Robert A. Black, Mathematical Storyteller

It wasn't until the end of my fourth day on San Nicolas Island that I realized I'd been holding an endangered species in the palm of my hand. The little white plants, so small and fragile looking that I kept having to make sure I wasn't burying them in the dirt, were San Nicolas Island buckwheat . Just like the island foxes or the scrub jays on Santa Cruz Island, the local buckwheat plants have evolved to the point where they were different from their mainland relatives. (The foxes, in fact, are different subspecies from island to island.) The next day, on our last morning of planting, I took extra care to make sure I planted them properly. Native Americans lived on San Nicolas for thousands of years, and got along just fine. Then in the 1800s, we Europeans showed up and decided we could use the island for sheep ranching. Within a few decades, the place was trashed. The sheep thrived during the rainy years, then ate everything during the dry years. With no plan...

I first sat down to write this entry the other day, but before I could get a word out, I was interrupted by a day-job crisis that put my entire premise to the test. Fortunately, I got through it in one piece. As I've pointed out before, the news media's business model depends on keeping your attention, so you'll stay tuned through all their commercials. One way they do that is by trying to convince you that something you value is about to be taken away. At the most basic level, they try to make you think your life is in jeopardy. That's where all those local TV news stories come from - "Can your pet hamster kill you? Details at eleven!" You see it in sports, too. As a lifelong fan of the Indy 500, I've been reading articles explaining why IndyCar racing is on death's door ever since the split between the Indy Racing League and CART - twenty-two years ago. You'd think surviving a decade would be long enough to get off the critical list, l...

Our job on San Nicolas Island was part of an ongoing project, restoring the natural habitat along a three-mile stretch of roadside terrain. The Navy dug up it to replace the water pipe that runs from the Navy's desalinization plant up to the main water tanks on the highest point of the island. Channel Islands Restoration started the project by collecting seeds from all around the island and growing them in a nursery built near the base, and now it was time for planting. The hope is that the plants will grow and propagate, until the entire roadside is full of native plants. One evening, we got to see an earlier project that had been nicknamed "the Google Site," because the Navy Resource Manager in charge had said he wanted to look up the island on Google Earth and watch the planted area grow from year to year as the plants multiplied. Naval Base Ventura County, which includes San Nicolas, just won an award for natural resource management among the nation's milita...

I've been back from my island adventure for a couple of days now, and what an experience it was. A lot of hard work, to be sure. I have new respect for the agricultural workers who do that sort of stuff all the time. Our little group of 13 volunteers and 5 regular staff put more than 1800 plants into the ground, and set up a drip-feed irrigation system for 1600 of them. And even with all that going on, we still had time to visit some incredible spots around the island, full of weird rock formations and tidal pools, in the company of huge elephant seals and little island foxes. (This was the logo on the backs of our orange traffic vests. Looks much better on a t-shirt, don't you think?) I'm still processing all the stuff I saw and did, and deciding which things I want to post about. I took a few dozen pages of notes, but since I wasn't allowed to take photos, you'd have to rely on my writing everything out. But there is one thing I wanted to say right of...