Engaging quest into the thick of nature

THEY say it is the journey taken, the path more than the glory, that defines a quest; the stories and truths that are swapped; the lessons learned; the past remembered and revered; the future expectant. If “The Wizard of Oz” taught us that our best gifts are within, then the nature hunters in this volume -- two naturalists, an artist and his wealthy tag-along -- invite us to believe in something that may or not be, as we accompany them on an adventure in extreme sleuthing. They take us along one of the roughest landscapes on the planet to capture the essence of a being that may be little more than a nod toward history: the fabled Tasmanian tiger, Thylacinus cynocephalus, thought to be extinct but possibly -- some think -- still alive.

The animal’s mystery is not akin to that of unexplained phenomena, for its existence is firmly placed in reality. The “tiger,” once the world’s largest carnivorous marsupial or pouched mammal, was a striped dog-like animal and is wonderfully depicted here in illustrations by Alexis Rockman.

The animal was declared extinct in 1986 despite isolated sightings through the years by professional enthusiasts and native Tasmanians on this Australian island state 150 miles south of the mainland and separated by the rough waters of the Bass Strait. Although Tasmania does not boast kangaroos, crocs or koalas, it does feature the Tasmanian devil (yes, Taz of cartoon lore), wallabies, long-nosed potoroos and a host of wildlife “as diverse as it is polite,” whose lineage and environment have been left relatively unfettered.

The adventure element aside, the true beauty of this volume is its depiction of the Tasmanian landscape in the raw; its total detachment from mainland civilization. Once the team hits Tasmania there are few roads that aren’t splattered, literally, with road kill. Squashed four-legged carcasses and scat reveal a story of the intensity and crass simplicity of the nature of fieldwork when it comes to “laying a scent” for Tasmanian devils. These folks can shine a light in the eye of an animal in the woods at night and tell the species by the color of the eye’s reflection.

At the book’s core, between the frequent introductions to their Tasmanian terrain-tested guides and the hilarious introspection of authors Margaret Mittelbach and Michael Crewdson regarding their chances of actually seeing a Tasmanian tiger, are the history lessons of the region. The authors invoke English naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, a contemporary of Charles Darwin, who pondered Australasia’s exquisite animal culture, and Hans Naarding, the wildlife researcher credited for getting one of the last good looks of the Thylacine in 1982.

Kudos are due the authors for the generous pace of their gaze. With humor and kaleidoscope quality, they provide the layperson and the hard-core nature enthusiast a sense of the beauty in their harsh journey while conveying an underlying harshness within the overall portrait of the trip. From the authors’ concern regarding government-sanctioned tree removal to the sense of irony in the desperate search for the physical signs of an animal that once ran plentiful (it was killed off because it ate livestock and then presumably died out), as the authors and their team push on, we are left to ponder all species that have been reduced to ghosts.

Ahmad Wright has written for Vibe, the Washington Post Book World and Upscale.