Field Notes with Laurie Sanders

I had the pleasure of attending a seminar on Friday, October 23, featuring Laurie Sanders, host of Field Notes on WFCR, a public radio station here in Amherst, Massachusetts. Laurie offered some great insight into what it takes to produce a weekly radio show, and I have a much better appreciation now for how hard these journalists and producers work.

Radio and television are media outlets that I wish to branch out into, so I was excited to hear how Laurie has managed to succeed there.

I was intrigued to learn that like me she is an “only child.” It is my belief that having no siblings tends to make an individual even more driven toward success. My mother tells me that I put away my toys at age ten and told her I had to make something of my life.

Laurie has been fearless in the pursuit of her own dreams. Just prior to grad school, she pitched an idea for a nature television show to a commercial station near her hometown of Cheshire, Connecticut. There was interest in the concept, but grad school took precedence. After achieving her degree, she cold-called the local Public Broadcasting Service affiliate WGBY. This time the idea took wing and Laurie ended up producing 36 short television segments on natural history over a four year period. Television is an expensive medium, however, and she eventually turned to radio, and the local National Public Radio affiliate WFCR, 88.5 FM. What materialized was a six month, grant-funded series of two- to three-minute weekly radio pieces for WFCR.

Ten years later, Field Notes shows no sign of slowing down. Laurie strives to present timely pieces that are meaningful to her New England audience. She has only six minutes and eighteen seconds to captivate her loyal followers and hook new listeners in her Monday morning niche.

Gone are the days of lugging heavy tape recorders into the field to record both natural sounds and dialogue with human subjects. The emergence of compact digital recorders has meant that editing interviews and whittling the whole affair down to the allotted time limit has also become easier. No more splicing magnetic tape! There is even freeware like “Audacity” that facilitates the editing of sound files.

Still, it takes a great deal of time to produce a quality presentation. While radio is vastly cheaper than television, with a faster turnaround from recording to broadcast, it still takes twenty to twenty-five hours of production for a five minute piece. Some shows, like NPR’s This American Life, are highly produced, while others take less time and resources.

Laurie is delighted when a national show like Living on Earth wants to use one of her productions. I have a feeling that syndication could be in the offing for Field Notes if Laurie wants to make the next leap. Stay tuned.

Autumn Scenics

Despite my dislike for fall, you can’t be in New England at this time of year and not go out on a picture-perfect afternoon to admire the foliage. Last Sunday, October 25, was just such a day. I went for a walk in the late afternoon to catch the low sun on the trees and the river, and these images hardly do the landscape justice.

My immediate neighborhood here in South Deerfield, Massachusetts is an odd mix of run-down homes and cul-de-sac spurs with obviously affluent subdivisions. Taking a walk down one such road brought me some spectacular views of North Sugarloaf Mountain, and this estate beneath, complete with a riding arena. There I met Kim, who greeted me on her riding mower as she vacuumed leaves off the steep lawn in front of her family’s house, situated right on the side of the mountain. Her daughter was riding her horse, exercising the equine to help it recover from an injury that kept it out of major shows this year.

Kim is typical of the strangers I’ve met here: Warm and friendly, and eager to share their experiences with the land. By the time we parted I had been invited to their Halloween party this Saturday.

North Sugarloaf is the wilder sister of South Sugarloaf, with a deep “saddle” between the two buttes. The farms that abut the base of both are breathtaking and suggest the quintessential romantic rural life. Blight killed off all the tomatoes this year, and tobacco (yes, tobacco!) was a total loss, too. Life is not as idyllic as it appears on the surface.

South Sugarloaf Mountain is the tourist attraction here. A yet-to-be-released movie starring Mel Gibson had a scene filmed at the top last year, where the observation tower stands. Manicured, clear-cut, and landscaped to offer a panoramic view and picnicking sites, it is decidedly less natural than its northern twin. I find the view looking upslope to be more inspiring than that from the summit, which takes a disappointingly short time to reach, even if you do not drive your car there.

Go around South Sugarloaf and you head downhill to the bridge between South Deerfield and Sunderland, over the mighty Connecticut River. This view looks upstream with Mount Toby in the distance.

The Connecticut is a highly-controlled river, its levels at the mercy of floodgates that this year left the water high most of the time. Only rarely did one see sand bars on the island or any semblance of a shoreline along the heavily-wooded banks. Just beyond the tree-line, however, the land gives way to agriculture. The University of Massachusetts has a large farm devoted to growing turf and sustaining cattle, among other experimental pursuits.

Here is a typical view behind the veil of trees.

The light fades too fast and I find myself wanting to chase the sun. The wind has not yet surrendered, and blows a reminder of wilder ways across the surface of the Connecticut, writing in ripples about seasons yet to come.

Autumn

I do not like autumn. I never have. I don’t like watching things die, if even only in the seasonal sense. Fall sends me into mourning for the lost summer, and already pining for spring.

Ironically, in the part of Arizona that I currently call home, the landscape looks dead the majority of the year, perking up only during the summer “monsoon” season. I know that life is merely hiding, though, cryptic in its way of dealing with heat and drought. Meanwhile, I am comfortable for most of the time. Not so here in New England.

Here, the spring and summer are fleeting. Life cycles seem speeded up by several orders of magnitude with insect species at least coming and going so quickly that they are easily missed if one isn’t paying attention, or rainy weather nudges one back indoors like it did this June and much of July. I am not alone in feeling short-changed in the sunshine department. Yesterday morning (Friday, October 16) it even snowed briefly.

The heralded “fall colors” here seem muted even by Massachusetts standards. Ornamental Norway maples are doing their part without much help from native maples. Oaks turn later I am told, and they sure seem to be taking their sweet time. Among the exceptional trees are red maples. They turned fiery red a few weeks ago in the “maple swamps,” truly spectacular in contrast to the blue skies and evergreens.

Here, people flock from elsewhere to see that kind of color. The tourists, some even from eastern Massachusetts, come as a mixed blessing to residents. Traffic picks up dramatically, and crawling along behind the “leaf peepers” seems a nearly intolerable price to pay for whatever revenue is injected into the local economy.

Apples, wool, and pumpkins dominate the mind and drive rural events now. I’m going to the annual pumpkin festival in Keene, New Hampshire later this afternoon in fact, tagging along with my “bus buddies” from the daily workweek commute. Friends and food are powerful motivations to venture out in the absence of insects and other wildlife to watch.

Last weekend I was in the vicinity of Antrim, New Hampshire with my friend Lynn Harper for their “Wool Arts Tour.” The event centered mostly around several farms where sheep, llamas, and alpacas are raised for their wool. I enjoy the pace of life away from the city, and the people here are warm and friendly, but I’d still be finding lots of insects on the desert broom (Baccharis) flowers back in Tucson.

Wet, fallen leaves underfoot, like a bowl of soggy cornflakes, and clouds condensing from one’s own breath. That is life right now.

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