

1. Biophilia
   1. Breakfast--Making coffee is transition to aesthetics
   2. Stack of books, cup of coffee--alien
   3. Brewer description from 1869--loving the scenery--reflection on experience of admiring a landscape
      1. Every cell relaxes, floating in the fluid mirror of my gaze--meditative contentment--thoreau, wordsworth, meditation
   4. Biophilia experience
   5. Gene-Culture coevolution--evolutionary explanation--biophobia--dogs and snakes
      1. poetry and science; culture and biology--coevolution (science as mythic)
   6. Landscape preferences for open, parklike spaces [pastoral]
      1. This has survival value perhaps--not woods
      2. Keep away from snakes and spiders in paradise
      3. Animal aversions: dogs like people fear snakes
      4. Aesthetics and emotional preferences have evolutionary explanation
   7. Different animals landscape preferences--based on survival
   8. Present day culture insulates us from natural environment--both fears and aversions
   9. Attitudes created by adaptation to previous conditions are obsolete, e.g. good deer and bad mt. lions--need for change to adapt to modern conditions--i.e. we need to readapt
2. Steinbeck--science to art--and strong emotion: fear to comfort
   1. Coffee enjoyment as form of biophilic adaptation--associated with regularity, order, leisure
   2. Sacrifice and renewal theme.
   3. Fears and phobias connect us to biology
   4. Link to author in same place--dialogue with writer; shared anxiety over mountains and night
   5. "long and stretching connections to this world 25...landscape tethers me to past, present and future worlds." Central theme...alone but not lonely...land full of ghosts." Connection to the dead; theme of death
   6. Alone but not lonely--solitude--connect to coffee and books; solitude and death. Culture and evolution are our links to the dead and the not yet living
3. Annual Grasses [science] --structure of double chapters
   1. Dog gets foxtail--an expensive inconvenience--annual grasses and the functions of foxtails
   2. Name: ripgut brome--Hordeum and Bromus--gruesome name
   3. Soft first, then become hard and attach
   4. Use of latin name; scientific exposition
   5. How they attach to disseminators; diagram
      1. Glumes protect seeds; barbed to protect from predators
      2. Locomotion to avoid competition with parent
      3. They can travel 10000 years and miles back to Iraq--the interconnection
4. More Annual Grasses [history and myth and philosophy--human culture] 10, 000 year epic history
   1. Source of seeds--travel through dog and her pants; travel from Iraq
   2. Origins of culture in Agriculture
   3. Seeds are durable
   4. Telling history/story/myth of the migration of seeds to California through the bulls--Cortez in 1520; Portola in 1720
   5. Same mediterranean climate of Iraq and Spain
   6. Her relation to the woman planting seeds in Iraq--her link to seed; her place in long temporal processes--individual, species, lineage--fundamental similarity in physique and in motivations
   7. Both owe existence to natural habitat
   8. seeing self as components of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen; also as essential part of larger pattern of evolution.
   9. Fate of seed and person bound up together--she and seed are part of immense journey "through meandering course of time"
5. Bluebirds and Sky[science]
   1. what the bluebirds are doing with earwig--juveniles; hears titmouse--close observation
   2. illusory nature of blue--Tyndall effect--why sky is blue--because blue wavelengths only ones not absorbed by particles in air--color is wavelength not absorbed but reflected
   3. mnemonic for color
   4. Hollow dead cells of bluebird feathers reflect blue light; red feathers are "real" colors [physics here remains obscure]
   5. Humans have given bluebirds "good' qualities" but play "The Blue Bird" by Maeterlinck is about the folly of seeking happiness outside ourselves [why mentioned?]
   6. Song about return of bluebirds in WW2 in England was illusory--not true bluebirds [probably about RAF]--used to create hope and optimism--a positive illusion
   7. Leads to thoughts of war--she whistles like bluebird, hoping to keep away war--illusory blue bird of happiness
      1. happiness is illusory; happiness outside the self is illusory; keeping away war is illusory? Whistle tune of bluebird (38)
6. Going Native
   1. Crossing fences--duck under barbed wire
   2. Likes finding bunch grasses, the natives, rather than trespassers
      1. Deeper root systems--took away from above ground production and took time; got to deeper groundwater
      2. Didn’t produce as many seeds and when it was dry produced no seeds and saved energy for their own growth and maintenance
      3. Non-natives are opportunistic--filled in spaces between bunch grasses
      4. Surface root systems stole moisture from deeper perennial roots
      5. Cattle preferred sweeter natives which didn’t get time to produce more seeds
   3. Valley oak, quercus lobata--etymology--live 250 years; leaves for words and wind to give them voice--metaphor; myth
      1. Loss of oaks--charcoal industry, creating more pasturage, grazing--new ones not growing
      2. Sprawl--subdivision kills trees and named Happy Oaks
      3. Destroying what attracted us
      4. Annual grasses take up water from baby oaks
      5. Deer browse oak shoots, not enough mountain lions
      6. Not enough carnivores make rodent population swell, which take up acorns, especially ground squirrels which eat roots
      7. Birds depend on these trees
   4. Nature moves slowly and methodically correcting its problems as it goes. Humans often behave in just the opposite manner, moving quicky and erratically. Humans can learn from the landscape--that's where their brains were assembled (p.44 Wilson's big ideas) The pattern of evolution--"correcting problems." Slow, progressive movement, vs. fast erratic movement. Is this viable idea?
7. Acorns Ch. 8 [chapter transition--she's a non-native intruder p. 45]
   1. Eating salami and provolone for lunch--feeling privileged--theme of bounty, plenitude, seeds--inexhaustibility
   2. Natives saved the Spanish colonists with pine nuts and acorn mush
   3. How did they learn: centuries of trial and error [culture and evolution]. Native indians vs. non-native Europeans
   4. Indian Myth of acorns
      1. Different species with different hats
   5. Settlers in new environments often starve until they get to know the gifts of the land [Theme]
   6. Indians generous to those who destroy them [closer connection to nature]
   7. Method of grinding acorns
   8. John Muir took acorn bread
   9. Different species ripen acorns at different times of year
   10. Family of six Salinan indians needed 2100 lbs. Of acorns per year
8. Acorn Woodpeckers-- 11:00 am
1. After lunch lazing--a necessity in the heat for all creatures--connection
   1. All caught in rhythm of seasons
   2. Stillness of landscape
   3. Moving from people as acorn consumers to birds
2. Etymology of name--
   1. Melanerpes formicivorus, blackcreeping anteater
   2. Carpintero--carpinter
   3. Acorn Woodpecker
3. Behavior
   1. Slam into wood at 650 cm/sec
4. Physics of shock absorption:
   1. Brain is small massed in larger skull
   2. Hollow air spaces instead of brain fluid
   3. Force of blow delivered below brain case
   4. Frontal bones tuck under bill
   5. Bill is straight sharp and self-sharpening
   6. Muscle tissue around skull absorbs shock
5. Woodpecker's tongue
   1. Similarity and difference from human tongues--relation
   2. Three different positions; complex mechanism
6. Woodpecker associations--Pliny
   1. Eating Grubs
      1. Falsely attributed to woodpecker
      2. Diet: her preference for cow--attributable to abundance of warm-blooded mammals for Anglo Saxons
   2. Myths:
      1. woodpecker bill wards off bites from insects
      2. Picus, Roman king: refused to accede to Circe's advances, she turned him into woodpecker who banged his head against tree from frustration of not finding his beloved
      3. Christian story: Jesus gets mad at woman for not giving him big enough bread and turns her to woodpecker who flies up chimney and gets covered with soot
      4. What do stories have in common: deity denied and in vengeance creates woodpeckers
      5. Mythologies borrowing from one another--archetypal theory of mythology postulating unities--falling from grace and then salvation and redemption. What about the theme of denying deity; distinctions like dusk--the middle morning of the first chapter
      6. Why war, when cultures are so closely intertwined [Pagan and Christian] 54
         1. Universals in mythology
         2. Connections: foxtail and mesopotamia, acorn woodpecker to romans and christians, acorns to Salinans
         3. Chaos and darkness, light and creation; falling from grace, saviors and redemption
      7. Mingle and blend like dusk
   3. Midpoint of book: Coming into the Valley is balm from feeling too separate from the world
      1. Valley is blanket woven with threads of time and land, died in a wash of living things, decorated with history
      2. I am part of everything and everything is a part of me (54)
9. Early Biology
   1. Afternoon--sun past zenith--time of day for mocking mythology
   2. Reading history of Science by Sarton--his narrative
      1. Connecting ancient to modern science
      2. Basis in Egypt and Babylonia
      3. Greeks were first scientists--
         1. gods were not necessarily causes
         2. nature was self-sufficient: things growing, reproducing and dying
      4. logical reasoning as art form--Socrates and Plato
      5. applying logic to nature--Aristotle
      6. Science didnt go any further under roman empire (?)
      7. Christianity--dont study nature, study God; science languishes for 1000 years
      8. Mocking the science of the bestiaries--anti-mythological
      9. Fox seen falsely as cunning by Dante, Chaucer, Machiavelli, Shakespeare
   3. Transition to cunning fox now on edge of distinction. 57
10. San Joaquin Kit Fox--endangered species act
    1. Transition to science: Personal-professional: biologist monitoring kit foxes
    2. Red foxes imported to support English passion for fox hunting; gray fox is native
    3. Kit fox small weighs less than seven lbs.
    4. Rarely seen
    5. Nocturnal, like most terrestial predatory mammals in warm or temperate climates to escape heat
    6. Burrowing during the day--always cool in burrows
    7. NB: Wendell Berry, Gary Snyder, Caren, Baxter--all looking for foxes in burrows
    8. Fox adaptable and surviving
       1. Moving to San Luis county because of pressure in native habitat of Valley--migration as adapatation--human and all life
       2. Adapting to niche pressure by becoming diurnal instead of nocturnal--Darwin in action; an awed witness (p. 61)
    9. Pressure to survive breeds adaptability; too much stress leads to failure to breed--extinctions: animal and indian
    10. Endangered Species act now protects them
        1. Expensive for people
        2. Prevents farmers from killing squirrels
        3. Most ranchers want to eradicate the whole population
        4. Squirrel infestation due to farming loosening the soil and loss of natural predators--the interplay and interconnection of factors--humans in their haste, create conditions that lead to their harm, but then attributed to other species 62
        5. Debilitating onslaught of stresses brings species to knees
        6. Endangered species act is referee--fight analogy
        7. Appeal to fairness--Professional Advocacy leading to personal narrative
11. 5052--the individual fox--a story-telling chapter; beginning, middle and end --is this science or mythology?
    1. continues previous chapter
    2. individuation by number--ear tags
    3. methods of biological survey to determine whether and why numbers are decreasing
    4. personal involvement--rarity provides little handling experience
    5. diction emphasizing decline--abysmally low, surreptitious gloom, empty traps--and suspense
    6. Climactic moment--description of finding holding, releasing and getting bitten by 5052--heightened drama in this chapter created by detail and bodily harm
    7. Scarring remains memorably--both are tagged; experience of being drawn together, with a tagline p. 67
12. Lightning--ch. 13
    1. Heat of day--112 degrees--scar on tree provides transition--chainsaw
    2. transition to imagining rainstorms
    3. Myth of female, light rain vs. male thunderstorm rain--raire
    4. Scientific explanation of lightning--hard to follow
    5. Mythological connection between oak and lightning--Zeus and Jupiter
    6. Scientific explanation of "conductive pathway" now abandoned
    7. Lightning hits church towers and blows up gunpowder stored there; people still keep their old self-destructive superstitious beliefs--superstition vs. science
13. Western Fence Lizards--taxonomy
    1. She's irritated by sounds of ground squirrels; understands people wanting to pick them off with .22
    2. Sounds catalogued; lizards fall
    3. Latin name leads to discussion of taxonomy; Greek and Roman names, which lead back to mythology; irritation as at ground squirrels
       1. History of science: evolution of culture and knowledge; ancestors still present; genealogy--past, present future
       2. Taxons are groupings; progressive narrowing--menemonic: King Phillip Came Over For Good Sex (!)=kingdom, phylum, class, order family, genus, species
       3. Phylum: chordata or vertebrates
       4. Class: Reptilia
       5. Order: Sauria
       6. Family: Iguanidae
       7. Genus and Species: Sceloporus occidentalis
       8. Uses of taxonomy--field guide
    4. Lizards vs. Snakes
       1. Lizards are much more like us
       2. Four feet, eyelids, rounde tongues
       3. Associated with sunshine and light
       4. Biophilia and biophobia--superstition today
       5. Dislike for creeping things
    5. Blue bellies
       1. She and dog blend in--her jeans and sky; dog and grass 79
       2. Heat makes for her spacing out; also taxonomic realtionships with other creatures
       3. Vision experience--climax of nothingness--"emerging from a place within myself, vastly still and silent, that I didn’t even know I had." (79) Lizard consciousness
       4. Contrast to "5052"--scar of individuality; active drama
14. Datura
    1. Time change--shadows begin their stretch; they need a stretch--more connection. Mick and I saunter
    2. Encounter with Drilling--Jim Muller and sons; taxonomic reasoning
       1. Uses bird watching as her disguise
       2. What's this about, if anything
    3. Jimson weed--jamestown etymology[etymology and evolution]…other names: Devils apple
    4. Dangerous cheap high…pharmacology: three alkaloids
       1. Indians used to relieve asthma
       2. Used today as sedative--depresses cerebral cortex and reduce motion sickness
       3. Used to produce hallucinations [Castaneda]
    5. Medicine vs. religion--superstition
       1. Pagan vs. Christian
       2. Church stopped medical research
       3. Sacrifice of those who experimented with drugs by trial and error
       4. Passed down gift of healing medicines, including aspirin, from indians--ethnopharmacology
       5. Persecution of healers as witches, especially women--Servetus burned alive
       6. Herbal traditions--plant known by Dioscurides--connects her to past--Blake Auguries of Innocence p. 88
          1. Powerful quote--see a world in a grain of sand/And a Heaven in a wild flower/infinity in palm of your hand/ eternity in an hour
             1. "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thru' narrow chinks of his cavern."
          2. More seed imagery--"seeds would take root..."
          3. Matthew 13:
15. Band-Tailed Pigeons--ch. 16
    1. Walk down road
    2. Pigeons are interchangeable with doves: scientific traits
    3. Links to acorn woodpeckers as oakwoodland residents and mythologicals
    4. Doves and Mythology
       1. Deucalion and Phyrra [Greek] and Noah [Christian]
       2. Astarte/ Venus--Jesus/Holy Spirit
    5. Social birds--tend to flock; easy to hunt
    6. Passenger pigeon hunted to extinction--bag limits protect these--Endangered species
    7. Cycles of population extinctions and species succession--Ecclesiastes the Buddhist p.91
    8. Succession of human species from homo erectus to homo sapiens--what will come next…the long view.
16. Oak Galls and Gall wasps
    1. Still intense heat
       1. Wind and dust devils
    2. Description of oak gall
       1. Explanation of cause--cecidologists
    3. Wasps and parthenogenesis--evolutionary improvisation--bad sides of asexual reproduction
    4. Two kinds of stimuli to oak produce specialized tissues to cover and isolate irritatnt and provide a home for the wasps
    5. Honeydew produced by wasps attracts bees and ants which attract birds [everything based on predation--acceptance of death]
    6. Oaks produce tannins as defense; ground squirrels develop salivary protein to bind with tannins--like indians washing acorns--processing and washing out tannins--Co-evolution--interconnection
    7. She gets beer from cooler--enjoying coolth in heat
    8. Dog's dinner dance--joy over dinner--best things in life are simple and shared with animals 97
    9. Elemental reverence; almost painful awareness of just how sweet, how enduring life is.
    10. Pours first sip to the ground--another climactic moment 97
17. California Ground Squirrels
    1. Sunset frees her to leave shelter of oak
    2. Ground squirrels--very unpopular today, though relied upon by natives--
    3. spermophilus-seed lover
    4. Serious pests in 1800s
       1. Bounty on tails; mandatory killing policy, free poisoned bait, 22 M killed
       2. Actually controlled by plague
       3. Education to hate them--DofA "instill a desire to eliminate"--a new superstition--biophobia; Mistaken like others
    5. Defense of Ground squirrel
       1. They control weeds
       2. In balanced community not much damage is done
       3. Integral function in healthy landscape
       4. Crucial food source for birds and reptiles
       5. Aerate dense soils
       6. Perfectly adapted to their role
18. Titmice and magpies
    1. Afternoon and evening blend
    2. Birds become active between day and night--bird calls, claiming space…singing gratitude--cf. Oak moth
    3. Titmice and magpies as indicator species
    4. Their song
    5. Magpies--endemic; reconstructing their evolution
       1. Story about gene encoding bill color…speculation 109
       2. Switch to Ovid's version--the singing contest between Pierus sisters and muses--they scold and fuss then transformed by goddess
19. Mistletoe and Druid
    1. Nighttime--gothic atmosphere
       1. Coyotes lingering; sunset
       2. Murky and lurky
       3. Sear animal flesh--she and dog in savage ritual 112
    2. Druidic memories; oak men and human sacrifices--worshipped spirits in oak trees
       1. Priests of Celts; sacred wisdom
       2. Celebration of paganism 113--gods in the world; animism
       3. Thunder and oaks combined like for Salinans
       4. Priests become poets and bards--cf. Blake
       5. Praying for prosperity--to oaks 114
       6. Oaks favored by gods; struck by lightning; carried the power of the sun
    3. Mistletoe--Concentration of the sun
       1. Magic qualities: no roots; semenlike substance, golden bough was the sun [Frasier, Vergil]--reverence for mistletoe
       2. Christian use of mistletoe for fertility at Xmas and Yule log cake, evolved from Celtic oak; solstice bonfires.
       3. Mythological apotheosis
       4. Christian vs. pagan, christian from pagan 116
20. Scorpio--Ch. 21
    1. Oak coals wink--night sky
    2. Scorpio crawling--Ancient persians and egyptians had same name for it--overcoming time
    3. Summer Scorpio; winter Orion--greek myth of orion and scorpio being kept separate
    4. Light from these stars rested on heads of Socrates and Pliny, Jesus and Paganorum, passenger pigeons--all extinct
    5. Accepting her own death--scorpio is death and love symbol; more lizard…people are ephemeral but the stars will remain
    6. I have come to the valley…sky has released me…I am in the pounding heart of eternity somewhere between heaven and earth. 119
21. Epilogue like Prologue
    1. Final image of the Marriage of science and mythology--like Revelation
    2. Parable about honeymoon--in yosemite--scientist and poet--classifying lizard as new species--poet noticing symbol of resurrection and recreation, sunshine and renewal
    3. An ecological, symbiotic relationship
    4. Where's the poem about the lizard
    5. Value of tradition--keeping connection to the past
2. class 2
1. Start with wordsworth--the tables turned--emerson
2. What is ecology--ecolit--ecological mythology
3. How did she write it; history of book
4. Her models
5. why pick specific natural objects and not others--red-tailed hawk, the coyote, geology
6. Her structures and transitions
7. Title and theme
   1. tough-minded women: mary austin, mary oliver, life and death
8. Individual essays
9. Model for essays--about 1200 words
11. What's next
12. What's happening with Kit fox?