He goofed on the opposable thumb, but the rest is rock solid

Second Nature: a Gardener's Education
by Michael Pollan

If you're a gardener, you'll enjoy this very much. If not, you probably won't read it. But that's a shame because he has a bit to say about man's place in nature and nature's place in the man-made world.  Short answer: front and center.

One sad little passage describes a small forest of old-growth white pines trees that were destroyed by a tornado. The nearby town had to decide what to do--harvest the timber and replant the pines; replant another species of tree; burn the area over to encourage the pine seeds to germinate; or do nothing in reverence for natural processes. But that latter was not an option, because the dead timber created a fire hazard that would endanger nearby houses.

One approach to this problem would have been to have a town meeting and let everyone have their say. You might have to have a human spokesman stand in for the birds and animals who occupied the forest. And when everyone had spoken, everyone would work together to choose a solution.

Sad to say, this approach wasn't taken. The "owners" of the forest--The nature Conservancy--chose to take the natural approach and didn't invite discussion. They were forced to allow a fire break to be dug all around. Spoiler alert--so a beautiful grove of pines is now a weed-choked field surrounded by an ugly ditch.

Leave it to mankind to jump on simple solutions ("let nature take her course") to complex problems. For one thing, it wasn't a wilderness to begin with. For another, what guarantee do we have that native species will regenerate the land and not the Norway Maple, an invasive species?  What if a heavy rain washes out all the topsoil and trees can never grow there again? We. Just. Don't. Know.

Nature has no grand design for this place. An incomprehensively various and complex set of circumstances--some of human origin, but many not--will determine the future of Cathedral Pines. And whatever the future turns out to be, it would not unfold in precisely the same way twice.

I can't repeat the entire argument here, but I urge you to seek it out and read it yourself. You'll come off a little wiser about the cheap, easily digestible fables about "natural succession" vs. "human desire", and you'll think a little more carefully about human's place in nature--neither above it, beneath it, or even outside of it. We're right in there and we need to accept that and go with the flow.

This episode of insight only occupies a small section in the book--the rest is pure entertainment. He talks about the snobbery of rose fanciers--I never dreamed that the "tea rose" was a irreverent upstart, not worthy of the notice of the stately, long-lived and well pedigreed old garden roses. He does a survey of garden catalogs, from exclusively snooty to novelty upstart to ecologically aware. And he cracked up when he independently discovered the reason why I plant seeds in rows. (Hint: try weeding a 4x4' square of scattered, mixed seeds of radishes, spinach, and kale.)

note: his opposable thumb quote below was wrong--most apes have one--

according to the anthropologists, it was the opposed thumb that gave us an edge over the apes and supplied the basis for civilization.