Enjoy this guest blog book report by Wenatchee Naturalist, Martha Bean, featuring her long-time friend and author, Woody Wheeler. Be sure to read Martha and Woody’s bios at the end of the piece.
A handful of years ago, my friend Woody Wheeler wrote a book aptly titled “Look Up!” I turn to his book when I seek a reminder of the bountiful benefits of being attentive to the ‘birds and other natural wonders just outside…’ my window.
When someone asks us to ‘look up!’, we’re not necessarily being admonished to get our noses out of our phones, or to stop slouching, or to not be morose. No indeed. The invitation to ‘look up!’ – especially when the invitation is from Woody – is one that asks us to lift our heads and hearts into experiences that will delight and engage us.
Look Up! Birds and Other Natural Wonders Just Outside Your Window is a collection of essays about the joys of establishing a personal practice of ‘looking up’. Woody offers simple advice on how to get started and tells stories of the marvelous things we can encounter when we take the time to genuinely see that which is around us.
Woody describes his daily ritual of sitting quietly for twenty minutes each morning, hot beverage in hand, in the backyard of his urban home. In Chapter 7, the Joy of Birding, Woody is clear we don’t need fancy binoculars, exacting note-taking skills, or even a rudimentary knowledge of wildlife to thoroughly enjoy the living beings that come into our quiet circle of observation. A favorite lesson from Woody is to take in and appreciate the beauty of that which is familiar. Consider the mallard – painted in iridescent greens and flaming reds, sharply contrasted by a yellow bill and reddish chest, with the most dramatic curlicue of a tail.
Or consider the common duck known as a gadwall. With a feathered coat tailored and elegantly hued, earning their nickname “downtown ducks”.
A special pleasure of Woody’s book are the references to his great-grandfather, Jens Jensen. Jensen was a pioneering urban naturalist in the Chicago area, and an inspiration to Woody. A film about Jensen, “The Living Green” was made several years ago and is available on streaming services. It is still frequently screened in theatres in the Midwest, inspiring people as recently as Earth Day 2023 to take up the cause, like Jens and Woody, of protecting our natural wonders and precious planet home.
Chapter one, “Getting to Know your Avian Neighbors”, includes informative and evocative essays on birds that are familiar to us in North Central Washington: Cedar Waxwings, Anna’s Hummingbirds and Clark’s Nutcrackers.
Chapter four, “Conserving our Best Assets”, includes a piece on the song of the Hermit Thrush. Reading about the Hermit Thrush always moves me to look up a recording of the hermit thrush, and being transported to magic of my grandparents’ yard on Vashon Island.
Woody lives on the wet, west side of the mountains but has favorite birding locales in Eastern Washington: Beaver Pond Trail, near Sun Mountain Lodge; Bennington Lake, Walla Walla; Lewis & Clark State Park, Dayton; Pearrygin Lake State Park, Winthrop; and Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge, Cheney. He is an avid reader of books on peoples’ interacting with and understandings of natural history; I value his recommendations. A current favorite of Woody’s is The Home Place by J. Drew Lanham. Lanham explores his own history as a descendant of Black American farmers in the South, and how their connection to the land shaped him.
You can ‘look up’ Woody’s business, blog and publications at Conservation Catalyst and give a gander to Look Up!. You’re in for a thoughtful time and engaging read as you are reminded of the world ‘just outside your window’.
Bio for Woody Wheeler
Woody Wheeler is a professional naturalist, and owner of Conservation Catalyst , an environmental education and guide service out of Seattle. A frequent contributor to Leavenworth Spring Bird Fest in Leavenworth, he is sitting out 2023 but encourages all to attend. Woody began studying wildlife biology in the early 1970s at the University of Montana. Dismayed to find the academic focus was almost exclusively on game management and extractive forestry, and not on conservation biology, he transferred to Western Washington University College of the Environment (formerly Huxley College of Environmental Sciences) where he studied environmental education and geography. Prior to becoming an author, professional naturalist and guide, Woody spent twenty years in jobs revolving around conservation, project management, and nonprofit fundraising, including positions at The Nature Conservancy, Audubon Society and Seattle Parks Foundation.
Bio for Martha Bean
Martha Bean is a 2019 graduate of Susan Ballinger’s Naturalist course, her first stop when she moved back to Wenatchee after many decades away. Like Woody, Martha attended Western Washington University’s College of the Environment, where she and Woody first met through their mutual joy of playing music around the campfire. Martha has a graduate degree in Environmental Planning from UC Berkeley, which gave rise to her profession as public policy and environmental mediator. In Wenatchee, she enjoys encouraging native plants to grow, thrive and reproduce at her home site, and all manner of outdoor activities available to us in North Central Washington.