Whit Gibbons, now retired, is one of America’s foremost ecologists. Newspapers everywhere carry his column--two thousand columns so far. In 2008, Gibbons bought 35 acres near Salley, South Carolina. This book is the story of how he has explored those acres: woods, a stream, a lot of swamp and wetlands and some sandhills, and made field notes, photographs, and even audio recordings of what he has found. It is a kind of instruction manual, advice on how you might, and should, do the same even on suburban land or parks, or anywhere. The earth is teeming with plants and animals, and he advocates looking carefully, making lists, learning what is all around you.
Nature is not simple. Gibbons writes: “Ecology is more complex than math, chemistry, or physics because the variables are virtually unending. People should say ‘it’s not ecology’ instead of ‘it’s not rocket science.’ Ecology, a subset of biology, has way more variables than any rocket launch.” As he describes animals he found, it seems oddly true. Of beetles, he tells us, there are 350,000 described species in the world, 30,000 in the U.S. That’s a lot of beetles! He tells us there are 5 million species of fungi on earth, with only 100,000 identified and named. Beavers are fun to watch but can flood places we want dry. Beaver dams have been found over 2,000 feet long.
Gibbons is especially fond of snakes. He has, in fact, taught his grandchildren to love them, too. They can identify venomous snakes on sight and leave them alone but happily pick up many other species, even diving into the creek after them. That is a snake too far for most folk. Of mushrooms, on the other hand, Gibbon is very cautious. Eating a woodland mushroom you picked is inherently dangerous. He doesn’t do it. He passes on a professor joke. When asked about a particular mushroom, the biology prof says “yes you can eat any mushroom--once. “
Gibbons is knowledgeable and unsentimental about the “red in tooth and claw” nature of nature. In the wood duck boxes he sets out, the female may lay one egg a day, sometimes as many as ten. Then, if a big rat snake enters, she leaves, “passing the snake at the door.” There are even stranger animal behaviors, too odd or complicated to relate here.
There are horsehair worms, sometimes two feet long, inside the stomach of a grasshopper, and there is the pirate perch, a small fish who starts out life with his vent, cloaca, near the tail, but it migrates to just under the fish’s throat, just behind the gills. To find out why, and a lot of other odd things, read “Salleyland.” It is engaging, pleasant, and therapeutic. Engaging with nature can lower blood pressure, increase the attention span of kids with ADHD, and help with memory and mood. Aside from the mushrooms, there is no down-side.