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Rebroadcast: Discovering David Douglas
My son walks by the beautiful cherry blossoms these days and exclaims "spring is in the trees." He looks at bare branches with a hint of hope, that spring will come to them too. But the evergreens confuse him: why don't they change with the seasons in the same way? While I can come up with a boring answer to this question, I bet if David Douglas were still alive he'd wow my son with an explanation of natural history.
David Douglas's name is all over Oregon. It graces a school district, an iconic tree, a Vancouver park, and the scientific nomenclature of more than 80 local plants and animals, but most Northwesterners have only a cursory knowledge of the Scottish naturalist.
A couple of months ago we explored the life of David Douglas with local author Jack Nisbet. Today, as spring approaches, we share that conversation with you again.
To see the original posts, check here. Or, of course, feel free to start a new thread here.
Tagged as: david douglas · forest · natural history
Photo credit: Justin Baeder / Creative Commons
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There were other great collectors in the Americas. I would like to hear Mr. Nisbet's comments on Thaddeo Haenke and Alexander Von Humboldt.
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This is a great rebroadcast. I think a discussion of our natural history and of people who helped shape the region is vitally important.
Coincidentally, a screening for a documentary about Douglas was just announced. "Finding David Douglas" was directed by a Portlander and involved producers and researchers from Scotland and England. The Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission is hosting a screening of the movie at the World Forestry Center on April 8. In the announcement on the OCHC website, it doesn't mention Nisbet, but I'd imagine he's at least aware of the project.
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Love the show! I regret that I caught only a few minutes of it. I love the author's perspective on how all periods, events and domains are inter-connected.
To those who think the show isn't relevant to what is important today--get to know your history!
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Can you imagine what our home looked liked when David Douglas saw it for the first time. Not a wilderness untouched by man, but one that was tended by human hands for 15,000 years. Tended not necessarily by intention, but rather by what works best over the generations. "Best" based not only on those who tended, but by all the species within the ecosystem that not only thrived because of it, but also evolved to create it.
Now we see ("see" being relative to those who are looking) so many pieces of that balanced system becoming threatened by not only the actions of the last 150 years in our area, but by those of industrialization world wide (not to mention population). If we can find a way to view our resources as something other than "profit now", such as, perhaps, a perspective closer to "security later"; then we might strike some sort of balance with what is left of the very land that defines us.
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Not a particularly riveting dicussion, eh? Well, I guess that's to be expected of a re-broadcast (rerun) of a show that isn't dealing with any of the important issues that hound us at present. (Economy, health care, getting the do-nothings in Congress to get off their collective arses, getting people into office who really WILL help the people, rather than enter into the endless campaigning for re-election cycle....just to name a few.)