Reviews
Finding Higher Ground: Adaptation in the Age of Global Warming
Kirkus Reviews February 2011
Unlike many ecologists who fear that global warning will lead to a planetary catastrophe, Seidl sees it as a spur to positive adaptation. Taking her lead from Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin, she writes that both men were correct: "Now in an era of warming, where organisms experience suddenly changing environments, we see —how seminal adaptation is to the evolution of life." Seidl cites coral reefs, & the poster child for extinction in oceanic environments," as a case in point—marine ecologists have discovered resilient reefs off the coast of Africa which appear to be successfully recovering. Exploring the effects of climate change already apparent in the behavior of birds, fish, insects and plant life, the author looks for analogous proactive transformations in human society and finds hope in the resilience of nature and in human ingenuity when it is spurred by challenge. One of the areas of cutting-edge research today is the study of the interplay between built-in genetic plasticity, which allows a species to acclimatize to novel conditions, and actual genetic mutations. This has practical relevance for ongoing research devoted to developing new seeds, and scientists are currently examining the wild varieties of 300 crops that have sustained human life throughout our existence. Seidl gives examples from her Vermont community and her family's efforts—growing their own vegetables and buying local produce, using solar panels supplemented by a wind-driven generator to power their home—to illustrate how, at the grassroots level, a transition to a green society is emerging.
Seidl's glass-half-full optimism is a welcome change from the many fatalistic prognostications of the future.
Publishers Weekly February 2011
Seidl transcends wrangling about the reality of climate change by focusing on those already adapting to shifts in temperature: flora, fauna, and farmers. In less than a decade, mizuma plants in California evolved to the shortened growing season caused by extreme drought. Yukon red squirrels are giving birth more than two weeks earlier to take advantage of global warming-induced increases in spruce cone crops. Vermont winegrowers "alert to the changes in regional weather and climate" are establishing new grape stock for resilience. Geese, salmon, and eels are even abandoning migration when easier winters make staying more advantageous than travel. But some species are less flexible, needing human assistance to relocate, and human migrations are increasing in response to drought and flooding. Observing her neighbors "striving for resiliency" by creating alternatives to a fossil fuel—based culture, Seidl optimistically proposes that humans might also evolve as we adapt, extending our empathy to nonhuman life vulnerable to climate change: "Coming to the aid of species unable to adapt to the Age of Warming, we will revise our role in the ecological world from agents of relentless environmental degradation... to agents who create the conditions conducive to life."
Advance Praise
"Here’s the playbook for the years ahead: loving but savvy, with open eyes and with open heart, Amy Seidl talks us through the possibilities we have on the planet we’ve created. A landmark book." — Bill McKibben, author Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
"This is a wonderful and necessary book. If you’ve been avoiding the climate change story out of fear that it would catapult you into helplessness and depression, biologist Amy Seidl has just taken away your last defense. Passionate, knowledgeable, and full of unflinching courage, Finding Higher Ground exhorts us to open our eyes to the ‘agitation of change.’ We can’t adapt with them shut." — Sandra Steingraber, author of Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis
"As an ecologist, a gardener, and a mother of two, Amy Seidl understands all too well the urgent challenges of climate change. But in Finding Higher Ground, her focus is finally on persistence and hope. For Seidl, that means combining a scientifically informed and spiritually charged appreciation for how living systems are already evolving with a determination to forge a more responsible and sustainable way of life for her own family. I feel grateful for this tough, timely, and encouraging book." — John Elder, author of Reading the Mountains of Home
"Not since Helen and Scott Nearing penned their testaments to the ‘Good Life’ has a Vermont author given us such a thoughtful, hopeful, and pragmatic guide to living lightly-and well-on this long-suffering planet. Amy Seidl draws on solid science, interesting characters (both human and otherwise), and a rich trove of personal experience to pave a sane way forward for us in this, the Age of Warming. A well-researched, thoroughly enjoyable introduction to local adaptation in the face of global change." Curt Stager, author of Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth.
Reviews
Early Spring: An Ecologist and Her Children Wake to a Warming World
Orion Magazine May/June 2009
HOW ARE WE TO SEE OURSELVES as characters—as actors—in the enormous story of climate change and the planet’s diminishment? How do we change our role in the drama from consumer to caretaker? How are we to think and feel about our bewildering moment in natural history, when the complexity of change is occurring on a scale not observable to the plain eye? Amy Seidl’s Early Spring brings complexity home to the author’s garden, family, and community in northern Vermont. She moves gracefully among roles as mother, ecologist, neighbor, and thoughtful witness of the everyday. She shows us where to look to see local change in circadian rhythms of both nature and culture: the date the lilacs first bloom or robins arrive, the forestalled annual ice-fishing derby or sugaring-off celebration in maple country. Click here to read the rest of this article
The Green Skeptic by Scott Edward Anderso - June 2009
It was late spring by the time I started reading Amy Seidl's book, Early Spring: An Ecologist and Her Children Wake to a Warming World, but it was hard to tell. April showers had given way to, well, May showers; and some of the warmest days of the year had produce intense clouds of pollen that were producing equally intense allergy symptoms in every one I met. Dramatic and even extreme changes in weather patterns are one of the expected changes of a warming world. Seidl offers several others, including some terrifying possibilities involving insects, disease vectors, and pathogens. Oh my. Seidl has written a book that is equal parts nature memoir, climate witness journal (a new genre!), and environmental impact study. Ultimately, it is a book that is both scientific and personal without being either dry or cloying. A none too difficult feat. Click here to read the rest of this article
The Gathering Storm, Boston Globe Sunday Book Review,
by Rick Bass - April 2009
"Early Spring" is the kind of book we'll be seeing more of, as the natural world tilts, sags, slumps, and burns, growing ever-more heated, and with biology's whispered promises of impermanence dialed up to a such a volume now that even those who might not wish to consider such things can hear them roaring in the near distance. In this book, scientist Amy Seidl doesn't come across as being overly sentimental or sorrow-filled as she considers various arcs and endgames, and there are fewer passages detailing the time spent with her very young children than I had anticipated, given the title. She and the children make a few walks here and there, but much of the book is a watching and a wondering on Seidl's part - will they still tap maples for sugar early in the spring? What species will still inhabit their lives, and which ones will be gone? It's a scary time to be a parent, but - if one can guard one's heart - it's not an uninteresting time in the least to be a scientist. Click here to read this article in its entirety
Book Review in UK Guardian Environmental Network - April 2009
Did you know that in 1965 the U.S. Department of Agriculture planted a particular variety of lilac in more than seventy locations around the U.S. Northeast, to detect the onset of spring —in turn to be used to determine the appropriate timing of corn planting and the like? The records the USDA have kept show that those same lilacs are blooming as much as two weeks earlier than they did in 1965. April has, in a very real sense, become May. Read more on guardian.co.uk
Book Review by Bev Merryweather, Basil and Spice - April 2009
The first two chapters, "Weather" and "Gardens" captured my interest which later carried me through the more detailed pages of the book. As Amy describes how her two daughters, Helen and Celia, learn about their environment, as all children do through observation, I felt like I was back in my Aunt's garden and the way she let me play among the plants. For many of us unfortunately our environmental education stops in our youth but life is more complex then what we can only see; Early Spring sparks our curiosity again. Basil and Spice review
Freakonomics NY Times blog by Steven Dubner - April 2009
Did you know that in 1965 the U.S. Department of Agriculture planted a particular variety of lilac in more than 70 locations around the U.S. Northeast, to detect the onset of spring — in turn to be used to determine the appropriate timing of corn planting and the like? The records the U.S.D.A. have kept show that those same lilacs are blooming as much as two weeks earlier than they did in 1965. April has, in a very real sense, become May. NY Times Freakonomics blog
Melting Muse by Mike Ives, Seven Days - April 2009
Amy Seidl wants to grow peaches, but she knows she would eat them with mixed feelings. Global warming is raising average temperatures in her Huntington hollow, and thriving peach trees would presage the fall of her beloved sugar maples. That subtle observation is one of the keenest in Seidl’s debut book, Early Spring: An Ecologist and Her Children Wake to a Warming World. Rather than detailing the logistics of climate change — in case you haven’t heard, unprecedented levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are throwing the planet out of whack — Seidl chronicles both the signs of the phenomenon and our perception of them. In other words, her pastoral vignettes show how a complex scientific process affects people both physically and emotionally. Click here to go to Seven Days website
Breaking the Silence on Spring by Eric Steig, RealClimate - April 2009
Did you know that in 1965 the U.S. Department of Agriculture planted a particular variety of lilac in more than seventy locations around the U.S. Northeast, to detect the onset of spring — in turn to be used to determine the appropriate timing of corn planting and the like? The records the USDA have kept show that those same lilacs are blooming as much as two weeks earlier than they did in 1965. April has, in a very real sense, become May. This is one of the interesting facts that you’ll read about in Amy Seidl’s book, Early Spring, a hot-off-the-press essay about the impacts of climate change on the world immediately around us – the forest, the birds, the butterflies in our backyards. Click here to read more of Eric's blog entry
Early Spring in Conservation Magazine - March 2009
Part nature journal, part personal narrative, Amy Seidl’s Early Spring documents the changes in climate—both those observed and those predicted to come—altering life in a small Vermont community. As the weather warms, it’s becoming more and more difficult to predict when the sugar maple harvest will occur. And longtime New England traditions, like ice fishing and pond hockey, may be gone forever. Conservation Magazine website article
Adapting to a Warming World by John Odumm in Green Mountain Daily - March 2009
Recently I attended a booksigning at Northshire books with local author Amy Seidl. It was a great experience and I was more than impressed with Seidl, I was genuinely moved. I don't always do "moved." Anyway, I wrote the following largely at the event...Click here to read more
Booklist - February 1, 2009
Ecologist Seidl blends a well-researched environmental study with observations of small-town Vermont life, even as she reaches beyond New England by keeping her discussion of global warming artfully broadminded. Thus Mexico can easily figure into a chapter on butterflies and Japan fits nicely into a discussion of her backyard garden. But mostly Seidl remains firmly settled in Vermont, and just as Sue Hubbell so effectively draws readers into the Ozarks, this title recounts the stories of sugar-makers, farmers, and neighbors whose stalwart dedication to maintaining daily weather journals, including significant records of climate data, is reminiscent of the Old Farmer’s Almanac. The inclusion of her children in the narrative makes clear Seidl’s awareness of the work of Richard Louv, and makes the title prescient in ways that nature writers could ignore in the past. The fact of the matter is that Seidl brings her children into the story because it is their world that is so drastically changing. At once d eeply personal and solidly scientific, Seidl’s chronicle manages to be concerned without being cloying.
Library Journal, starred review - October 1, 2008
"It has never been more important for us to understand natural systems than now, when the choices we make today will have an impact on generations to come. In this debut work, Seidl, who as a field scientist has observed firsthand the complex interrelationships among plants, animals, and their environment, provides scientific explanations of how living organisms have evolved to fill their special niches and their mechanisms for adapting as the environment changes with the domino effects of global warming, such as increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Writing in terms lay readers will understand, Seidl talks about the subtle changes occurring within her own backyard and community of Huntington, VT. Ice fishing tournaments, the ski industry, maple sugaring, and even people's expectations about what each season represents are being affected by shorter winters and earlier springs. Some of the unfortunate consequences are increased mosquito outbreaks, more flooding, a reduction in maple tree seedlings, and plants out of sync with their pollinators. Informative and hopeful, this book is highly recommended for both public and academic libraries."
Publisher's Weekly - September 29, 2008
In this intimate reflection, Seidl, an ecologist, records her observations of life and ecology in the wooded Vermont hollow where she lives, depicting how human, animal and plant life is changing as the weather becomes warmer and less predictable. At Christmas, people are canoeing rather than skating; daffodils push through the ground in January; outbreaks of tent caterpillars, historically limited by winter deep freezes, stress the sugar bush. An ice-fishing derby "is cancelled more times than it is run. They can't depend on the ice... to hold up."Seidl's tender descriptions of her young daughters' encounters with the natural world-skipping rocks, choosing Halloween pumpkins from the garden and "gorging on the abundance" of cherries picked off the tree-add personal poignancy to a subject "few can stand to talk about at any length." Walking the woods with her husband and children on a Sunday morning, Seidl muses on "the scale of life itself... its infinite unfolding, and how... present joy is a reflection of deep time," suggesting that, to avoid mass extinction, we "evolve a new set of values... consonant with ecocentrism."
Advanced Praise for Early Spring
"This is the voice we need to hear now: a biologist mother, with no time for despair, bearing witness to the unraveling of the ecological world within her children's backyard - which is all of our children's backyard. With urgency and grace, Amy Seidl delivers the message I've been listening for." —Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D., author of Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment and Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood
"The world is made of small places, each of which is responding differently to the crisis of a changing climate. Here, with the mind of a scientist and the heart of a mom, Amy Seidl explores the effects of climate chaos on her home-ground, its meadows and rivers, birds and traditions. She ponders the human predicament in a titanic and visionary personal inquiry that remains fixed on promise even in the face of grim and unsettling facts. This is a brave book." —Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
"In her wonderful new nature memoir, Early Spring, Amy Seidl does for northern New England what Aldo Leopold does for the upper Midwest in Sand County Almanac. Early Spring is an eloquent celebration of one ecologis’s commitment to family, community, and the ever-so-fragile natural world that we were all once intimately a part of. After reading Early Spring, I realized that global warming is the principal threat to all that I love about living in Vermont. Regardless of where you live, this may very well be one of the most important books you’ll ever read.&q
—Howard Frank Mosher, author of A Stranger in the Kingdom
"Early Spring contributes something of great value to the tradition founded by Rachel Carson. Amy Seidl brings her own professional training as a biologist, as well as her engaging lyrical voice, to bear on the blurring of seasons around her Vermont home. The result is a timely, important book--both troubling and lovely." —John Elder, author of Reading the Mountains of Home
"Who would have thought a few years ago that coal-burning plants on the other side of the globe could affect us. The hills and hollows of Vermont would seem to be the last place on Earth you'd expect to feel the effects of global warming. But Amy Seidl tells lovingly of how Vermont's nature and landscapes will change, and what could be in store." —Bernd Heinrich, author of Mind of the Raven
"Early Spring is brave and eloquent testimony from a reliable witness about the extraordinary changes we face in the very nature of daily life on earth. It reminds us that the human heart and mind have their place in the order of things, too." —James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency
"This is a quiet but important little book in the spirit of Gilbert White, J. Henri Fabre, and Thoreau, three other writers who grasped that close observation of local details can lead to transcendent understanding. Amy Seidl, a graceful and trenchant writer herself, combines scientific research and home truths to alert us, at gut and heart and head levels, about what's happening to our planet." —David Quammen, author of The Reluctant Mr. Darwin
"This slim and informative book speaks to the heart as well as the mind. Painlessly, and in quiet, personal language, it taught me much about ecology and my native New England." —Mark Bowen, author of Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming
