In Praise of Field Guides

 Whenever I head out into the great outdoors for an "adventure", I will usually pack one or more field guides with me.  By "adventure" I mean any excursion with the express purpose of observing nature, and by "field guide" I mean any manner of pocket-sized book that is helpful in identifying the things you will find in nature.  I can hear the collective eye-rolling from here.  "Oh Skeeter, they're like little bricks in your backpack; why carry the excess weight?" Or better yet, "Oh Skeeter, we've got modern apps on your phone for this; get with the times!"  

Please hear me out.

Part of why I love field guides so much is first a function of who I am, and second is a function of what I'm trying to do.

A little bit about who I am.  As a fifty-something at the time of this writing, it's pretty safe to say that I grew up in an analog world.  This world was pre-internet, pre-cell phone, and pre-digital anything.  I mean, yes, there were computers on board the space ships that were going up, and banks were converting their records over from paper to computer around that time.  But in day-to-day life, if you wanted to learn about something on your own, you had to look it up in a physical book.  Our school library was loaded with books of all sorts, and you even used a card catalog to find them.  When I was old enough to have pocket money, I would buy my own books, especially ones that I enjoyed checking out from the library over and over again.  One series of books I began to collect were known as "Golden Guides."  They were richly illustrated, as printing color photographs in books was rare and expensive in those days.  The point here is, if I had a book in my hand, I could thumb through it and see, for example, hundreds of species of wildflowers, or in another book, hundreds of species of trees, all in one sitting.  It opened a world to me that wasn't some black box sitting in my pocket.  These books helped unlock a curiosity in me at a young age, because I learned about a world that I needed to go out and discover for myself.

A little bit about what I'm trying to do.  The idea of going on an outdoor adventure to study nature is but one aspect of any journey into a wood or meadow.  I might be going out there with the goal of exercise in mind.  I might be going out there just to clear my head.  Whatever the reasons, it's usually to unplug, and that's the operative word here.  Connecting with nature allows us a few moments in our day to disconnect from work, bills, tax filings, the news, social media drama, you name it.  I go outside to reduce my screen time as much as possible.  Granted, most cameras these days, either the one embedded in your phone, or a handy point-and-shoot camera, have a screen built into them.  Unless you're going to sit and sketch your findings, you're probably going to photograph them, and screens are therefore mostly unavoidable (unless you're the rare person who still uses film).  All this being said, any reduction in screen time is better than no reduction in screen time.  The benefit of this is that we learn to slow down a little bit more.  We engage with the world with our own eyes rather than a screen image of it.  This is how we actually connect with nature, by looking at it, smelling it, and sometimes even tasting it.  It's just you, your eyes, that wildflower, and the air between you and it.  

This is how we pause. This is how we rejuvinate ourselves.

Having said all of this, it's not like I don't use plant ID apps.  I just choose when and where to use them.

Let's say I'm out on the trail and I find a white wildflower I've never identified before.  I might have seen it a hundred times, but I might not know what species it is.  If the bugs aren't biting too fast, I might stop and snap a photo of it for later reference.  Then I might pull out a field guide that specializes in wildflowers.  I'd flip to the section on white flowers, and thumb through until I find a match.  I might then note this in a notebook and move on.  Suppose I don't find a match?  Well one of the drawbacks of printed field guides is that they are limited in the number of species they can contain in their 200 pages.  You're likely to only find the most common species in any given book.  So if  I come up short, I might look the plant up on something like PlantApp later using the photo that I took.  This way, I stay in the moment, and I remain as unplugged as I can while out on the trail.

Over the years, I've accumulated quite a collection of field guides.  I probably only bring no more than three with me on any given trip.  Sometimes I don't bring ANY books with me if my goals are more to do with covering ground than collecting photos of plants or trees.  But I have them, and they're an integral part of my library.  

Just a few of the many field guides in Skeeter's Library

The best part about field guides is that they have them for any age level.  Peterson puts out a series called "First Guides" which are designed for young people who are just starting out.  Golden Guides are still in production from St. Martin Press, and are perfect for beginners or seasoned adventurers of any age.  The Audubon Society has a series of thick field guides with extraordinary photography for the more advanced users.  If you're lucky, you might find one or two books that are specific to your area.

If you're finding that this sort of hobby is for you, consier investing in a couple books for yourself.  Focus on topics that you're most interested in.  It's a good way to enrich your experience and to invest in yourself.  Cheers and I'll see you in the next one.

Winter Survey

In my first few blog posts, I talked a bit about what I do, and in this blog I'm actually going to do what I've been talking about.  This will be a brief walk-through of a recent short outing to the woods behind our house.  I've probably done this a hundred times but this time I'm going to document it.

At the time of this writing, it's early January, and the ground is pretty much frozen up and snow is on it's way in a couple days.  I thought, this is a good time to take a look at the forest floor and see what's looking green while the big trees are asleep at the moment.  If you're looking for something to do in the winter, this is a fun activity, and all you need is a camera and a field guide or two to help with plant identification.  Optionally, you can also bring a notebook to log your findings.

For reference, I'm conducting this activity in Eastern Connecticut, in what's known as a "dry-mesic oak forest."  The area was lightly logged about 22 years ago and while there are many older trees between 50 and 75 years old, many are younger, between 5 and 25 years old, along with saplins and seedlings.  The area is not old growth by any means.  Many acres of former farmland reforested in the last 125 years or so.  The evidence of stone walls through the woods suggest this space was once cleared, perhaps for animal pasture.

Four low-growing evergreen plants

The first group of plants I found were small and low to the ground.  Most of these are familiar to me, but I actually don't know the names of all of them.  I consulted three different field guides to narrow in on what these are called.  Two of them with round-ish leaves were a little too close to call, so I used a plant identification app and later confirmed their findings with Google to get an ID on one of these.  It turns out that they're ALL wintergreens.  Going clockwise from the upper left, we have what I believe to be American Wintergreen, Teaberry, Spotted Wintergreen, and what I believe to be Shinleaf.  I'll probably need to look at the two on the left again in the spring to see how similar or different their flowers are, to make sure I'm not looking at two of the same species.

The teaberry (upper right) has small leaves, and they grow along the ground.  In the summer and fall, you can usually see their bright red berries.  They are definitely edible, and you can make a tea out of them, but please don't eat any wild berries until you are 100% sure of what you're looking at.

One Google image and three field guide photos to help ID these plants

Moving on, I spotted three different non-flowering plants.  You might remember this category of plants from high-school biology class, but if you don't, don't worry about it for now.  For the sake of this discussion, we're going to say that out behind our house are evergreen ferns, one very tiny baby fir tree, and plenty of moss-covered rocks.  I know the fern to be a Christmas fern.  I don't know my mosses, and that tiny tree may very well be a hemlock, but time will tell.

Some non-flowering plants from the forest floor

We can talk about the larger trees another time.

So just like that, I've identified most of the plants in our little forest that are still green during the winter.  I'm sure there are a few I missed, but these help give an idea of what's common in our area.  Other naturalists can use this to see how their area is similar or different.  If they live in our same ecoregion, this information will be useful for them.

As for me, I could spend hours poking around in the woods.  Many of these plants are like old friends to me.  I take a great deal of joy in knowing what's around me.  As I like to say, "the floor of the forest never disappoints."

I'm a big fan of field guides.  Since this exercise was done on our own property, I left the books inside and consulted them later.  When I go on an expedition away from home, I'll throw a couple in my bag.  Why use an analog book when you've got the whole internet in your pocket?  I suppose it's a personal preference.  Time spent in a book is time not spent on a screen.  They're unplugged and help life pass a little more slowly.  And they are particularly useful in conserving your phone battery (I've been known to run my phone down just from taking too many photos!).  Personally, I can never have enough of these little books.  Here are the three I used in this exercise:

In the next post, I'll talk a bit about the mature trees and as an added bonus, I'll talk about signs of animal life that I found on this exursion.  Until next time...