Quick Take
Artist and naturalist Obi Kaufmann, whose illustrated books explore California’s landscapes and ecosystems, takes a philosophical turn in his new book, “California Inside Out: Mapping an Ecology of Mind.” He argues that the state’s identity is rooted less in its political boundaries than in its ecological systems and the Indigenous stewardship that helped shape them. Kaufmann will discuss the book at Bookshop Santa Cruz on Oct. 22.
Artist and naturalist Obi Kaufmann begins his new book provocatively: “California, in many ways, does not exist.”
It’s a bold declaration for a writer who has fashioned a singularly successful literary career writing specifically about the Golden State. But context means everything in this case.
Obviously, Kaufmann agrees that California exists politically, culturally, geographically, economically, artistically, maybe even spiritually.
He’s talking ecologically.
Consider the state’s famous outline, at least half of which is formed by straight lines drawn with political calculation in the mid-19th century. “What an arbitrary doodle,” he continues in his new book “California Inside Out: Mapping an Ecology of Mind” (Heyday). “What a peculiar, misbegotten polygon.”
For the original people who inhabited the land for millennia before Europeans, that “arbitrary doodle” would mean next to nothing.
From Kaufmann’s standpoint, California’s iconic shape does not represent a distinct landscape or ecosystem that separates it from the rest of the continent that surrounds it. But he offers an alternative.
The California floristic province (CFP) is a botanical designation, an ecological boundary that takes up more than two-thirds of the “misbegotten polygon,” making up the entire coastline, most of the Central Valley and the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada. (It also bleeds into southern Oregon and Baja California.) Ecologically, the CFP is a collection of specific ecosystems that each represent a unique biodiversity hotspot. Taken together, these hotspots give California its unique environmental character.
“California exists within the stories we tell in California,” said Kaufmann, who comes to Bookshop Santa Cruz to talk about his new book on Thursday, Oct. 22. “We do have a real relationship to this place. I’m using the ‘royal we’ here that I rarely use in the book. I want to talk about my own experience, the ‘I,’ the first-person singular. How do I become more from California? I was born here. My mother was born here. Her mother was born here, yet I still feel like I’m settling this place.”
Kaufmann’s literary career took off in 2017 with the publication of “The California Field Atlas.” In a market awash with California guides and road-trip reference books, it stood apart. For one thing, Kaufmann is an accomplished artist and illustrator, and the book was crammed with his watercolors and illustrations of flora and fauna, of familiar California landscapes and of hand-drawn maps.
As a writer, his focus was on the elemental forces and features of nature — rivers and forests, aquifers and bioregions. If you’re looking for information on the Hollywood sign, Route 66 or the Haight-Ashbury, look elsewhere.
In fact, Kaufmann invented the “field atlas” as a genre, distinct from the atlas or the field guide. “My books are much more about how these larger living systems are put together,” he said, “and how they juxtapose one another to create this reality, this most beautiful of all places.”
In the wake of the success of “The California Field Atlas,” Kaufmann published a series of deeper dives into his subject, including “The Forests of California,” “The Coasts of California,” “The Deserts of California,” “The State of Water,” and “The State of Fire: Why California Burns.”
The new book, he said, is a different beast, more of a philosophical meditation on California from the biggest of big pictures, from the state’s geology to the often-overlooked story of the management of its natural resources by countless generations of Indigenous peoples before the arrival of Europeans.
“The basic premise is that California is largely an ecological artifact of Indigenous California, of the stewardship that has been present on such a massive scale for such a long period of time,” he said.
Freed from the need to be comprehensive, “California Inside Out” is also slimmer than his other books, which tend to come in at more than 500 pages. Although steeped in the past, of how California came to be what it is today, the book is also an earnest meditation on the future, on how contemporary Californians should think about their homeland on a scale beyond the day-to-day headlines.
The new book is not, however, a closing argument on Kaufmann’s ongoing dialogue about California. In fact, he said, he will soon be launching a new trilogy of books, called the “California Ages” trilogy, that focuses on the history — and the future — of the state. “Inside Out,” he said, is “a bit of connective tissue” between his work to this point and what’s yet to come.
“These are issues of love, of home, of core identity,” said Kaufmann, of the themes of his work and the myriad challenges that California faces in an uncertain future. “We’re talking about whether — despite the coming ecological injuries inflicted by climate breakdown by way of anthropogenic global warming — we are able to leave the human world of California in better shape at the end of the 21st century than we left it at the end of the 20th century. I believe that, despite all the hype to the contrary, that is absolutely possible, if not probable.”
Obi Kaufmann, the author of “California Inside Out: Mapping an Ecology of Mind,” will be on hand at Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave., on Thursday, Oct. 22. The event is free.
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