{"product_id":"early-spring-isbn-9780807085974","title":"Early Spring","description":"The human heart is the most sensitive instrument, and that is why Amy Seidl's marvelous book is so important, a new kind of contribution to the rapidly growing library on global warming.—Bill McKibben, from the foreword\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRobert Frost wrote about nature and rural life in New England, and Norman Rockwell painted classic scenes of farmhouses and American traditional life, images reproduced as symbolizing an idealized history born of New England sights. But New England, a region whose culture is rooted in its four distinct seasons, is changing along with its climate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eEarly Spring\u003c\/i\u003e, ecologist and mother Amy Seidl examines climate change at a personal level through her own family's walks in the woods, work in their garden, and observations of local wildlife in the quintessential America of small-town New England, deep in the Green Mountains of Vermont. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSeidl's testimony, grounded in the science of ecology and evolutionary biology but written with beauty and emotion, helps us realize that a natural upheaval from climate change has already begun: spring flowers blossom before pollinators arrive, ponds no longer freeze, and animals begin migrations at unexpected times. Increasingly, the media report on melting ice caps and drowning polar bears, but Seidl brings the message of global warming much closer to home by considering how climate change has altered her local experience, and the traditions and lifestyles of her neighbors, from syrup producers to apple farmers. In Vermont, she finds residents using nineteenth-century practices to deal with perhaps the most destructive twenty-first-century phenomenon. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSeidl's poignant writing and scientific observations will cause readers to look at their local climate anew, and consider how they and their neighbors have adjusted to the reality of global warming.\u003ci\u003eForeword by Bill McKibben \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003ePreface \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 1: Weather \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 2: Gardens \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 3: Forests \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 4: Water \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 5: Birds \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 6: Butterflies \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 7: Meadows and Fields \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eEpilogue \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eSelected Bibliography and Notes\u003c\/i\u003eAn eloquent celebration of commitment to family, community, and the ever-so-fragile natural world . . . Regardless of where you live, this may very well be one of the most important books you'll ever read.—Howard Frank Mosher, author of \u003ci\u003eA Stranger in the Kingdom\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A timely, important book—both troubling and lovely.\" —John Elder, author of \u003ci\u003eReading the Mountains of Home\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This is the voice we need to hear now: a biologist mother, with no time for despair, bearing witness to the unraveling of the ecological world within her children's backyard-which is all of our children's backyard. With urgency and grace, Amy Seidl delivers the message I've been listening for.\"—Sandra Steingraber, PhD, author of \u003ci\u003eHaving Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eEarly Spring\u003c\/i\u003e is brave and eloquent testimony from a reliable witness about the extraordinary changes we face in the very nature of daily life on earth. It reminds us that the human heart and mind have their place in the order of things, too.\"—James Howard Kunstler, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Long Emergency\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"With the mind of a scientist and the heart of a mom, Amy Seidl explores the effects of climate chaos on her home-ground. . . . A visionary personal inquiry that remains fixed on promise even in the face of grim and unsettling facts. This is a brave book.\"—Janisse Ray, author of \u003ci\u003eEcology of a Cracker Childhood\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Seidl's tender descriptions of her young daughters' encounters with the natural world-skipping rocks, choosing Halloween pumpkins from the garden and 'gorging on the abundance' of cherries picked off the tree-add personal poignancy to a subject 'few can stand to talk about at any length.'\"—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eAmy Seidl\u003c\/b\u003e has taught in the environmental studies programs at Middlebury College and the University of Vermont. She is currently a research scholar at Middlebury and associate director of the LivingFuture Foundation. She lives with her family in Huntington, Vermont, in a solar- and wind-powered home.\u003cb\u003ePreface\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe little crab alone with the sea became a symbol\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003ethat stood for life itself—for the delicate, destructible,\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eyet incredibly vital force that somehow holds its place\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eamid the harsh realities of the inorganic world.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Rachel Carson,\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Edge of the Sea, \u003c\/i\u003e1955\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e As a mother who has borne life, as a person who delights in\u003cbr\u003e the diversity of life, and as an ecologist who realizes that life\u003cbr\u003e in our gardens, forests, lakes, and meadows relies on the\u003cbr\u003e countless multitude of species and their interactions, I am\u003cbr\u003e unsettled by global warming. I fear it will have a tragic effect\u003cbr\u003e on all forms of existence, including our own.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e I chose to write this book after I spent years researching\u003cbr\u003e natural systems. As a field scientist I have worked\u003cbr\u003e around the world studying Antarctic, alpine, coastal, temperate,\u003cbr\u003e and tropical ecosystems. These experiences sharpened\u003cbr\u003e my ability to understand how natural communities\u003cbr\u003e work, to identify species across taxa, and to admire their\u003cbr\u003e complexity and beauty. But it was after these experiences,\u003cbr\u003e when I was bound to a single place as the mother of two\u003cbr\u003e young daughters and the wife of a man establishing his caxi\u003cbr\u003e reer that I began to carefully observe my immediate environment.\u003cbr\u003e Here, outside my door in rural Vermont, I readily\u003cbr\u003e found signals that the natural world was changing.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e It was at this point that I decided to collect my observations\u003cbr\u003e about climate change in a book and call it \u003ci\u003eEarly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eSpring\u003c\/i\u003e. I chose the title to signify one of the strongest signals\u003cbr\u003e of global warming for the Northern Hemisphere:\u003cbr\u003e spring is coming days earlier with each decade. I decided\u003cbr\u003e that by sharing the signals of warming from my garden and\u003cbr\u003e woods, the places where I take my children to swim or\u003cbr\u003e where we walk along the road and collect stones, I could localize\u003cbr\u003e the experience of global warming for my readers.\u003cbr\u003e Further, by describing the ecological flux that is a consequence\u003cbr\u003e of climate change in the iconic New England landscape,\u003cbr\u003e I hoped to engage with the significance of global\u003cbr\u003e warming to all life, including our own.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Throughout \u003ci\u003eEarly Spring \u003c\/i\u003eI apply my knowledge of\u003cbr\u003e ecology and evolutionary biology to reveal the effect\u003cbr\u003e of global warming in the landscapes I have studied as well\u003cbr\u003e as the landscape where I presently live. To these descriptions\u003cbr\u003e I add personal stories of how ecosystem health is\u003cbr\u003e being altered—at micro and macro perspectives. I also examine\u003cbr\u003e climate change in relation to the fact that I have\u003cbr\u003e small children—Helen was one when I began this project\u003cbr\u003e and Celia was six—and I relay my concern for their ecological\u003cbr\u003e future and the planet they will inherit as global\u003cbr\u003e warming progresses.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e While I have spent time in regions of the world where\u003cbr\u003e global warming is more rapidly affecting ecosystems, I\u003cbr\u003e want to emphasize the changes I see in my landscape close\u003cbr\u003e to home—in my garden, in local woods and ponds. It is in\u003cbr\u003e this everyday context that I notice the world entering flux.\u003cbr\u003e The timing of seasonal events, for instance, is shifting:\u003cbr\u003e lilacs are blooming earlier, gardens remain prolific well into\u003cbr\u003e the fall, and butterflies appear weeks earlier than previously\u003cbr\u003e recorded. But it is not only the natural landscapes that are\u003cbr\u003e shifting. In my rural community, cultural traditions tied to\u003cbr\u003e the season are no longer assured: ice-fishing derbies and\u003cbr\u003e winter carnivals, once relied upon as cold-season diversions,\u003cbr\u003e are on-again, off-again, and the start of maple sugaring\u003cbr\u003e rarely begins in early March as it historically did. As I\u003cbr\u003e wake to these signs, I place each onto a growing list that\u003cbr\u003e challenges my sense of season, cycle, and time, even my expectation\u003cbr\u003e of what is true.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e With each year I am compelled to ask: How are the natural\u003cbr\u003e communities and ecosystems where I live responding\u003cbr\u003e to climate change? What does a thunderstorm in January\u003cbr\u003e signal? What about deluges in May that preclude spring\u003cbr\u003e planting? And the absence of ice on rivers and ponds in\u003cbr\u003e early winter? These are examples from my landscape—and\u003cbr\u003e the natural and agricultural communities in it—that signal\u003cbr\u003e that the world around me is moving into flux. As these\u003cbr\u003e events collect, I realize how more and more of my observations\u003cbr\u003e reflect the predictions that climate scientists are\u003cbr\u003e making for New England—greater single precipitation\u003cbr\u003e events, warmer nights, shorter winters, and overall more\u003cbr\u003e variable weather. While it remains difficult to draw causal\u003cbr\u003e relationships between global climate change and local\u003cbr\u003e weather, we are able to see how our local conditions increasingly\u003cbr\u003e resemble the forecasted predictions.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e I am not alone in noticing changes in the landscape\u003cbr\u003e where I live. Fortunately, there are others who have observed\u003cbr\u003e and recorded changes or are currently noting and\u003cbr\u003e writing about them, many for far longer than I have. There\u003cbr\u003e is Kathleen Anderson, who has for thirty years kept daily\u003cbr\u003e records of the flora and fauna that she sees on her farm in\u003cbr\u003e Massachusetts and when particular species come and go.\u003cbr\u003e There’s my neighbor Bob Low, who notes the area’s\u003cbr\u003e weather and keeps an annual list of the birds on Gillett\u003cbr\u003e Pond, the place where I bring my daughters to skate and\u003cbr\u003e canoe. These record keepers are motivated by their enjoyment\u003cbr\u003e of the natural world and also by the feeling that they\u003cbr\u003e are a part of the annual cycle they document. Like the famous\u003cbr\u003e conservation biologist and ethicist Aldo Leopold,\u003cbr\u003e who kept records of bird and plant sightings on his Wisconsin\u003cbr\u003e farm, these environmental diarists maintain a close\u003cbr\u003e connection with their home environment, and their diaries\u003cbr\u003e provide a history of this intimacy.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Now these diaries are being used to further our scientific\u003cbr\u003e understanding of climate change. Statisticians and\u003cbr\u003e ecologists are analyzing them for the occurrences they document,\u003cbr\u003e and the presence and absence of species is being\u003cbr\u003e added to electronic databases and computer models in an\u003cbr\u003e attempt to see repeating patterns of change across landscapes.\u003cbr\u003e Equally important, these narratives serve as a local\u003cbr\u003e chronicle of how human communities are experiencing the\u003cbr\u003e local effect of a global event. Indeed, the longer these diaries\u003cbr\u003e have been kept, the better they are at relating how our\u003cbr\u003e seasonal expectations are being preempted by anomalous\u003cbr\u003e events, how the familiar is being superseded by the unusual.","brand":"Beacon Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300488138981,"sku":"NP9780807085974","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780807085974.jpg?v=1767725796","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/early-spring-isbn-9780807085974","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}