Conversation with Richard Nevle: The Sierra Nevada: Natural History, Poetry, and Ecological Imagination

The Sierra Nevada: Natural History, Poetry, and Ecological Imagination

Conversation with Steven Nightingale, Richard Nevle, and Rodolfo Dirzo.

Friday, June 3rd, 4:00 PM (PT) (in person, outside)

Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve (picnic tables) 

Richard J. Nevle and Steven Nightingale take us across the legendary Sierra Nevada mountain range on a journey illuminated by scientific insight and incandescent poetry. From granite to aspen, to fire, to a rare, endemic species of butterfly, the essays and poems in the book explore the natural history and mystical content of each wild element. As they weave in vignettes from a ninety-mile backpacking trip across the range with their families, Nevle and Nightingale powerfully reconceive the Sierra Nevada as both earthly matter and transcendental offering. In a time of rapid environmental degradation, there is still a way forward— a whole-minded, learned, loving attention to place that can rekindle our joyful relationship with the living world.

Join Richard, Steven, and Prof. Rodolfo Dirzo in a lively conversation that explores connections between The Paradise Notebooks and Dirzo’s research and teaching on natural history and conservation biology.

Steven Nightingale teaches poetry in schools and universities in Nevada and California. He is the author of ten books, including the short fiction collection The Hot Climate of Promises and Grace.

Richard J. Nevle is the deputy director of Stanford’s Earth Systems Program and a recipient of the university’s highest teaching honor. He is a Jasper Ridge docent and contributes to teaching Ecology and Natural History of Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve.

Rodolfo Dirzo is the Bing Professor in Environmental Science and a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment. His research focuses on species interactions in ecosystems in California, Latin America, and other tropical regions.