Red Dirt Country: Field Notes and Essays on Nature by John Gifford (review)

Writer and photographer John Gifford has authored a number of books and published widely in journals, magazines, and newspapers, including Southwest Review, The Atlantic, U.S. News and World Report, and The Christian Science Monitor. His latest book, Red Dirt Country, is a collection of field notes and essays on the landscape surrounding his urban Oklahoma home. Inspired by Henry Thoreau, Gilbert White, Aldo Leopold, and other naturalists, Gifford combines research with personal experience to produce what he calls "creative nonfiction for general and literary readers" (8).

In doing so he succeeds in conveying accessible observations of plants, animals, and natural phenomena and in illuminating his impressions clearly. Scientific and technical expertise are not required to understand Gifford's descriptions of the inspiring value of natural phenomena such as the riparian corridors that concentrate rural and suburban wildlife across the southern Great Plains. "In a developed area … where natural habitat is often compromised," he writes in his introduction, "riparian spaces are even more important, for they become vital areas of microhabitat and legitimate urban forests, which benefit not only native fauna but also human lives" (8–9).

Gifford's field notes chronicle his observations through a yearly cycle in his suburban neighborhood and trace the behavior patterns of everything from the eerie yipping of local coyotes and cheerful songs of cardinals and mockingbirds in early spring through the hard rains of May and on to the grassland melodies of field sparrows and diving, midair acrobatics of Mississippi kites frolicking in the summer skies. Come August, the daily hum of cicadas provides a buzzing soundtrack for the daily adventures of creatures such as the omnivorous, lightning-quick roadrunner. By September and October the kites and other migratory birds begin their exodus, the post oaks and pecan trees drop their nutty bounty, cotton fields ripen, and riparian trees assume their respective yellow, brown, and red autumnal cloaks. Finally, November and December herald the winter season with late afternoon assemblies of chickadees, deer, wrens, mourning doves, blue jays, and woodpeckers near the backyard feeder.

Collectively, these field notes and essays overturn stereotypical perceptions of the Great Plains as unpopulated, treeless, monotonous, and geographically and biologically austere. For Gifford, if one looks closely, one discovers that this region has remarkable environmental diversity that is irreplaceable. For that reason he argues that ecosystems such as the riparian zones must be protected from ongoing practices such as fire suppression, which disrupts a natural element of the bionetwork, impedes nutrient and water cycling, encourages the spread of invasive species, and increases the flammable biomass, in turn creating more intense and destructive wildfires. Gifford also identifies the troubling effects of overdevelopment and urban sprawl. Elsewhere, he laments the loss of large swaths of first growth forests such as the "Cross Timbers," an enormous, ancient woodland of low-growing post oaks and blackjacks that once extended through eastern Kansas and Oklahoma into Texas.

Even though Red Dirt Country sounds several environmental alarms, Gifford is careful not to turn this book into an apocalyptic lament. At one point he asserts, "Despite society's ongoing assault on the natural world … I'm inclined to believe we can mitigate, and in some cases even reverse, the ecological damage human activity has caused over the past century" (132). As evidence, he cites how banning DDT and chlorofluorocarbons helped save bird populations and reduce the ozone hole, how legislation such as the Sustainable Fisheries Act ended overfishing of valuable marine species, and how the preservation of urban forests and green areas in urban spaces like those found in the heart of Oklahoma City add "beauty and joy and meaning to our lives" (199). Without doubt, the challenges are formidable, but Gifford joins ranks with biologists such as Edward O. Wilson and others who assert that if humans reconsider their anthropocentric self-image as a species, they can avert environmental disaster with sustainable practices. Given the present din emerging from popular...