In a recent Monster Mike video (my grandson’s favorite YouTube fishing celebrity), he and his fishing partner attached a GoPro (with a chip clip, no less!) to a shark’s fin. Griffin and I watched as the shark swam and the camera recorded as far as the fishing line would allow. We didn’t get to see much of anything but aquatic plants, yet the whole idea of a GoPro attached with a chip clip was pretty cool.

Coincidentally, a day later, I saw a photo of a turn-of-the-century pigeon with a miniature camera attached to its breast. Was this a hoax? I knew that pigeons were used to carry messages during war, but photographs? I investigated and found that the photo was historically accurate and that there were, indeed, camera pigeons.

Dr. Julius Neubronner, a German apothecary, submitted a patent for a new invention in 1907, a few years after the Wright brothers made their famous flight at Kittyhawk. His invention? The pigeon camera: a small, lightweight camera fitted with a harness and a timer, so that photos could be taken during flight. His invention featured a pneumatic timing mechanism which would go off at regular intervals in puffs of compressed air that would trigger the exposure. Generally, the pigeons flew in a 60-mile range, so this allowed Neubronner to collect many photos from a relatively large area.

Initially, Neubronner created the camera for his own purposes of tracking his flock of pigeons. He quickly discovered the possible commercial and espionage benefits of his invention, though, and he began showing it and selling postcards of his birds’ aerial photography at expositions all over the world.

Some have claimed that the pigeon camera was our first drone. The photos are wholly dependent on the pigeons’ flight routes and are often random, with angles awry and wing feathers framing shots. Still, in addition to photos from kites and hot air balloons, they are some of our earliest aerial photos. Neubronner’s camera pigeons gathered surveillance photos at the battles of Verdun and Somme during WWI. In the Washington D. C. Spy Museum, these birds and their early technology have their own room. Airplanes–and later drones–and their ability to take targeted aerial photos would quickly replace the camera pigeon, but for a short time, this invention allowed military forces to see behind enemy lines without leaving their positions. Some sources claim that the CIA used this technology even as late as the 1970s.

As one whose father raised and raced homing pigeons, I admit that I had never heard of Dr. Julius Neubronner and the camera pigeon. His turn-of-the-century technology rivals the GoPro attached with a chip clip to a shark fin. Griffin and I watched the Monster Mike video, waiting for another creature–a shark, squid, or octopus maybe–to appear and wow us. But for three minutes, the shark swam along the ocean floor capturing footage of plants and a few tiny (and I mean you had to look really closely to see them at all) fish.

Photographing from pigeons or sharks is a crap shoot. In the end, photographers strap expensive pieces of technology onto birds or fish who have no clue that their special mission is to find and capture specific images. In contrast to drone photography, there is something wonderfully wild about these pictures. It’s like putting your quarter into one of those toy machines with little plastic rings, key chains, and assorted small figures and hoping beyond hope that you will actually get the prize of your desire–and not another smiley face sticker. In these moments of expectation and waiting, you can imagine what you will receive. In your mind’s eye, it’s even more glorious with each re-imagining. And even if you did receive another smiley face sticker, you convince yourself that there’s always a next time. I wonder if Julius Neubronner felt this way each time he strapped a little camera onto one of his pigeons and released him or her. I like to think that he did.

I have no pigeons or sharks. Nor do I have an actual camera, save my cell phone. Just fifty yards from my house, however, there is a pen of seven chickens who have been known to escape and canvas the area. And I do have a new roll of duct tape just itching to be used. I could tape my phone onto the chest of one of these hens and see what incredible photos I could get. . . or not.

 
 Goldenrod
  
 Goldenrod takes the fields
 who wave their happy hands
 like parade queens.
 It’s all in the wrist, they say.
 A turn to the east
 and back to the west,
 a maized rhythm made certain
 by the metronome of wind.
  
 In late September, 
 I feel all my honeyed years 
 bend in the breeze--this way, 
 then that.
  
 For a moment, I slow--
 my ragged breath a sharp reminder
 of age.
 But in the next, I walk as a school girl,
 open and golden,
 the day, a gift to be unwrapped. 
 Present then past,
 this way, then that.
  
 It’s all in the wrist, 
 I say to the flaxen fields before me
 and wave my honeyed years 
 for all they’re worth. 

“Then a severe frost succeeds which prepares it to receive the voluminous coat of snow which is soon to follow; though it is often preceded by a short interval of smoke and mildness, called the Indian Summer.” Michel-Guillaume-Jean de Crèvecoeur

Jean de Crèvecoeur, a French-American soldier who later became a farmer, first recorded the term Indian summer in his 1778 Letters From an American Farmer. We continue to use the term to describe unseasonably warm, summer-like weather that precedes the frost of winter. A short interval of smoke and mildness. For me, sometimes this interval is as good as it gets.

As I was walking the rural roads of southern Iowa last week, I noticed the recent roadside mowing. The county crews had been out for one last job, and as I walked, I plowed through thick piles of grass clippings. I couldn’t help but mourn summer’s roadside bounty: wild chicory, trefoil, Queen Anne’s Lace, tiger lilies, foxtails. Until today, when I came out of mourning and rejoiced. Summer wasn’t giving up. Summer was still showing up. God bless Indian Summer.

 
Last Mowing
  
 After the last mowing,
 the grasses shorn nearly to the earth along Mink Road,
 the wild chicory and Queen Anne’s Lace bloom quickly.
 Their slender stems hold blue violet heads and bridal bonnets
 on doll-sized versions of their summer selves.
 At three or four inches, they are no less lovely
 than they were in late June.  
 In the early days of September,
 they refuse to give in, refuse to welcome the autumn
 that is sure to come.
  
 I walk with my head lowered.
 I can’t get enough of these tiny soldiers
 who muscle through grass clippings and roadside waste.
 These are September’s heroes who have forgotten their place,
 who insist on singing even as the cottonwoods and maples
 drop their leaves.
  
 Today is not a good day to die, they say.
 Today, the world is not enough without us.
 Today, we sing. 

Sometimes, my book worlds collide, and the collision is more splendid than I could ever have imagined. Recently I bought two books: Lost Words, the only coffee table book I’ll ever own, and The Overstory, the 2019 Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestseller. Lost Words, written by Robert Macfarlane and exquisitely illustrated by Jacki Morris , celebrates—and mourns—the passing of 20 words from the natural world: acorn, adder, bluebell, bramble, conker, dandelion, fern, heather, heron, ivy, kingfisher, lark, magpie, newt, otter, raven, starling, weasel, willow, and wren. Macfarlane calls his book a spellbook for conjuring back these lost words, words that he most fears are disappearing from the language of children.

After I could open the book without being wholly consumed by the illustrations, I began to seriously consider the words that Macfarlane identifies as lost. I recall holding the book in my hands, paging from word to word, and thinking No way! Acorn??? Dandelion??? Heron??? Willow??? Living in rural Iowa, these are some of the coolest words I know and use. I have read lists of words that we are losing or have lost, words such as gallivant, kerfluffle, and hootenanny. And I admit that I could lose these words and sleep soundly. But ivy and wren? I would fight for these words, and if they succumbed to those who put them to early deaths, I would write their eulogies and lay flowers on their graves.

Conker, however, made me pause. I scrutinized the illustration of what resembled a buckeye-type nut with a prickly casing. I read the accompanying poem for clues. In the end, I googled it and discovered that conker is the seed of the horse chestnut tree (not to be confused with the sweet chestnut tree which supplies edible nuts). I admit that I have never used the word conker nor heard anyone else use it. And sadly, I admit that I rarely–if ever–use the word chestnut unless I am singing along with Nat King Cole: Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your toes. . .

The Overstory, written by Richard Powers, contains interlocking stories of 12 people who learn to truly see and value trees as ecologically and spiritually indispensable. Most of the characters become activists of some sort, and like Powers himself revealed in a Guardian profile, all find their place in a system of meaning that doesn’t begin and end with humans. The opening story centers on the American chestnut tree and the blight that destroyed the 4 billion trees that grew in the eastern U.S. At the turn of the 20th century, the American chestnut was destroyed within 40 years. Today, there is one surviving giant (recently discovered in Maine) that is 115 feet tall, the tallest known tree in North America. The tree is not technically extinct; the species has survived by sending up sprouts from stumps, but these sprouts eventually succumb to the blight, die, and return to the ground.

The American chestnut was distinctive not only for its height but for its value. Its wood was strong and rot-resistant, perfect for log cabins, posts, poles, flooring, and railroad ties. The nuts fed birds, wild animals, hogs, cattle, and people. Some have called the American chestnut the perfect tree. Until Cryphonectria parasitica, a parasitic fungus native to South East Asia, was accidentally introduced to North America. The American Chestnut Foundation claims that this blight was the greatest ecological disaster to strike the world’s forests in all of history.

So when my books worlds collided, there in the dust lay the coupling of Macfarlane’s conker and Powers’ fictional account of a lone surviving American chestnut tree (in Iowa no less). Sadly, conker may go the way of the American chestnut tree: something we remember–for a time–and seasonally celebrate in song. Both are essentially lost, and this loss may be more costly than we can imagine. This, of course, is Powers’ admonition in The Overstory. In a New York Times review of this novel, novelist Barbara Kingsolver writes that this novel intends to tell us that in fact we’re not much more than a sneeze to a bristlecone pine and that the contest for the world’s forests is every bit as important as the struggles between people.

As I walked the other morning, I speculated about the loss of words–and trees–that are an integral part of my life. If we lose the word acorn, will the oak tree be far behind? And what about willow, such a lovely word and even lovelier tree? What would my world be without oak and willow trees? Quite simply, it would be less. Less lovely and less alive.

I concede that some words should gracefully fade into that place where dying words go. Giglet, a merry, light-hearted girl, disappeared from our language (and I, for one, am eternally grateful). As did scurryfunge, a quick tidying of your house between the time you see your neighbor and the time she knocks on the door (I mean who really bothers to quickly tidy up?) Giglet and scurryfunge have left our lexicon–thankfully–and there have been few, if any, mourners.

But consider these 15 words that are used most often today:

Email
Internet
Google
YouTube
Website
Twitter
Texted
iPhone
iPad

I’d hate to think that Twitter edges out kingfisher or that YouTube replaces heather. Our language and our lives are so much richer when the words that name our flora and fauna are living, just as their species are.

Richard Powers told the Chicago Review of Books that writing The Overstory quite literally changed my life, starting with where and how I live. Powers moved from Palo Alto, California to the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee where he could live deep in the woods. Today, he admits that walking a trail has become as important to me as writing. And Powers’ new life in the woods is, no doubt, rich with growing things and the language to talk about it.

At the end of Macfarlane’s poem, “Conker”, he writes:

  Realize this (said the Cabinet-maker, the King and
  the Engineer together), conker cannot be made,
  however you ask it, whatever word or tool you use,
  regardless of decree. Only one thing can conjure
  conker--and that thing is tree. 

And so it is with acorns and buckeyes, with so many things we use and lose. Only one thing can conjure them: trees.