A Field Guide Is A Phone Book

A field guide won’t bring profound connection to the land base, but can facilitate an introduction.

Sometimes a book wants to promise more than it can provide. I remember the subtitle of Sam Thayer’s third field guide to edible plants : “36 plants that can change your life”. Really? I guess throwing the “can” in there helps keep it down to Earth. Or maybe it is also a bit of a cultural narrative, that if we can learn to use a field guide we’ll suddenly be the Wild-Antlered-King of the Unseen-Forest-Realms™. I think some us look to those who know the names of other forms of life as having a magical gift, a clairvoyance into a world beyond - similar to how I once looked at an elder at a plant walk who told me and my companion the name of the plant with whom we were so enamored. “Viper’s Bugloss” he said, and we watched in awe as this mysterious Druid in khakis and a tilly hat sauntered away to catch up with the rest of the group.

A field guide, and those who use them, do not have special leafy powers. There is no immediate or innate connection derived from the books or apps which help direct us towards titles and characteristics of a wild unknown. Instead, the role of a field guide is to be a tool to lead us towards identification, to give us a name, a search image and some basic information which enables us to begin working towards a relationship of connection. It’s like knowing how to use a phone book. Remember those? If you know how to look up the region where someone lived, and then their last name, you could get to the point in the book where you could get their phone number and maybe an address. A phone number doesn’t mean relationship. A phone number doesn’t mean an understanding of the relationships which tie that person to their broader community. But a phone number can be a big step in bridging the gap between stranger and friend. In a more relevant example, an Instagram post may give you a photograph of someone doing something they love, or maybe what they like to eat, similar to a field guide. But we still can’t declare someone is a friend just because we’ve seen their photo and know their name. But, by knowing a name and knowing who you are talking to, you can then start to engage in a way that can begin building that relationship.

Hopefully, a good field guide provides important details to help us understand a little bit about those beings we are encountering. Some examples of those details are things like range maps to identify the location of where a being lives, field marks to point out what they look like. The field guide may state their size, shape and distinct features and where they like to hang out. It might even tell us who the species is likely to be seen with. These are the same kinds of details a friend may share with you when they want to introduce you to someone. The field guide is simply doing that, introducing us.

I want to note that we don’t always need an introduction though to meet with the world. There are means of engagement, ways of being in relationship which are profound and intense, which have lasting implication, even though we may not know all the details of the life who you are encountering in these profound intimacies. We sometimes don’t need to know the identities of those we come across to have connective experiences. I remember hooking up with a stranger at a club a few years ago on Earth Day. I don’t think I ever learned their name, and didn’t know much about them at all.. but it was a really hot, really memorable encounter. His body and mine in relation, quickly, mutually, with respect and consent. It is something I will remember for a long time, perhaps the rest of my life. Can we have intimacies with more-than-human beings in these same ways? Can someone eat a unnamed mushroom and transport themselves to new worlds and ways of knowing? Can we trail a “random” Coyote (Canis latrans) and discover whole worlds imminently embedded in the place where we live our everyday? I site these two examples as moments where I have been in intimate encounters with the more-than-human and they have been transformative experiences with lasting impact and rippling liberatory consequence.