Humans have utilized stone as an essential, long-lasting building material for millennia. The Stone Trust Center of southern Vermont offers an expanding program of educational events, workshops and outreach projects dedicated to the preservation and advancement of the ancient art and craft of dry stone walling. In this episode of Nature Revisited, we meet the students and staff of The Stone Trust and learn how they are engaged in preserving the natural use of plentiful stone in simple, gratifying ways.
Episode 46: Meg Lowman - The Arbornaut
Meg Lowman is a pioneering biologist, botanist and conservationist who has devoted more than forty years towards researching the hidden ecosystems of the world's forest canopies. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Meg talks about her new book The Arbornaut - a blend of memoir and fieldwork account. As in her book, Meg's discussion launches us into the life and work of a field scientist, offering insights and plans for action. Despite devastation across the world, through trees, we can still make an immediate and lasting impact against climate change.
Episode 45: Kevin Healey - Foraging: Searching For Nature's Bounty
Kevin Healey is a forager, scientist, chemist, and the author behind Pullupyourplants.com: a site that explores the ethnobotany of foraged food and peculiar produce. His passion is researching, discovering, and preserving the stories of the human-plant relationship. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Kevin reminds us of the ancient practice of foraging; an exploratory act within nature that can provide one with not only a potentially marvelous array of natural sustenance, but also intimate experiences that replenish one's connection with curiosities of the natural world that are all but forgotten in our current Industrial Age of monocrops and supermarkets.
Episode 44: Kelly D. Norris - New Naturalism
Kelly D. Norris is one of the leading horticulturists of his generation. An award-winning author and plantsman, Kelly’s work in gardens has been featured in numerous publications as well as television, radio and digital media appearances. His passion for planting at the intersections of horticulture and ecology has culminated in a new book New Naturalism: Designing and Planting a Resilient, Ecologically Vibrant Home Garden. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Kelly talks about the objectives of his book, his gardening philosophy, humanity as innate gardeners, and how our gardens may be the last threads holding our fragile ecological patchwork together.
Episode 43: Chaz Powell - The Wildest Journey
After exploring and hiking the globe for over 16 years, Chaz Powell now lives his life as an Explorer, Expedition Leader and Survival Guide. His ongoing project ‘The Wildest Journey’ is all about his travels by foot along Africa's wildest rivers with an aim to raise awareness for wildlife conservation and anti poaching. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Chaz talks about his path to becoming an Explorer, his numerous adventures, and his mission to help preserve Africa’s wildlife and wild lands for future generations.
Episode 42: Ben Cosgrove - The Trouble with Wilderness
Ben Cosgrove is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist whose work explores the intersection of sound and place. The strongest forces guiding Ben’s composition and performances have been his deep and abiding interests in landscape, geography, place, and environment. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Ben talks about his new album 'The Trouble with Wilderness', an expansive set of songs that consider the role of nature and wildness in the built environment.
Episode 41: Neil Diboll - Native Plants: A Cultural Shift
A pioneer in the native plant industry and recognized internationally as an expert in native plant ecology, Neil Diboll has dedicated his life to the propagation of native plants, promoting their benefits and furthering their use and in restoration projects. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Neil talks about the roots of the native plant movement, the importance of native plant species and their role in the food web, and how we all need to be respectful stewards of the land in order to secure a healthy future for all.
Episode 40: Dhyani Ywahoo - Sacred Plants, Sacred Medicines
Venerable Dhyani Ywahoo is a member of the traditional Etowah Band of the Eastern Tsalagi (Cherokee) Nation. Trained by her grandparents, she is the twenty-seventh generation to carry the ancestral wisdom of the Ywahoo lineage. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Dhyani discusses the numerous sacred medicinal plants the earth has to share, their healing properties, and how they are utilized in the transformative healing of body and mind.
Episode 39: Michael Finkel - The Stranger in the Woods
In 1986, a shy and intelligent twenty-year-old named Christopher Knight left his home, drove to the woods of Maine, and disappeared into the forest for 27 years, surviving by his wits and courage until he was finally arrested for stealing food. This remarkable true story is told by American Journalist Michael Finkel in his book The Stranger in the Woods: The extraordinary story of the last true hermit. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Michael discusses how he came to retell this gripping story of survival, the mystery behind Christopher Knight, and why Christopher's determination to live his own way is pointedly inextricable with humanity's origins.
Episode 38: Curt Meine - Aldo Leopold and Land Ethics Revisited
Curt Meine, Ph.D., is a conservation biologist, historian, and writer. His biography 'Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work', was the first full-length biography of Leopold, and was named Book of the Year by the Forest History Society. In this episode of Nature Revisited Curt discusses American ecologist Aldo Leopold's life and his influential 1949 work 'A Sand County Almanac' which championed the idea of a "land ethic", or a responsible relationship existing between people and the land they inhabit. After more than seventy years, Leopold's Almanac still stands as one of the most significant environmental books of the 20th century.
Episode 37: Doug Tallamy -The Nature of Oaks
Doug Tallamy is an author and a professor of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware. His research involves better understanding the many ways insects interact with plants and how such interactions determine the diversity of animal communities. In this episode of Nature Revisited, the central topic of discussion is oak trees. As Doug describes in his new book The Nature of Oaks, oak trees are a keystone species that sustain a complex and fascinating web of wildlife, and we must act to nurture and protect them.
Episode 36: Benjamin Vogt - A New Garden Ethic
Benjamin Vogt is an award-winning author and gardener based in Lincoln, Nebraska. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Benjamin explains why we need a new garden ethic and why we urgently need wildness in our daily lives. The seemingly trivial matter of not growing native plants in our gardens is an important factor in how we are short circuiting our response to global crises. By thinking deeply and honestly about our built landscapes, we can create a compassionate activism that connects us more profoundly to nature and to one another.
Episode 35: Yazzie the Chef - Food Sacred
Brian Yazzie (a.k.a. Yazzie the Chef) is a Diné Chef from Dennehotso, Arizona, which is part of the Navajo Nation. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Yazzie describes his path to becoming a chef, the importance of food & community, and how he focuses on bringing together hyper-local indigenous ingredients from the streams, rivers and forests to revitalize healthy indigenous cuisine. Yazzie’s website and his YouTube channel.
Episode 34: Henk Gerritsen - His Life and Vision
Henk Gerritsen (1948-2008) was a founding member of the ‘Dutch Wave’ 1970’s garden culture movement which aimed to bring nature into the garden as a source of inspiration and design. Starting out as an artist, Henk went on to become a garden designer, most notably for his renovation and design of Waltham Place in England. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Stefan reaches out to a variety of Henk’s friends and colleagues who describe in their own words and recollections, Henk’s life and vision. Guests include Henk’s co-author and notable garden designer Piet Oudolf, as well as Heilien Tockens, Mark Brown, Gert-Jan van der Kolk, Michael King, and Ruurd van Donkelaar. Henk Gerritsen’s Essay on Gardening.
Episode 33: Kofi Boone - Black Landscapes Matter
Kofi Boone is an African American landscape architect and professor at NC State University, working in the overlap between landscape architecture and environmental justice. This episode of Nature Revisited discusses the matter of environmental racism in the US, which is layered into the complex of other systemic racial and social inequalities. When utilized strategically, landscape architecture can play a positive role in terms of the unequal access to nature for people of color. Kofi's Essay Black Landscapes Matter
