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Download video of presentation made to the Sequoia Natural History Association about the natural history of the Sierra Nevada. (Click on the "Movie Theatre" link on the bottom left hand side of the web page). John Muir Laws shares his love of art and nature with area students, Sierra Star, December 17, 2009 Annual plant sale features noted conservationist, by Sarah DeCrescenzo, The Porterville Recorder, October 06, 2009 Naturalist Muir Laws earns honors for his work, art, By Mark Prado Marin Independent Journal 09/12/2009 Naturalist, educator and artist John Muir Laws, 42, is this year's winner of the Terwilliger Environmental Award given by San Rafael-based WildCare. Laws spent his summers as a youth at a cabin in Inverness with his family, where he discovered the natural world. He came back to the county in the 1990s to work for the county's outdoor school program at Walker Creek Ranch. He left a job at the California Academy of Sciences to explore nature on his own terms in 2001 and since authored "The Laws Guide to the Sierra Nevada," a comprehensive pocket field guide to more than 1,700 species found there. Q: What got you interested in the environment? A: My mom and dad were both avid naturalists. Part of the regular activities of our family was exploring nature. It was an introduction into nature in a light and playful way, and it was exciting. I loved it. Q: What do you love about nature? A: There is so much astonishing intricacy in nature that goes on right underneath my nose. The more I can get myself to slow down and look carefully, the more interesting things you see and you realize how amazing it is to be alive on this planet. Q: What's the oddest thing that ever happened to you while pursuing your work? A: Going out in the Pinnacles National Monument and hearing a saw-whet owl hoot and then whistling back to it, and then it coming to my call as it landed on my arm looking for another owl. It flew up to a branch then came back down and perched on my head.
A: It has changed me. I spend a lot of time alone in nature, just myself a backpack and sketchbook. I now have a deeper appreciation and a sense of being part of everything, and less the sense of being a visitor. I feel more connected to nature and it has made me more fierce about the stewardship of nature. I feel a duty to protect it. Q: What is hard about it? A: Stepping off the clear career track. Before I had a paycheck, a boss to tell me what to do, health benefits, and here I am wanting to run into the forest and paint flowers. I also love interaction with people, the solitude is often a delight, but I am a social ape. There are some lonely parts about it. Q: What surprised you about it? A: The more you go along on a path like this you end up meeting all sorts of other people who deeply love nature and this planet. Q: What else would you have preferred to be doing? A: We all have the capacity if the desire is there to step out and do what I did, and this is exactly what I want to be doing. This is what I feel called to do. It's what excited me and gives me energy. I have never been happier. Q: What do you do on your off-time? A: I go to swing dancing classes, I take Brazilian jujitsu, and anything that brings me in touch with happy, joyful people. Author views the Sierra, up close and personal, By Jan Hovey, Calaveras Enterprise 9/16/09 I have always been in awe of authors who have the creativity and conviction to devote years to producing umpteen pages of passion into a book. Finally– the book is in print and other than a few book signings, the author moves on. Not so with John (Jack) Muir Laws. His story, alone, deserves its own publication. His father, an amateur bird watcher, and mother, an amateur botanist, fell in love with both the Sierra Nevada and each other during their courtship on its trails. John Muir Laws was born with a name that would inspire a field guide like no other. Jack was, surprisingly, not named after renowned naturalist John Muir. “John” and “Muir” are both names going back in his family lineage. “Every time you have a birthday (with the name of John Muir), people give you a John Muir book,” jokes Laws. Born and raised in San Francisco, Laws was backpacking in the Sierra with his family as soon as he was old enough to carry a pack. Throughout his upbringing his parents instilled a deep love of nature that nurtured his insatiable curiosity. In his high school years, Jack was hiking the John Muir trail and was struck with an inspiration that would ultimately lead to “The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada.” In 2001 Laws began an ambitious project to create a new fully illustrated guide to the natural history of the Sierra Nevada. After six years of research, 2,710 original watercolor illustrations and over 1,700 species, “The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada” was born, and to rave reviews. Personally, I find the guide to be the best reference guide on Sierra Nevada flora and fauna I’ve ever seen and is packaged for easy schlepping on hiking and backpacking trips. The illustrations, unbelievably all hand drawn and painted by Laws, are beautifully and accurately detailed, and each species of fungi, tree, wildflower, spider, fish, amphibian, bird and mammal is organized by color. You must see it to believe that such a thing exists. Laws’ vision did not stop once the guide was published – he spearheaded “Following Muir’s Footsteps,” an educational program that reaches out to teachers and school children in the Sierra Nevada, engendering a passionate love of nature, personal understanding of the natural history and commitment to stewardship. “Following Muir’s Footsteps” gets students out in the field, learning from their own observations, using field guides and nature journals as the basis for discovery. The curriculum links to the State of California’s science, math, language and social studies standards. “The program is geared to get the field guide into the hands of children and to give teachers the tools to integrate it into their science programs,” says Laws. In addition to “Following Muir’s Footsteps,” Laws holds summer institutes for teachers to help children learn how to be great observers. Funded by donations and grants, find out how you can help by going online to johnmuirlaws.com. “We take it for granted that people can observe. It takes training to truly observe.” The program takes that keen observation “into sketching and journaling like scientists do.” His devotion to the Sierra is infectious. As he hiked the trails during his six-year tenure gathering information and sketches for his field guide, Laws became even more ardent about his Sierra stewardship. “The more time you spend in the valleys and peaks, the more you fall in love with the Sierra,” exclaims Laws. Experiencing the Sierra gave him an even stronger commitment to protecting it. “My mission is to educate and expose as many people to the wonders, the beauty, the joy of discovering the botany and beauty of the Sierra Nevada. Then they’ll fall in love with it and protect it, too.” Laws has worked as an environmental educator for over 25 years in California, Wyoming and Alaska. He teaches classes on natural history, conservation biology, scientific illustration and field sketching. On Sept. 18 he is receiving the 2009 Terwilliger Environmental Award for outstanding service in Environmental Education. Laws is trained as a wildlife biologist and is an associate of the California Academy of Sciences. In fact, the field guide is co-published by Heyday Books and the California Academy of Sciences. “It was through the Academy that I was able to have access to its scientific collections. Behind the Academy is a giant library of insects and specimens – millions of them.” Laws is currently working on a similar field guide about coastal California and on a book to teach people how to observe and draw birds. “This will help people when out in the field – how to make a quick sketch and what you can draw from memory.” Laws is leading a free seminar at Calaveras Big Trees State Park Sept. 26, 2009 in Jack Knight Hall at 10 a.m. For information, call 795-3840. This is a man that is certainly out-standing in his field. I’ll see you there. Sunbeams: The art of nature, By Harriet Ainsworth, Bay Area Insider, 06/19/2009 EXPERIENCE THE SIERRA NEVADA WILDERNESS — Go to, and experience, the wild, urged John (Jack) Laws, a young and handsome naturalist, educator and artist who introduced his book "The Laws Field Guide" to a full house recently at Lamorinda Presbyterian Church. Reflections of a naturalist- John Muir Laws painted a window to the Sierra, By Melissa Bosworth, Etc. Magazine, Fall 2008 John Muir Laws, the naturalist, author and City College field sketching instructor whom everyone knows as Jack, is driving his Subaru Outback down the two-lane road that runs along Bolinas Lagoon in West Marin. He stops mid-sentence to point out every natural wonder that strikes his fancy. “Hey you, big pelicans!” he says to a pair of birds flying low over the water’s surface. “Wonderful bird. Look at those wings. Flip, flap, flip, flap.” First it was the fog rolling in over Mount Tamalpais – “What a beautiful cloud. It’s stunning.” Then a California quail on the shoulder of the winding mountain road, a kingfisher perched on a telephone wire, and now the pelicans. His mind has been wandering in every direction but to the road ahead. “It’s a very dangerous thing to go driving with a birder,” he warns his passenger. For someone who has this much trouble staying focused, Laws has accomplished an extraordinary feat of patience. “The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada,” which he published through Heyday Books in 2007, comprises 2,710 illustrations of 1,700 species, every drawing an original outlined in light blue graphite and painted in lush watercolor. It took him six years to complete. To those who know Laws, he’s the best animal impersonator in the state. The 42-year-old author can whistle like a gold-crested sparrow, strut like an egret, and verbalize the inner monologue of a tiny endangered rabbit called the pika. If he puts his iPod on shuffle, it plays Tom Waits and Zydeco music, as well as an assortment of birdcalls. He’s an Eagle Scout and a brown belt in jujitsu, and he’s addicted to field guides. “My bookshelves are overflowing,” he says. And his behavior is as eccentric as his tastes. When someone says “duck,” he ducks. But when Laws sits down and locks his gaze on some plant or animal, that’s the most important thing in the world. Seven years ago, Laws quit his job at the California Academy of Sciences and set out to create the field guide he had always dreamed of owning. It would be small enough to fit in a pocket, but dense enough to make a broad survey of the flora and fauna in the Sierra Nevada. “One reason I made the book was so I could make my backpack lighter,” he says. “It’s like taking all your notes and putting them together.” This may be an understatement. A year into his work, Laws took a sample of his book to six different publishers. Every one of them accepted. That’s because there was something special about the field guide Laws was putting together. For one, Laws is a purist. He doesn’t just take a photograph or a sketch of a stuffed animal and drop it in a field guide. Every drawing requires weary hours of field research and observation to portray an animal that an amateur can identify in the field. Or, as Laws puts it, photographs of animals won’t always catch them in their natural posture, and the stuffed birds in museums “just kind of look like a bird-sicle.” And Laws’ book was different from any field guide manuscript that had landed in these publishers’ slush piles before. It was uniquely visual. When Roger Tory Peterson published the first modern field guide in 1934, he sought to present organisms for easy identification. This meant highlighting their distinguishing features so that amateurs with little knowledge of phylogenetic order could find what they were looking for. Peterson’s field guide became a reference book that allowed amateurs to pursue their own understanding of what they saw. It sparked an uptick in enthusiasm for bird watching and is often credited with the sweeping increase in broader conservation efforts that took place following its publication. For Laws, whose mind has never conformed to standard systems, it was only natural to take his book one step further from tradition. “Most field guides are based in the mind of the author,” says David Lukas, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and fellow naturalist, who helped field test the book. “Other authors have such a deep attachment to language and to words, and I don’t think that Jack trusts language, or words on a page. So he made a book that he would use.” Laws has always had a tenuous relationship with written language. When he was in school, growing up in the Haight, he would stay up late just trying to learn how to spell. His parents tried everything to help him read. He even participated in a study at UC Berkeley back when researchers were only beginning to understand what dyslexia was. He had a fickle attention span, too. As a teenager at the Urban School of San Francisco, he was notorious for starting pillow fights during class. “Running around in the field and looking at things there was no problem,” he says. “It was just when I sat down and looked at those multiplication tables, my mind said, ‘OK, we’re done.’” So when Laws went out to paint the Sierra, he didn’t see it phylogenetically. He threw that system out the window and started from scratch. The book he came up with is charming, simple and remarkable. “It’s a brilliant stroke of genius in how it’s organized,” says Lukas. “Because it’s based on what you see … it just trusts that visual imagery.” The color-coded thumb tabs on the front cover of the book lead to sections like “Spiders, Insects & Other Small Animals,” and “Yellow Flowers.” “When you’re looking at a bird on a branch,” Laws says, “you’re not thinking, ‘what are the muscles in its voice box doing?’” When he’s sketching, though, this is just the kind of thing Laws thinks about. You don’t have to understand the animal to recognize it, but you do if you want to draw it so that someone else will. “If you draw a pretty picture, that’s OK,” he said recently to a group of City College students he had taken on a field trip to Carquinez Strait. They were lined up along the rail of a footbridge, drawing some ducks in the creek below. “What you want to do is learn something about mallard-duckness by sketching them.” Laws had already learned a few things while doing his own sketches. “Mallards have a very powerful sex drive, and they will mate with anything that moves,” he told the class.Just about everything Laws pointed out that day got a little more color when he described it. The egret had “gold slippers” and the duck had a “cute little duck cheek.” Of the salt marsh flora, the parasitic dodder plant caught his eye. “Here’s a little marsh plant over here,” he shouted to the class. It looked like a tangled heap of orange fishing line. “Oh! It’s in full bloom,” he added. “There’s a bouquet of dodder flowers!” When it was time for the class to do their own sketches, Laws instructed them, “Go around and find yourself a salt marsh plant that you would like to get to know better.” A few students chuckled. “Introduce yourself,” he added. He was probably joking, but it’s hard to say. The man has a connection with wildlife that sometimes blurs the line between understanding and camaraderie. And he certainly wouldn’t mind if others got the bug, too. “By understanding it, we’re going to grow to love it,” he says. “If we love it, we’re going to work together to protect it.” Laws himself falls in love pretty easily. “I think of myself as an attention deficit disorder naturalist,” he says. “People ask me what my favorite thing is, and it’s whatever I’m looking at.” At his tidy studio apartment overlooking the Sunset District, Laws keeps a small bird feeder on the balcony and a vast collection of field guides lining his shelves. Among the guides is a copy of “Nine Horses,” a book of poems by Billy Collins. It contains a piece that’s dear to his heart. “I read slowly,” he says. “I’m dyslexic, so it’s taking me a moment.” He stumbles at first, and as he begins to pronounce the words he seems to read as much from memory as from the page. The poem is a wandering ode to the mundane called “Aimless Love.”
Laws has an indiscriminate fondness for beauty. He’s fascinated by mallard-duckness. He’s distracted and enraptured. It’s impossible to see just one creature, he says, because every organism is only one component of a larger system. He walks along, following the connection from one thing to the next, learning the story, and letting the interwoven ecosystem lead him to new discoveries. “When you really start looking, everything is so delightful,” he says. “It’s a matter of learning how to look, and how to fall in love with poison oak.” Or pigeons, or pikas or salamanders. Or even the famously ornery German shepherd-sized weasel, the wolverine. Until this year, the wolverine, which used to inhabit the Sierra, had not been positively documented there since the 1920s. It was one of only a handful of animals that Laws had hoped to put in his book but never saw. When he was almost finished with the guide, Laws got a call about a wolverine sighting. He packed a few remote sensor cameras and some vials of foul-smelling weasel musk and headed up to the Sierra to sit for a week and wait. He never saw the wolverine. The film from his cameras produced only a few pictures of his boot from when he was setting them up. The caption next to Laws’ drawing of the wolverine in his guide reads: “Probably extirpated. If seen, photograph and report the sighting to the California Department of Fish and Game.” It’s a terse entreaty. Fingers crossed. Early in the morning on February 28, 2008, a remote sensor camera outside Truckee, Calif., captured an unusual image. Sniffing around the base of a pine tree was an animal the size of a large dog with thick, dark fur. The only discernible marking was a broad white stripe across the back of its legs. It was a wolverine. “When this picture came out it electrified the biological community,” Laws says. “Every graduate student from miles around was there, picking up all the scat they could find.” The wolverine has been photographed in the Sierra three times since the release of Laws’ field guide. The most recent series of photos was captured by a remote camera put up in response to the first sighting. Laws has posted all of these photos on his Web site (www.johnmuirlaws.com). He is also spreading the word about the pika, a tiny, high altitude rabbit that collects grass and flowers. It cures them in the sun to use for its winter shelter. “It’s a delightful animal,” Laws says. “You actually see them running around with bouquets of flowers coming out of their mouths.” As global warming progresses, the pika is losing its habitat. Temperatures over 80 degrees will kill it, and the melting Dana Glacier (in Yosemite National Park) has relegated the pika to only the highest Sierra altitudes. They’re trapped. “These critters have one other problem,” says Laws. “They can’t vote. And if these creatures are included in the sphere of what we care about, we can make a change.” In fact, Laws has fallen so in love with the pika that its bird-like call rings out whenever his mom calls his cell phone. “Hi ma-bear,” he says, putting the phone on speaker as he snakes the car down the eastern slope of Mount Tamalpais on his way home from a field trip. He passes the fork for Stinson Beach and Muir Woods. “I haven’t heard from you in a while,” says Beatrice Laws, who lives less than a mile from her son, in the Haight. Laws is a San Francisco native, and the son of two attorneys. He is not related to THE John Muir. He wasn’t named after him, either. His mother, who worked as a lawyer for the Sierra Club, gave him the first name John after her father. His father, Robert Laws, gave him the middle name Muir after his own grandmother. Laws grew up hiking the Sierra with his parents. His father looked up at the birds, he says, and his mother looked down at plants. It was their son’s natural proclivity for falling in love that got him looking at everything else. Laws tries to teach this kind of curiosity to his students. He wants them to see the world through an illustrator’s eyes. “I think that we are programmed not to really look deeply at things,” he says. “We quickly assess – ‘can that eat me?’ and then ‘can I eat that?’ I think drawing and sketching is an effective way for people to look, and look again.” As a field guide author, Laws hopes that his work will inspire people to pursue their own understanding of nature. Once he’s done adapting his book as a text for middle school classes, he wants to work on a field guide to the California coast, and another for the deserts. He is an activist at heart. Illustrating is a means to greater ends – like teaching kids to look more deeply at their surroundings, or making sure that everyone can recognize a wolverine. He considers himself a naturalist first, then an artist. Laws has been painting since before he can remember, though. He got his love for nature early on from his parents, but it was his grandmother who taught him to use watercolors. She gave him lessons throughout his childhood. “And Jack, there are no rules,” she told him. Maybe that’s why he isn’t confined by them. Finding Connection in Nature, by Kate Marianchild , The Ukiah Daily Journal (also syndicated in Willits Nickel & Dime) 5/8/09 "When I sketch, the animals forget I'm there," explains John Muir Laws, author of the Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada. "One day I crossed a log over a stream and settled down to paint a wintergreen plant. A group of Stellar's Jays soon began squawking – the way they do when they're trying to drive a predator away. "I sat perfectly still, and soon a mid-sized weasel called a Pine Marten popped out of the bushes in front of me with a chipmunk dangling from its jaws. Between the shrieking of the jays and my stillness, the marten didn't even notice I was there. It ran across the log, still carrying the chipmunk, and nearly touched me as it passed by to cross over the stream." John Muir (Jack) Laws was exposed to the Sierra from an early age. His mother was an amateur botanist, his father a birder, and both were passionate about the mountains. When Jack was growing up they were always throwing camping gear in the car and heading for the High Sierra. "When I'm in the Sierra the quality of light on granite and the sound of wind in the lodgepole pines give me the feeling that I have come home," Jack reflects. During high school Jack got the idea for his field guide. He was lugging too many books on a backpack trip, and suddenly realized there ought to be a single field guide that covered all the species of the Sierra. The thought simmered quietly during his undergraduate years at UC Berkeley, his graduate studies at the University of Montana, and his subsequent career as an environmental educator. But finally, in his mid-thirties, Jack remembered something his grandmother once said: "We all walk around with dream projects in our heads – and that's exactly where they remain until we put them out of there and do it." Jack wasted no time. He quit his job at the California Academy of Sciences and headed for the High Sierra. For six years he backpacked and sketched during the summers and refined his paintings during the winter months. In the middle of the effort, after he finished painting the Sierra birds, he published a "break-out book" called A Hiker's Guide to Sierra Birds. That book helped fund and market the comprehensive guide that would be two more years in the making. In the Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada all the life forms – mushrooms, lichens, flowering plants, spiders, beetles, butterflies, bats, fish, snakes, birds, and mammals – are living together in exquisite detail and vivid color. Just opening the book makes a nature-lover happy. Some species, such as the crayfish and tarantula hawk, cast shadows so life-like the creatures nearly jump off the page. Laws even tossed in sections on animal tracks, weather patterns, and stars to make sure Sierra hikers lacked for nothing. The book has been rigorously reviewed by experts and field tested by novices who have found the identification keys accurate and easy to use. And though it's a stretch, the tall, narrow, thick book can actually be squeezed into some back pockets, barely qualifying it as a pocket guide. The Sierra guide is a stunning achievement in a career that was already important to the preservation of California's natural environment. Before the book's publication, Laws purveyed his degrees in Conservation and Resource Biology (B.S.) and Wildlife Biology (M.A.,) as well as his Certificate in Science Communication, into opportunities to teach and develop science and biodiversity curricula in institutions such as UC Santa Cruz and the California Academy of Sciences. He has also worked as a free-lance illustrator for National Geographic, Nature Conservancy, Save San Francisco Bay Association, and several other environmental organizations. Since the 2007 publication of the book Laws has been in great demand around the state as a presenter and environmental educator. He has been the keynote speaker at many conferences and conventions, including a climate change conference, a conservation symposium, and numerous birding conventions. Laws is deeply committed to stewardship of nature and collaborates with organizations throughout the state to this end. He is currently coordinating efforts to create a standards-based 6th-8th grade curriculum to help teachers convey a love of nature and an understanding of biodiversity to their students through field studies and nature sketching. He is also seeking funding to provide copies of his field guides to schools in the Sierra so students there can discover biodiversity in their own backyard. Laws will give a slide presentation in Ukiah on Thursday, May 14 titled "Finding Connection in Nature." (Ukiah Civic Center, 300 Seminary Avenue, 7 p.m.). His talk will be illustrated with his paintings of "the beautiful and amazing species of the Sierra and the relationships between them" and will also touch on the natural history of the Sierra Nevada, the conservation challenges facing the stewards of the Sierra, and the process of creating a field guide. Signed copies of The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada as well as Sierra Birds: A Hiker's Guide, will be available for purchase at the presentation. Please note that in order to secure Jack Laws as a speaker, Peregrine Audubon Society has departed from its usual schedule. Laws will speak on the second Thursday in May rather than the third Thursday. This presentation is free to the public, though donations will be welcome. For more information please go to www.peregrineaudubon.org. Article by Kate Marianchild based on 4/22/09 interview with Jack Laws. Sketches used to identify fleeing avian suspects, By Dhyana Levey, The Merced Sun Star 3/7/08 Everyone's seen a bird before. But how close do you actually look at them? This question also applies to people who make it their hobby to watch birds. "We are rather sloppy observers," said John "Jack" Muir Laws, of San Francisco, a naturalist and nature sketch artist. "Once we can identify something, we stop really looking at it." A large part of Laws' bird watching involves drawing them. He says sketching helps a birder see so much more. "How long is the beak, the pattern on the chest, what is the difference of color?" he said. "All sorts of things you wouldn't notice otherwise. And the memory of what you see is improved." Laws is bringing his expertise to Mariposa. He will teach a hands-on bird sketching techniques workshop for the public from 9 a.m. to noon Friday at the Agriculture Complex conference room, across from the Mariposa County Fairgrounds. The class is for people who enjoy drawing and want to sharpen their identification skills, said Holly Warner, a coordinator for the Upper Merced River Watershed Council, which is hosting this event with the Yosemite Area Audubon Society. It's also for people who don't think they can draw. "There's this mythology that some people have the gift of being able to draw -- that's not true," Laws said. "It's a skill. Get yourself doing it on a regular basis." Nature sketching is more common in Europe than it is here, he said, adding that in the United States art and science are often kept separate. Kris Randal, president of the Yosemite Area Audubon Society, said she hasn't seen many birders in her area use sketching as a method. But it really can help new birders' education or bird watchers who don't have their field guides with them. "If you see a bird you don't know, sketch it out," she said. "Then you might write something about it -- what time you saw it, what it was doing, the color, the habitat. Then you can go home and look it up." Laws said he was always interested in natural history as a child and kept notes of his observations. But he was dyslexic, which made this practice more difficult. So he started taking notes with more drawing and some writing -- which made expressing himself easier. He doesn't just draw birds, he likes drawing nature in general. "But I have spent a lot of time carefully looking at birds," he said. "The most important? Getting down the shape of the body -- the basic shape, posture and proportion. "If you don't have that basic shape, it won't look right." His experience has led him to publish "The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada," with more than 2,800 illustrations, and "Sierra Birds: A Hiker's Guide." And he's been a popular presenter at Mariposa nature-related events, said Len McKenzie, program chair of the Audubon Society and president of the Mariposa County Resource Conservation District. Those who can't wait until Laws' drawing techniques workshop can see his free presentation at 7 p.m. Thursday evening titled "Exploring the Sierra Nevada as a Naturalist and an Artist." It will be held at Mariposa Methodist Church. Laws plans to also discuss sketching as a method of watching at this event. "I think it's a powerful tool, to learn to look," he said. "Even animals you see around you all the time. Many people discover they've never really looked at a scrub jay." Reporter Dhyana Levey can be reached at (209) 385-2472 or dlevey@mercedsun-star.com. |
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