Bikes and books

I got to spend most of the afternoon sitting outside in the shade and reading. It was pretty heavenly, as this doesn't happen all that often. Most of the people had gone on a bike ride. J. had taken M., B., D., K., Y., G., and L. on an excursion to a nearby forest preserve, where they biked about 7 miles. But first they needed to find 8 working bikes from the 3,297 bikes we seem to have lying about in various states of disrepair. They did this, and then they needed to figure out how to transport 8 bikes in the van. Thankfully, one of the (many) items that were left behind in the house when we moved in was a bike rack hitch.

This is the photo I took of everyone figuring out how to transport bikes.

They had a great time. J. took some pictures while they were biking.

I, on the other hand was quite content to sit and read. TM had taken H. and R., who couldn't have managed the bike ride, to get some ice cream, so the house was pretty quiet. I finished an Amelia Peabody book I was close to being done with, and then spent the rest of the time working on the non-fiction book I was reading. I'm nearly finished with it, so wanted to talk about it a bit here.

The book is Eager: The Surprising, Secret Lives of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb. If you care about the environment, you should really read this book. It is pretty eye-opening and fascinating. Plus, every so often, there are some pretty funny bits, such as this one:

"Like many Beaver Believers, Brock Dolman found religion through fish. Dolman is a certified salmon fanatic, a man so committed to preserving California's dwindling runs that he once attended a county meeting in a home-sewn coho costume and angrily spawned orange pom-poms across the desk of a conservation-averse commissioner." (p. 143) 

I mean, can you imagine? I spent more than a little time pondering what this must have looked like. You kind of got to love someone so committed to their cause. But there is some pretty serious stuff here, too. Beavers could be a key to global warming.

"In 2015 scientists found that the world's beaver ponds emit around eight hundred thousand metric tons of methane each year. The study elicited hand-wringing from the climate-concerned media; one headline, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, warned about 'The Latest Climate Change Threat: Beavers.'

Of course, in a global accounting of carbon emissions, beaver ponds wouldn't even register: Eight hundred thousand tons of methane might sound like a lot, but it's about 1 percent of cattle's contribution. And before we indict beavers for melting the Greenland ice sheet, consider this: Much of the organic matter in their ponds remains stable. Just as forests suck carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in wood, so beaver ponds lock it up in buried sediment. According to a 2013 study published by geomorphologist Ellen Wohl, active beaver complexes on twenty-seven streams in Rocky Mountain National Park once stored more than 2.6 million megagrams of carbon -- by my [the author] calculations, the equivalent of thirty-seven thousand acres of American forest. Active colonies, Wohl found, store about three times more than drelict ones, up to fourteen times more than dry grasslands. Forget trees: If you want to fight climate change, it's entirely possible you're better off planting beavers." (p. 146).

Or, if you are concerned about pesticide run-off and the dead zones in the oceans because of of it:

"If constructing wetlands is good, letting beavers do it for free is even better. In one 2000 study on Maryland's coastal plain, researchers found that a beaver pond slashed the discharge of total nitrogen by 18 percent, phosphorus by 21 percent, and total suspended solids -- waterborne particles that are classified as a pollutant by the Clean Water Act -- by 27 percent." (pp. 160-1)

But beaver ponds don't just act as a filtration system, they go one step better.

"And it's not just that beaver ponds capture and store nutrients -- thanks to one 2015 paper, we know they can even change pollutants' physical state. In the course of their study, researchers from the University of Rhode Island jammed metal tubes into the squelchy bottoms of three rodent-built ponds to collect soil cores. Then they applied nitrate to the samples and tracked the molecule's fate. Bacteria living in the sediment broke down the nitrate, performing microbial alchemy, called denitrification, that effectively purged the pollutant from the water by converting it to nitrogen gas. The researchers calculated that beaver ponds, and the microscopic wizards living in their soils, could remove up to 45 percent of nitrates from southern New England's rural watersheds, preventing dead zones from forming in its estuaries. " (p. 161).

As Christians we are called to be keepers of the earth God created. In order to do that, we need to be informed about the natural world; what is good for it, what is not. Frankly, humans have made a real hash of things over history, and we can do better. Read books that inform you of this beautiful place that God created for us. Understand how things work so that you can make informed decisions about both what you personally do and how you elect representative who make broader, more far-reaching decisions. This is our obligation. Plus, it's just dang interesting. 

Highly recommended.