Which Crowe is that?

Forest and Bird, Issue 308, 1 May 2003, Page 18

Which Crowe is that?

PAT BASKETT

meets the author of the popular nature guides.

ndrew Crowe has a monk-like A to talk about himself or his beliefs. Let’s keep it to my work, he requests. That’s not difficult, given his prolific output — 30-something books on or about nature published in 22 years, a dozen of them finalists in the national Children’s and Montana book awards. How many families cram Which Native Tree? and Which New Zealand Bird? into their packs on tramping holidays? A generation of children has grown up hearing A Kiwi Has No Wings and Where Does The Tui Go? Books on how to recognise coastal plants, seashells, insects and — this year’s publication — The Lifesize Guide to New Zealand Wildflowers; simple stories for young children, activity books like Earthkids. The list of topics is still growing although what’s currently in the pipeline is a secret. In the meantime Andrew Crowe has taken a step sideways from writing about the bush. He recently returned from six months in Dharamsala in India with a book on the life of the Dalai Lama ready for publication. Aimed at teenagers, it’s not, when you think about it, all that far off his usual track. The deeper aspects of his writing are concerned with taking the reader with him along a path of personal discovery which, up till now, has focused on the world of nature. The seeds of this book go back a long way, he says. It came about through thinking of spiritual values that are universal, and how to communicate them effectively to children. The way to do this, he decided, was through the life of an individual, in this case, the Dalai Lama. During his six months’ research, which included three weeks in Tibet, he arranged, with great difficulty, to spend an hour talking to the Dalai Lama. It was an hour well spent and Crowe laughs at the memory of it. ‘He has tremendous warmth and humour, and amazing charisma. But he never made me feel less than his equal? Crowe’s spirituality has an earthy, rather than a religious, ring to it. ‘Tm not a Buddhist, he says. ‘I don’t feel that I have a particular belief. ’'m more of an explorer: Yet there does appear to be a link between

his inquiry into Buddhism and the genesis of the first book he wrote: Native Edible Plants which has run to three editions and several printings since its initial publication in 1981. That book grew out of a decision he made to spend 10 days alone in the bush without food. Yes, he admits in retrospect, there was more to that experience than a scientific curiosity about hunger and survival — it was also about being alone. His lifestyle, if not exactly monk-like, has always had something of the wandering friar about it. After his stint in the bush he spent six months living in a cave on the Coromandel. From there he utilised the excellent amenities of the Country Library Service to access information from museums and libraries throughout the country and, in one instance, from Russia via London. A more immediate source of information for that book was his Coromandel friend Dick

Hovell to whom Maori elders had passed on their store of knowledge of native plants. When someone needed a house-sitter he left the cave, but houses seem, like possessions in general, superfluous to his lifestyle. There was one 10-year period when he owned a house near Whitianga but at the moment his base is a small van, with his much-loved reference books stored in a friend’s garage. ‘Tm mixed about possessions. Books are a huge weakness — and the reason why I could be tempted to have a house of my own again, he concedes. Crowe was born in London and came to New Zealand in 1972 when he was 20, leaving an engineering degree incomplete. His fascination with nature only started when he came here and began making forays into the bush. Writing about the subject was not something he had considered until a friend suggested he try it. Native Edible Plants began in his mind as a mere booklet — its standing as an academic treatise on 160 plants can be measured in its printing history and the fact that it is out of print again. The three years of its making left Crowe hooked on the process of research and writing. During a year back in London, he wrote a guide to its parks. On his return to New Zealand he embarked on another path

of discovery — writing about nature for children, whose world he had always enjoyed and identified with. His first little book, A Kiwi Has No Wings was turned down by most publishers, he says, on the grounds that there was no market for New Zealand children’s books at that time. It was eventually picked up by Longman Paul in 1988 and a second edition was published by Reed in 1997 — 10 printings in all. No, Crowe doesn’t have children of his own — ‘but I was one!’ he quips. A dozen more titles for children followed, with five of these translated into Maori, and then he began the Which...? series. For these and the Lifesize Guides that followed, not being a scientist, or expert in a particular field, has helped, rather than hindered his work. Explanations for children need, he says, a naive or simple logic that doesn’t require a scientific background. Always in his mind are the questions an enquiring four-year-old might ask. The visual language of each page is as important as the verbal, his aim being to enable young children to ‘navigate through the book even before they are able to read’ Thus, plants or insects are arranged in groups identified by a particular colour which appears at the top of each page and, in the extremely simple and beautiful Lifesize guides, as a coloured thumbprint on each page number. This format is slightly more complicated for Which New Zealand Insect?, a follow-up to his 1999 Lifesize Guide to Insects. Native insects, for example, are clearly identified by a green tag in the text, and their Maori name included. Crowe hopes this expanded volume — a finalist in this year’s New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards — will be a reference for entomologists as well as children at primary school. ‘I felt there was scope to make a book that would work at different levels at the same time, he says. The division of insects into specific types — beetles, flies, bugs, bees, wasps, ants, etc., — is his adaptation of a conventional way of sorting the insect world. The choice of which among the 10,000 or so named candidates to include was determined partly by consultation with scientists and experts in MAF, and by consideration of what people are likely to be looking for and at. So nothing too tiny is included. One of the thrills in researching the book was Crowe’s discovery of two new species of cave weta, one in snow and scree in the Remarkables mountains near Queenstown, the other near the Homer Tunnel in Fiordland. Their photos are on page 99 of the book. The photographs — about 650, all life size and taken by Crowe — are one of the book’s major accomplishments. Their authenticity

was achieved by using a macro lens calibrated to specific ratios. A photograph taken at a ratio of one to four was restored to life size by scanning at four hundred per cent. Crowe’s sometimes quirky text, offering information not often associated with subjects as seemingly dry as insects, is another of the book’s charms. Who would have thought, for example, that ants had the nous to ‘farm’ rove beetles in order to enjoy the sweet substance the beetles produce? Or that click beetles (tupanapana in Maori) can leap a distance the equivalent of a person jumping onto the roof of a threestorey building, with an acceleration more than 30 times that of a space rocket? The Japanese eat these creatures. Did you know that the huhu beetle squeaks? It, too, used to be eaten — as are many of the insects Crowe describes. (He hasn’t eaten any — at least ‘not on purpose!’) Ninety per cent of insects in New Zealand are found nowhere else.

ow we underestimate these fellow H inhabitants of the planet. According to Crowe’s research, bees, wasps and cockroaches are now being trained in the same way as dogs to find unexploded land mines. ‘People don’t give insects enough attention, he says. ‘I felt this early on. What have 25 years of thinking and writing about the details of our ecology told him of its future? ‘Personally, I think maybe we’re doomed as a species. The way we’re behaving gives room for pessimism. When you look at the bigger picture, we’re going to be one of the planet’s short-term species. The evolution required in our way of thinking is pretty big — we seem to be resistant to change at a fundamental level. ‘Rather than being depressed or daunted by that, I feel our job is to find our own modest way to help? Drawing people into a relationship with nature seems an excellent way to start. — PAT BASKETT is an Auckland journalist.