Still Waters

May 28, 2018
Science professor Stager (Your Atomic Self) declares, “There’s nothing like a lake to reflect and reveal the world,” and he sets out to do the same in this philosophical meditation on lakes, their inhabitants, and the threats they face from human effects on the environment, reaching back thousands of years. He begins this literary tour of lakes he’s studied with Walden Pond, made famous by Henry David Thoreau, which provides a jumping-off point for discussions of diatoms, algae, Thoreau’s importance to readers, debates about the starting date of the Anthropocene, the difference in approaches between environmentalists and scientists, and mortality. Later sections examine and pay tribute to the flora, fauna, and natural laws governing lakes Stager has studied all over the world, from his hometown pond, where he “caught frogs on its banks in summer and skated on it in winter,” to Lake Victoria on the Tanzania-Uganda border, whose drying out (in the climate shifts during the end of the Ice Age) he recounts, drawing on data from sediment cores collected by researchers. All of this leads back to the connectedness between humans and other parts of nature. This contemplative volume, both informative and poetic, makes good on Stager’s intent to “upgrade” Walden “for our own century.” Illus.