2009 Dewey Decimal Project: 599.67 O
Feb. 18th, 2009 10:09 amThis month's book was Secrets of the Savanna by Mark and Delia Owens. The real reason I never get around to reading the things people have recced to me is that I'll be browsing the "what people are reading" shelves at the library and find something that sounds interesting, which is how I found this book.
Mark and Delia Owens spent decades in Africa studying wildlife and advocating for conservation. In 1986, they made their way to North Luangwa National Park in Zambia, where they wanted to study elephants. They also created a project to loan money to the locals to start their own businesses so they would have some source of income other than poaching.
The book is interesting. I somewhat expected it to be more of a continuous narrative than a lot of the nonfiction I've been reading, and in some ways it is. There's a logical progression from chapter to chapter, and yet, most of the chapters would still be able to stand alone.
I think I was misled by the inside flap because I expected the book to be more about elephants, when it's really more about the people involved, and most especially Mark and Delia. At some point, they do talk about how they'd always planned to do more studying of the elephants but that the realities of running the project kept getting in the way.
It's an interesting story anyway, and it traces, in fits and starts, the path from their arrival to the attempted destruction of the project by corrupt officials. Mark and Delia don't go back to Africa in the end - they settle in Idaho and work "to recover remnant populations of grizzly bears and wetland habitats in the Pacific Northwest" - but the project lives on. "Maybe someday we will return to Marula-Puku and Fulaza, but that is not really important. What matters is that Gift keeps having babies, that Hammer is distributing seeds, and that the winterthorn still sings," Delia says in the end.
Each chapter of the book is written by Mark or Delia, and the chapter heading tells you who wrote it. Delia has more of a tendency towards flowery prose, although Mark doesn't quite escape that, and I was struck by the gender division of Delia writing about camp life and animals and Mark writing about politics and flying the helicopter. I really liked the way Delia, especially, made connections to previous chapters. She tells us about the gifts from her grandfather, and comes back to them. She considers the baboons and their troop, and comes back to talk about building her own troop. She tells us about joining women for a coming-of-age ceremony, and comes back to the feeling of connection she gets from it. I also like the unintentional connections to other things I've read, especially when Delia talks about her grandfather.
Mark and Delia Owens spent decades in Africa studying wildlife and advocating for conservation. In 1986, they made their way to North Luangwa National Park in Zambia, where they wanted to study elephants. They also created a project to loan money to the locals to start their own businesses so they would have some source of income other than poaching.
The book is interesting. I somewhat expected it to be more of a continuous narrative than a lot of the nonfiction I've been reading, and in some ways it is. There's a logical progression from chapter to chapter, and yet, most of the chapters would still be able to stand alone.
I think I was misled by the inside flap because I expected the book to be more about elephants, when it's really more about the people involved, and most especially Mark and Delia. At some point, they do talk about how they'd always planned to do more studying of the elephants but that the realities of running the project kept getting in the way.
It's an interesting story anyway, and it traces, in fits and starts, the path from their arrival to the attempted destruction of the project by corrupt officials. Mark and Delia don't go back to Africa in the end - they settle in Idaho and work "to recover remnant populations of grizzly bears and wetland habitats in the Pacific Northwest" - but the project lives on. "Maybe someday we will return to Marula-Puku and Fulaza, but that is not really important. What matters is that Gift keeps having babies, that Hammer is distributing seeds, and that the winterthorn still sings," Delia says in the end.
Each chapter of the book is written by Mark or Delia, and the chapter heading tells you who wrote it. Delia has more of a tendency towards flowery prose, although Mark doesn't quite escape that, and I was struck by the gender division of Delia writing about camp life and animals and Mark writing about politics and flying the helicopter. I really liked the way Delia, especially, made connections to previous chapters. She tells us about the gifts from her grandfather, and comes back to them. She considers the baboons and their troop, and comes back to talk about building her own troop. She tells us about joining women for a coming-of-age ceremony, and comes back to the feeling of connection she gets from it. I also like the unintentional connections to other things I've read, especially when Delia talks about her grandfather.
In later years, when he could no longer go hunting, he would shake his head and say, "There ain't as many birds as there used to be HiDe." He would almost whisper, "There used to be so many doves they'd darken the sky when they flew over a cornfield. At dusk you could hear the ducks landin' on the river from half a mile away. You never heard so much squawkin' and carryin' on in your life. We didn't figure our shootin' would make a dent in 'em. But I reckon we did." He stopped short of saying the game warden was right all those years, but that's what he was admitting, and he felt bad, real bad.