Notes from my Knapsack 4-28-22

Notes from my Knapsack 4-28-22
Jeff Gill

The Natural History of Granville
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In 1789, an Anglican priest serving in a small rural community in the south of England called Selborne published a book.

It had the straightforward title "The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne," and with the help of his brother in London, Gilbert White offered up what had been in part a series of letters he'd written to fellow naturalists in London and Wales. In fact, some of the letters were never sent as such, but White used letters he had written and sent as a literary device, a framing tool for over a hundred installments in the natural history portion and a few dozen about the antiquities of his district in Hampshire.

Some have said that Gilbert White helped create what we call today "ecology," and his acute awareness of a local environment, along with precise observations, recorded over time, contributed to much of the evolutionary and environmental science that was to follow in the 19th century.

And for subsequent generations, "The Natural History of Selborne" became a benchmark for the growing field of nature writing. The "antiquities" as a second volume often were left off, and "The Natural History" has not gone out of print for over 230 years. Selborne has changed, but not drastically; what has changed is the environment, and Gilbert White started a sequence of both precise and poetic observations which can be added to more modern scientific data for modern climate change evaluations.

If you've lived in a particular place for any amount of time, you have your own "natural history" in the back of your mind. Did the daffodils come up earlier this year than previous blossoms? When did you start seeing sparrows nesting, and is it in the same bush as last year? How many snows after the forsythia? Basically, that's what Gilbert White was up to, just in greater detail.

I've often wished since we moved to the village in 2004 that I'd kept a sort of naturalist's calendar, as did White, to record on paper or in pixels, not just in unreliable memory, when certain trees first budded out, bulbs sprouted, birds returned, frost last struck (in our part of Ohio, Mother's Day in general and May 15 more specifically is considered our frost free date). I'm just not that disciplined.

What the recent news of development on our western borders has made me think (among other things) about is how we have a great deal of natural resource that we're about to lose, how our environment is likely to change as habitat is reduced, and how species will no doubt adapt or move on, increase or decrease. Modern development has been bad for some wetland creatures, for instance, but raccoons thrive (that's why they call them trash pandas, after all.

All of which has me thinking about working on "A Natural History of Granville." We live in a dynamic ecosystem which has already seen great changes in the last two hundred years (look up "The Famous Wolf Hunt" of 1823 in Harrison Township online). Perhaps it's time to start recording our present landscape before it becomes what was.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's kind of into the idea of a parson-naturalist. Tell him how you observe the wildlife in your domestic settings at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.