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A Year on the Wild Side
A naturalist, illustrator, geographer and nature columnist for Monday magazine, Briony Penn is a rare bird herself, having deep roots in British Columbia. One set of her ancestors settled in Victoria and Saltspring Island; the others in the Upper Fraser, not far from Big Bar. She is comfortable in either environment, fossicking on the sheltered beaches of the Gulf Islands, or frolicking in Chilcotin sagebrush.
Penn and her husband Donald, and their two rambunctious young boys, Callum and Ronan, live on Saltspring, in a large old heritage home that they brought over from Victoria. "That was a nightmare,"; says Briony. "They sawed the house in half and put each piece on two decrepit old barges. More than once we were sure that our recycled home was going to end up as so much driftwood.";
The command post for Penn's writing is a comfortable home office she shares with Donald, a wildlife artist and architect. From there she produces the twice-monthly columns for Monday that form the basis for A Year on the Wild Side. She acknowledges an intellectual debt to Gilean Douglas, the reclusive Cortes Island naturalist who wrote quirky nature columns for the Victoria Times Colonist in the 1970's (and about whom a new biography is being published this fall, from Sono Nis Press).
Briony approaches nature and writing like a great cook would a gourmet supermarket. She grazes the overstocked shelves, selecting wildly disparate items to combine into nouvelle cuisine.
Mick Jagger is used to explain the biology of red tide. The canals of Venice are compared to local swamps full of skunk cabbage (and found wanting).
Plate tectonics are used as a rationale for cheaper ferry fares.
It is a mistake, though, to pigeonhole Penn as merely an upbeat and humorous writer who deals with natural history. There is a profoundly committed side of Penn that has led her to help create B.C.'s Land Conservancy. As well, she teaches ecosystem restoration and devised a scheme for marketing beef from sustainably-managed B.C. ranches.
When asked to name her greatest achievement, she responds in typically modest fashion. "Oh, no question,"; she says. "It was the Queen's Toads.";
The Queen's Toads adventure took place in Edinburgh, Scotland, where Penn was pursuing a Ph.D. in Geography. Every day on the way to University, she would ride her bike by a pond in Holyrood Park, adjacent to Her Majesty's summer estate, Holyrood Palace. Each fall, hundreds of toads would flock to the pond, in search of mates. "It was absolute carnage,"; Penn says. "There they were, hopping all over the road, blinded by their lust, and cars would just mow them down. So I wrote to the Queen and told her what was happening to her poor toads, and now they block that section of the road off for a few days every year.";
Penn activism closer to home has sparked similar campaigns.
"A certain unnamed BC Park wanted to expand a stupid parking lot into some beautiful natural habitat,"; she says. "So I went to the area and dug around until I found a long-toed salamander. Then I brought the Parks people out and showed them how they couldn't possibly destroy priceless habitat of this solitary survivor of an extremely rare, endangered species, one that biologists all over the world were talking about. They immediately agreed, and cancelled the parking lot expansion.";
When I point out that long-toed salamanders are dirt-common if you know where to look for them, she replies, with a definite glint in her eye, "You tell me what's more important, that salamander's peace of mind or parking space for one more Winnebago.";
Briony often puts her geography skills to work in the design and environmental interpretation consulting work that she and her husband Donald collaborate on. She advocates community involvement in the mapping of local ecosystems and natural features and lays out her methodology (as well as some stunning maps) in her other book, co-authored with Doug Aberley and Michael Dunn, Giving the Land a Voice (Land Trust Alliance of B.C. $20).
Her next book project is historical-a composite view of elderly B.C. ecologists and naturalists, men and women who have made incredible contributions to our understanding of the provincial environment. "I'm going to visit them, drink lots of tea with them, and write up their stories before they're gone,"; she says.
Meanwhile A Year on the Wild Side offers 52 stories in a 12-chapter format, each chapter being a month of the year. She introduces sexy salamanders, marvellous mushrooms, murders of crows, endangered marmots, Salish myths and great blue herons that are compared to Dr. Seuss characters.
Penn is also involved in the design of the Gwaii Haanas Visitor Centre in the Queen Charlotte Islands and the Gulf of Georgia National Heritage Site.
Wild Side 0-920663-68-0
Giving the Land 0-9685042-0-5
[Don Gayton / BCBW WINTER 1999]
Penn and her husband Donald, and their two rambunctious young boys, Callum and Ronan, live on Saltspring, in a large old heritage home that they brought over from Victoria. "That was a nightmare,"; says Briony. "They sawed the house in half and put each piece on two decrepit old barges. More than once we were sure that our recycled home was going to end up as so much driftwood.";
The command post for Penn's writing is a comfortable home office she shares with Donald, a wildlife artist and architect. From there she produces the twice-monthly columns for Monday that form the basis for A Year on the Wild Side. She acknowledges an intellectual debt to Gilean Douglas, the reclusive Cortes Island naturalist who wrote quirky nature columns for the Victoria Times Colonist in the 1970's (and about whom a new biography is being published this fall, from Sono Nis Press).
Briony approaches nature and writing like a great cook would a gourmet supermarket. She grazes the overstocked shelves, selecting wildly disparate items to combine into nouvelle cuisine.
Mick Jagger is used to explain the biology of red tide. The canals of Venice are compared to local swamps full of skunk cabbage (and found wanting).
Plate tectonics are used as a rationale for cheaper ferry fares.
It is a mistake, though, to pigeonhole Penn as merely an upbeat and humorous writer who deals with natural history. There is a profoundly committed side of Penn that has led her to help create B.C.'s Land Conservancy. As well, she teaches ecosystem restoration and devised a scheme for marketing beef from sustainably-managed B.C. ranches.
When asked to name her greatest achievement, she responds in typically modest fashion. "Oh, no question,"; she says. "It was the Queen's Toads.";
The Queen's Toads adventure took place in Edinburgh, Scotland, where Penn was pursuing a Ph.D. in Geography. Every day on the way to University, she would ride her bike by a pond in Holyrood Park, adjacent to Her Majesty's summer estate, Holyrood Palace. Each fall, hundreds of toads would flock to the pond, in search of mates. "It was absolute carnage,"; Penn says. "There they were, hopping all over the road, blinded by their lust, and cars would just mow them down. So I wrote to the Queen and told her what was happening to her poor toads, and now they block that section of the road off for a few days every year.";
Penn activism closer to home has sparked similar campaigns.
"A certain unnamed BC Park wanted to expand a stupid parking lot into some beautiful natural habitat,"; she says. "So I went to the area and dug around until I found a long-toed salamander. Then I brought the Parks people out and showed them how they couldn't possibly destroy priceless habitat of this solitary survivor of an extremely rare, endangered species, one that biologists all over the world were talking about. They immediately agreed, and cancelled the parking lot expansion.";
When I point out that long-toed salamanders are dirt-common if you know where to look for them, she replies, with a definite glint in her eye, "You tell me what's more important, that salamander's peace of mind or parking space for one more Winnebago.";
Briony often puts her geography skills to work in the design and environmental interpretation consulting work that she and her husband Donald collaborate on. She advocates community involvement in the mapping of local ecosystems and natural features and lays out her methodology (as well as some stunning maps) in her other book, co-authored with Doug Aberley and Michael Dunn, Giving the Land a Voice (Land Trust Alliance of B.C. $20).
Her next book project is historical-a composite view of elderly B.C. ecologists and naturalists, men and women who have made incredible contributions to our understanding of the provincial environment. "I'm going to visit them, drink lots of tea with them, and write up their stories before they're gone,"; she says.
Meanwhile A Year on the Wild Side offers 52 stories in a 12-chapter format, each chapter being a month of the year. She introduces sexy salamanders, marvellous mushrooms, murders of crows, endangered marmots, Salish myths and great blue herons that are compared to Dr. Seuss characters.
Penn is also involved in the design of the Gwaii Haanas Visitor Centre in the Queen Charlotte Islands and the Gulf of Georgia National Heritage Site.
Wild Side 0-920663-68-0
Giving the Land 0-9685042-0-5
[Don Gayton / BCBW WINTER 1999]
Submitted on July 22, 2003 in By David.
