New Zealand has more Antarctic
museums than any country in the world,
and they are located in Christchurch and
the nearby seaport of Lyttelton—it was
from this nondescript little town that the
wooden ships of the twentieth century’s
Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration sailed
o= for icy adventure. Christchurch’s
museums became the repositories of gear
donated by these early explorers. Items on
display include: Sir Robert Falcon Scott’s
last train ticket, purchased in Australia
where he traveled raising money for his
expeditions; the pocket
knife Norwegian Roald
Amundsen used to cut
the first flagpole erected at
the South Pole; stu=ed
penguins and sled dogs;
mannequins sporting the
old-fashioned Burberry
anoraks. One of the most
poignant artifacts in the
Canterbury Museum is
the “Little Comet” stove
that had been aboard the
James Caird, the now
iconic lifeboat in which the genius navigator Frank Worsley and other members of
Ernest Shackelton’s 1914 expedition sailed
across the Drake Passage to find rescue for
the rest of the men left behind after their
ship had been crushed by ice.
The task of Roberts’s book is to tell “
little known” Antarctic accounts—those
“ground up under the tractor treads of history.” Though many of these stories will
already be well known to those interested
in Antarctica, what this account does do is
bring to life and light the historic port of
Lyttelton, allowing us to see the major role
it played in the making of Antarctic myth.
Most importantly, Roberts introduces
readers to the intriguing Norris, a man
entirely dedicated to preserving the artifacts and thus shaping the narrative of
one specific place on Earth.
— Gretchen Legler
Nature’s Beloved Son
Rediscovering John Muir’s
Botanical Legacy
by bonnie j. gisel, with images
by stephen j. joseph; foreword
by david rains wallace
Heyday Books, 2008. $45, 256 pages.
THE HABIT OF pressing plants began
early for John Muir. He collected them for
pleasure; he collected them to add to his
store of knowledge. Muir’s plant press was
a close companion on all his travels—his
drawings show him sleeping with the press nearby,
or swimming rivers holding it above his head.
A beautifully produced
book, Nature’s Beloved Son
is a treat both for Muir-lovers and plant people.
Through stunning digital
photographs of the botanical specimens collected by
Muir during a lifetime of
wandering, the authors
tell the tale of Muir’s trav-
els in Wisconsin, Canada, Indiana,
Florida, Cuba, and elsewhere, ending
with major chapters on California and
Alaska. The text, by naturalist Bonnie
Gisel, clearly the result of massive
research, hits the highlights of Muir’s
life, beginning with his early aptitude
for mechanical invention (including an alarm
clock that tilted him out
of bed in the morning).
He was pulled into the
natural world by an irresistible force, which
expressed itself first
through the plant world.
In this he reminds us of
Henry David Thoreau,
whose last and most
major study included
hundreds of pages of
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closely observed descriptions of the lives
of the plants around him.
The word specimen doesn’t adequately
convey the feel of these gorgeous plates by
photographer Stephen J. Joseph. Each is
elegantly rearranged on the page, caught
in its moment of life, and a powerful connective zap moves from Muir to us
through these photos of the plants he
encountered, described, and collected.
Joseph’s digital reworking of the often
frayed and broken specimens required
from three to twenty hours for each plant.
Among the most stunning plates are
those reflecting Muir’s love of ferns,
whose intricate spore patterns seem to
jump o= the page. Joseph says, “I never
tired of the thought that John Muir picked
and preserved each plant.”
Nor does specimen convey the reverence felt during the “botanical moment,”
the meeting in time and space of plant
and collector, as well as the faith in the
future required to put
oneself in the way of
these plants at their
moment of flowering,
to gather, dry, press,
identify, label, and convey them to a safe,
moisture-free, rodent-proof place—there to
wait for viewing. Muir
entrusted his plants to
friends and family
(“Now do take the extremest care of my
