Our nature find of the year (book review)

The Long Ago Lake: A Childs Book of Nature Lore and Crafts, by Marne Wilkins, illustrated by Martha Weston.  ISBN 0-684-15614-8

The copy we found at the thrift store is the Sierra Club edition from 1978, but there is a 1990 paperback reprint with a different cover.

"Sometimes it is hard to see what you look at.  In the out-of-doors, it is so important that sometimes it not only saves you a whole lot of trouble, but maybe even your life."

This book is unique. It's somewhat like Jim Arnosky's Secrets of a Wildlife Watcher, somewhat like a Scout handbook, but with stories of a 1930's childhood thrown in  Imagine that you have a groovy grandma who loves to spend long rambling afternoons with you, who tells you equally rambling stories about stuff that happened fifty years ago, who can show you how to make everything from a wooden spoon to a pine needle basket to a rope swing, and who knows the names of just about everything that wiggles, flies or grows around you.  If you can't find such a grandma (or grandpa), this book comes pretty close.  There are no photographs--just lots and lots of diagrams, and also black and white drawings illustrating her stories.

A sample of the writing:

"Tracks and nests are storytellers if we can see what we look at.  Meadows have hundreds and hundreds of living places in them, and if you sit still and look closely, you'll almost lose count of the animal villages and houses you can see.  Start with anthills, gopher towns, and spider and insect caves.  Next count the mice nests [sorry, DHM] and snake holes and badger burrows and rabbit forms and ground nests belonging to birds.

"It gives me the shivers when I see dune buggies or motorcycles zipping through meadows and deserts instead of on designated trails.  I know the drivers can't see such things as the mother kildeer running away, limping, to lead intruders away from her young in their nest.  A week later that same elegant lady bird strides proudly along with her young who look like minature striped fluff balls on toothpick legs teetering along behind her.  Well, no one who had seen her would wreck her house, I'm sure.  But her nest is just a simple saucer shape, open and exposed among pebbles and rocky places.  It is hard to see and so easy to destroy."

The book is occasionally very blunt about life, death, and our relationships with the natural world.

"I very often find a bird that has died for some unknown reason, and I have learned how to preserve them.  My first effort was the result of thinking I wanted to become a great surgeon.  I found a dead owl at the foot of a huge pine tree and dissected it with a pair of crude kitchen scissors.  My father was very cross and told me I had no right to do that to the owl, dead or alive.  He was right.  I'd only made a bad job and didn't learn anything, except that owls have more feathers than anything else.  Eventually I found someone who could teach me.  As with so many crafts, I discovered the main ingredients for doing a good job were patience, practice, and the proper tools."

The author also shares her reminiscences about some Chippewa boys that she knew during those long-ago summers.  I'm not sure how politically correct her stories are, so please be forewarned about this; she seems to just tell things as she remembers them. [UPDATE: I've also noticed a couple of other places that you may want to skip; for instance,  a paragraph about evil spirits being stored in baskets.]

"The Chippewa boys were such good shots that one day my aunt asked them if they would get a bunch of bullfrogs for us.  The boys were enthusiastic and started off toward the bogs.  Suddenly, one of them came back and asked my aunt why she wanted the frogs.  She said, 'To eat, of course.' To our surprise, the boy turned slightly green, and his eyes practically popped out of his head.  He said, 'Well! I've heard of people who eat snakes and frogs, but I've never seen one before!' And away he ran.

"The boys not only refused to bring any frogs, but they didn't come to visit for a few days, either.  When they did, one of them happened to shoot a chipmunk but only wounded it.  Then it was our turn to be upset.  We made a box for it and nursed it until its broken leg was well.  My dad explained to us all that not everybody values life in the same ways.  He said that it was all right to be different from each other sometimes.  Later, when the chipmunk bit me instead of the food I offered it, I didn't feel so different from the Chippewas."

Worth looking for! There are currently quite a few inexpensive copies listed on abebooks.com, or you might be able to find it in a library.