Gene Twaronite’s The Absurd Naturalist
By Gene Twaronite In an article on nature writing, author David Rains Wallace once wrote that, “The most daunting challenge facing nature writers today is not travel but data. Someone has to translate information into feelings and visions.” Thus inspired, I set off on a collecting trip not to some far off corner of the globe but to the musty shelves of a nearby college library. (Yes, I could have done this at home, but, for the true bibliophile, nothing can match the sheer adventure of wandering through towering rows of books.) There, beneath the covers of the latest science journals, I hoped to “discover” new data that I could translate for my readers. Hacking my way through the jargon jungle of the specialists, however, I quickly came to appreciate what Wallace meant by “daunting challenge.” Right off, I knew there might be trouble ahead when the first article encountered in The Biological Bulletin was entitled “Aggregation and Fusion Between Conspecifics of a Solitary Ascidian.” Suddenly I felt more alone than any solitary Ascidian. All that I managed to ascertain from the article was that this was the first time such a thing had ever been reported and that the frequency of fusion between contacting (presumably consenting) specimens was 20 percent. Also, the fused animals had their outer membranes on at the time, unlike the unfused ones (which could have considerable significance if you’re a solitary Ascidian).
Charting
a new course, I proceeded along the provocative pathways of the London journal Animal Behavior. Its author left plenty of good leads for me to follow such as “Do Digger Wasps Commit the Concorde
Land of the solitary Ascidian Fallacy?” I’ve committed a few fallacies myself, but this one sounds like one of the cardinal sins. And how could one not want to know more about “The Responses of Dark-bellied Brent Geese to Models of Geese in Various Postures”? My mind raced with possibilities, and I found myself wondering exactly what kinds of postures those researchers were showing the poor geese. Alas, only three were shown: head up, head down, and extreme head up. I found the last one extremely disturbing, though I’m not a goose. (The geese considered “head down” most attractive. I disagree.) Another London journal, Annals of Botany, led me to a romantic sounding place with its title: “Alnus Leaf Impressions From a Postglacial Tufa in Yorkshire.” I found myself yearning to sit on a nice soft tufa while soaking in the countryside.
It
was in the physical science journals that I really began to go astray. Several articles in the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences sent troubling images through my brain. What is one to make of the title “On the InterpreImages via tation of Eddy Fluxes During a Blocking Episode”? Does this sound like football, or is it just me? The article entitled “Improving Spectral Models by Unfolding Their Singularities” left me trying to imagine what a spectral model — especially a “maximally truncated” spectral model — might look like with its singularities unfolded. The visions became even worse in the Physical Review. Why, for instance, upon reading the seemingly straightforward title: “Interactions of H and H- with He and Ne” did I suddenly think of the old movie “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice”? And why did the article entitled “Hydrogen Atom in the Momentum Representation” leave me imagining some weird body-building pose?
I
finally lost my way in the Geological Society of America Bulletin. Oh, it started off innocently enough with a “Crab Bitten by a Fish From the Upper Cretaceous Pierre Shale.” But, feeling adventurous, I went further, becoming hopelessly mired in the title “Progressive Metamorphism from Prehnite-Pumpellyite to Greenschist Facies in the Dansey Pass Area, Otago, New Zealand.” In spite of my predicament, it was a fascinating world with lovely creatures like “Mesozoic Graywackes” and “Prehnite-pumpellyite Facies.” I kept up until the author went around a bend and left me alone with “progressive textual modification ranges from massive, nonfoliated greywacke, semi-schist, to thorough-going laminated quartzo feldspathetic schist.” Dazed and confused, I straggled on home. I’ll leave that for some other nature writer to translate into feelings and visions. ©Gene Twaronite 2014 ***** Gene Twaronite’s writing has appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines. He is the author of “The Family That Wasn’t,” “My Vacation in Hell,” and “Dragon Daily News.” Follow Gene at TheTwaroniteZone.Com.
All-Free-Download.Com. Illustration by 5enses.
�ENSESMAG.COM • MARCH ���� • COLUMN • ��