Thinking Like a Mountain

Nature has been Robert Bateman's inspiration ever since he began painting birds from his bedroom window as a young boy. The wildlife he features in his paintings are expressions of his love and respect for the natural world.

A passionate environmentalist who has devoted his life to documenting the awesome power of nature, Bateman is deeply worried about the state of our planet and the fate of our natural heritage. Whenever he talks about his paintings, he talks about the environmental messages they convey, and those who have heard him speak have clamoured for a book that encapsulates his philosophy.

Thinking Like a Mountain is the result of many years of thinking, talking and writing about the world's growing environmental crisis. Beautifully designed and illustrated with original drawings, it is a gathering of questions, observations and ideas Robert Bateman has drawn from his own life experiences and gleaned from the writings of some of the visionaries who have influenced him.

As Einstein said, "We cannot solve the problems of today with the same thinking that gave us the problems in the first place."Only a profound shift in philosophy, Bateman believes, can save our species from extinction.

Thinking Like a Mountain is printed on 100 per cent ancient-forest-free paper that is 100 per cent post-consumer recycled and has been processed chlorine free. 

Preface

PART ONE: Getting to Know the Neighbours
  A Day in May
  Portrait of the Artist as a Young Birdwatcher
  My People
  The Call of a Wolf
  Roving around the World
  Getting to Know the Neighbours
  Natural Art
  Aristocrats of Time and Space

PART TWO: Message in the Bones
  Message in the Bones
  The Grapes of La Mancha
  If a Tree Falls
  A Village Story
  Homo sapiens Teenager consumerensis
  Small Is Beautiful
  Unholy Alliance
  Natural Capitalism
  Beyond the Rapids

PART THREE: Signs of Hope
  An Alpine Idea
  The Grameen Bank
  Nigerian Public Transit
  The Ecology of Cities
  Holy Alliances
  From Tortoise Islet
  Good People
  A View from the Mountain

More Food for Thought
Acknowledgments

ROBERT BATEMAN's fascinations with nature dates from his boyhood in Toronto, where he began his lifelong education as a naturalist by studying and sketching the species he saw in the ravine behind his house. An internationally acclaimed artist whose paintings can be found in collections worldwide, he is the bestselling author of fifteen books. An officer of the Order of Canada, the recipient of numerous honorary doctorates and an honorary life member of many conservation organizations, he devotes a great deal of his time to finding ways to preserve the natural world. Bateman lives with his wife, Birgit, on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia.A Day in May
 
Over the years, I’ve often spoken about one of the most memorable experiences of my childhood, a golden day in May, when I was perhaps ten or eleven. That morning – it must have been a Saturday – I ventured down the steep path into the ravine behind our house, one of many ancient river valleys that provide a tracery of wildness through Toronto’s urban landscape. That ravine held the first forest I got to know; from the time I could walk, I explored it and made it my personal domain. As I grew more interested in wildlife, I began to learn about its inhabitants: the resident birds, raccoons and squirrels. To my fledgling eyes, my ravine seemed impossibly rich and varied.
 
Because the valley was wet, giant willows flourished there, as did a jungly tangle of fox grapes and Virginia creeper. Each spring, the stream that ran along the foot of the ravine overflowed, leaving pools where tadpoles grew into frogs and painted turtles sometimes swam. In early May, before the canopy leafed in, the forest floor turned into a brilliant carpet of wildflowers: trilliums, hepaticas and trout lilies.

I didn’t know it then, but my private woodland was only a poor remnant of the rich and majestic mixed forests of maple, beech, ash, white pine and hemlock that had covered most of southern Ontario before the Europeans came. And even back in the early 1940s, the plants and animals shared their space with the inevitable ambassadors of Progress. Twice a day, a steam engine belonging to the city’s now long-gone Belt Line railway puffed its way along a track to deliver coal and ice to the residents of North Toronto. But this predictable daily intrusion did not discourage the annual spring visitation of migrating birds.
 
In my memory, the day dawns sunny, with the promise of unseasonable warmth. As quietly as one of the characters from Ernest Thompson Seton’s Two Little Savages – I devoured Seton’s books from a young age – I creep down to my favourite spot, a bower of wild plum blossoms that gives me excellent views of the branches below, already brushed with spring’s first greenery. There I wait, breathing the rich smells of damp earth and decaying leaves, mixed with plum blossom perfume, and listening to the chirp and chatter of the localbirds – totally at ease in my familiar territory. Time passes without any sense of urgency. The sun rises and the day grows warmer. Then, suddenly, as if at some prearranged signal, the migrants come.
 
Within the space of less than an hour on that unforgettable morning, I saw legions of migrating warblers, as well as kinglets, a yellow-bellied sapsucker and a ruby-throated hummingbird. It seemed as if every branch of every tree was dripping with birds. If perfect happiness is possible, then this was the day I experienced it.