To paraphrase an old saying, there are lies, damned lies, and book jacket blurbs. So when the publisher says on the back of Darby Nelson's paperback, For Love of Lakes, that the book is "in the tradition of Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac," you are temped to say, "Yeah, yeah..." Well, I have read Sand County multiple times and I have read For Love of Lakes, and in my humble opinion the two book titles do belong in the same sentence. Nelson's book is that good.
As one who has loved lakes all my life -- first Lake Michigan on whose shore I grew up and then multiple lakes in Wisconsin's Northwoods -- I found this book enriched me on several levels. Nelson, like Leopold, combines the sensitivity of an artist with the insight of a scientist (he is an aquatic ecologist and college professor by background). From this book I learned a great deal about what makes a lake tick -- explained in ways that I am sure his students at Minnesota's Anoka-Ramsey Community college much appreciated. Consider phosphorus and its effect on algae in lakes. Nelson first describes all the ingredients in his wife Geri's blueberry muffins and explains how, if she happens to have only two teaspoons of baking powder, she can only make one batch of muffins -- no matter how much flour and sugar and how many eggs she may have on hand. Then:
"...(I)n lakes, except in unique circumstances, the 'tin' of phosphorus usually empties first. Compared to demand, it is phosphorus that is available in least supply, the bottleneck to alchemy. Little phosphorus in lake water begets few cyanobacteria, algae and aquatic plants. Lots of phosphorus begets lots of blue-green (algae) or aquatic plants or both."
If there's a better description of the effect of phosphorus on lakes, you've got to show me. If our Wisconsin legislators -- and their constituents -- could read those simple words, they might understand this phenomenon better and we might have less squabbling over whether we really need to spend so much money to keep phosphorus out of the water.
I also learned about the geological history of the lakes of the Upper Midwest and the glaciers that formed them. Through Nelson's descriptions, I could almost see in my mind's eye a time-lapse movie of the glaciers advancing and receding across the landscape, and hear the crunching of rock and the flowing of glacial melt water.
Perhaps even better than all that was Nelson's sheer joy and awe at seemingly ordinary events like observing the tiny water fleas and other creatures in a jar of lake water, or snorkeling thought weed beds on his favorite lakes and seeing sunfish stare right at him through his mask. And one can't help but notice Nelson's passion for protecting our lakes -- a passion he lived out by serving three terms in the Minnesota state legislature and advocating all sorts of conservation-oriented legislation.
Nelson's 250-page journey takes us on visits to dozens of lakes he has known and loved, from Henry David Thoreau's Walden Pond to the "ghost" Lake Agassiz, which once extended north from the Minnesota-South Dakota border area for hundreds of miles into Saskatchewan and Ontario. It is a fascinating journey that, if you take it, will deepen by many fathoms your appreciation for lakes in general and for the special lakes you love. It will also will inspire and motivate you to do your share to protect them -- and fight for their protection in the public arena. It is hard to consider an ecological education complete without having read this book.
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