Cultures of Habitat: On Nature, Culture, and Story

Full disclosure: I know the author casually. Marvelous blend of green economics, cultural values and foods. Beautifully written by an extremely thoughtful person....

beautiful collection of generous essays - as we enter into this crushing time of widescale ecological collapse it is imperative, if we are to holdon to anything - that we recall that human beings are not inherently the cause - that this devastation is the work of a very narrow slice of the world's culture - that mostly people have lived with plants and animals in mutually beneficial ways - a very important book.

Gary Nabhan's book has images in it that are complex and, judging by some of the reader's reviews, too fine-grained for some people's tastes. Like all great written works, Gary has taken the time not to oversimplify or over-generalize, but the resulting ambiguities and lack of forcing these essays into a pre-ordained thread has left me with images that will stick with me for a long time. They, like the ecosystems and cultures that he describes, point to a complexity which reveals itself slowly and over time--lifetimes, in some cases. It is this complexity that he celebrates and mourns the loss of as the cultures and languages that have evolved close to the land become increasingly diluted and discarded in the rush of assimilation that has overtaken so many cultures,languages and landscapes. His case for breathing life back into our landscapes THROUGH our culture and language is compelling, and a challenge to us all, wherever we live.

So few nature writers (Barry Lopez being one notable exception) are concerned with dissolving the artificial wall between humanity and nature. Nabhan takes this objective one step further by showing that biodiversity actually depends on the survival of human communities. In specific, human communities that have adapted to and depended upon natural systems for their own survival. For those who are interested in conservation, environmental science, human cultures, Native American societies, ethnobotany, archaeology, and anthropology, this book is a must-read.

What is the proper term for someone like Gary Nabhan? Ethnoecologist? I found this to be a well written, thoroughly enjoyable book. I don't usually make it all the way to the end of a book of essays, but I read every one of these. I found Nabhan a pleasant traveling companion as I tagged along with him through the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and northern Mexico, sleuthing out the tatters and remants of native peoples' relationships with the habitats in which their cultures evolved. Nabhan is largely concerned with what Dan Janzen has called "the most insidious kind of extinction -- the extinction of interactions." Through visits with fascinating people in fascinating places, he explores what have now become highly endangered interactions between rare desert plants and their even rarer insect or mammal pollinators, between wild plants and their domesticators, between competitors for scarce natural resources (be they human or hummingbird), and between story tellers and their children and grandchildren. This is a book that will make you want to get to the roots of your relationship with the natural world by talking to your parents and grandparents about their own childhood experiences in nature. Whether your interests run primarily to botany, to zoology, or to anthropology, you will find much in these essays to please, sadden, and stimulate you.