BOOKSHELF 



By Laurence A. Marschall 



Chasing Spring: An American 

 Journey Through a Changing Season 



by Bruce Stutz 

 Scribner. 2006; $24.00 



At the beginning of this spring-chas- 

 ing journey, set in 2004, neither 

 Bruce Stutz nor his automobile is a good 

 bet to finish a three-month odyssey 

 across the continent and up to Alaska. 

 Stutz, a former editor-in-chief of this 

 magazine, has recovered recently from 

 surgery for a faulty heart valve. Dick 

 (named after Moby), a 1984 white 

 Chevy Impala, still has its 

 original valves, but 

 twenty years of gathering 

 dust in the garage of a 

 friend's mother have not 

 been kind. Both man and 

 car need to get on the road 

 again and get their fluids 

 running. And what bet- 

 ter way to revive than to 

 follow spring, the season 

 ot rebirth, as it sweeps 

 across North America? 



Stutz's journey is a 

 long one, though hardly 

 epochal. It begins on the 

 vernal equinox, north ot 

 New York City, and ends when the Sun 

 touches the horizon at midnight, at 

 summer solstice, on the Arctic Circle. 

 Along the way he stops to witness how 

 the environment is changing, and to 

 chat with scientists who study it. 



There are plenty of changes to pon- 

 der. While still close to his home in 

 Brooklyn, he accompanies a biologist 

 to a seasonal vernal pool, helping to sur- 

 vey frogs and salamanders. The experi- 

 ence gives him ground truth about the 

 threat suburban development poses to 

 the creatures' woodland habitats. Pass- 

 ing through North Carolina, he visits 

 an experimental forest where PVC 

 pipes, sixty feet high, circle seven large 

 stands of trees. To measure the effects of 

 greenhouse gases on forest growth, 

 holes drilled in the pipes blow varying 

 amounts of carbon dioxide or plain air 

 over each stand, while heldworkers as- 



siduously plot the effects on the trees. 



Two weeks later, in Oracle, Arizona, 

 Stutz visits Biosphere 2, a giant glass ter- 

 rarium. Completed in 1991, it houses a 

 700,000-gallon artificial ocean, a coral 

 reef, a rainforest, a mangrove swamp, and 

 a desert. Nowadays the place has fallen 

 on hard times. All the delicate elements 

 designed to balance its enclosed ecosys- 

 tem are limping along and beginning to 

 fail. Stutz suspects that Biosphere 2 may 

 unintentionally, in its decline, have be- 

 come the accurate microcosm for the 

 larger ecosystem it was intended to 

 model — Biosphere 1, planet Earth. 



Country lane leads the traveler through a field 

 of poppies in California. 



A' 



nd so it goes. Passing through 

 .Tornado Alley in Oklahoma, 

 Stutz continues on to the Colorado 

 Rockies, to join a group of environ- 

 mental scientists who gauge climate 

 warming by monitoring the depths of 

 spring snow. Then, in Oregon, he 

 meets a group of peripatetic hunter- 

 gatherers who make their living col- 

 lecting mushrooms for sale. They seem 

 to keep at it, in an uncertain market, 

 just because they like the outdoor life. 

 By early June, Stutz and Dick have 

 reached Glacier National Park, where 

 the largest of the huge ice rivers that 

 gave the place its name covers only 10 

 percent of what it covered in 1850. 



With Dick resting safely in a parking 

 lot at the Seattle airport, Stutz ends his 

 journey in the Arctic National Wild- 

 life Refuge. That's about as far north as 

 one can get in the United States. Glad 



to be there as the last rays of vernal sun 

 kiss the thawing permafrost, Stutz re- 

 alizes that he's come through a season 

 of change, in life as well as on Earth, 

 and that many of the places he's visited 

 he will probably not see again. 



Armchair travelers who join Stutz 

 through this pleasantjournal will be glad 

 they came along, but they, like the au- 

 thor, may also share his unease with the 

 changes that are not merely seasonal, but 

 long-term. Too many changes seem 

 wrought, m part, by inattentive stew- 

 ardship. "What will your and my chil- 

 dren's and grandchildren's springs be 

 like?" he asks at the end. "Will (our chil- 

 dren] be able to head out in spring to 

 recover their hearts?" 



Parenting for Primates 

 by Harriet J. Smith 

 Harvard University Press, 2006; 

 $29.95 



Dear Harriet: 



My son Carl, who is eight, just can 't seem 

 to sleep alone. It's gotten worse since Cindy, 

 my youngest, was born. Needless to say, I 

 have to keep Cindy close, since she's suck- 

 ling, but Carl keeps interfering, snuggling 

 up to us every night when we need time to 

 ourselves. Wlxat should I do to get him to 

 grow up and let us rest in peace? 



[Signed] Cara [her mark] 



Dear Cam: 



Carl is just feeling a natural anxiety at be- 

 ing weaned from co-sleeping. Build your- 

 self another nest. When it's done, bed down 

 in that old nest, and once Carl's asleep, 

 move with Cindy to the new nest. Carl 

 may be upset, but after you've repeatedly 

 left him alone in the old nest, he'll get the 

 idea. He may even decide to build his own 

 nest. It's worked for other orangutans, in 

 my experience, and it will be good prepa- 

 ration for his adolescence, when you in- 

 evitably kick him out! 



Yours groomingly, Harriet 



Of all the primates, people have by 

 far the most complex and most 

 enduring relations with their offspring. 

 Yet we humans share more than just a 



\ NATURAL HISTORY April 2006 



