To see Don
Hunter’s facebook album with photos of today’s ramble click here.
(A small selection of Don’s photos are imbedded in this blog post.) This post was written by Don Hunter with minor additions by Dale Hoyt.

Twenty
three ramblers showed up for the weekly ramble, despite the threat of
rain.  Though it was raining in the area,
the rain, except for one brief sprinkle during the walk, was absent for the
ramble.   Hugh presented the reading for
the day from the work of John Burroughs:

After long experience I am convinced that the
best place to study nature is at one’s home,– on the farm, in the mountains,
on the plains, by the sea,– no matter where that may be. One has it all about
him then. The seasons bring to his door the great revolving cycle of wild life,
floral and faunal, and he need miss no part of the show.

. . .

The science of anything may be taught or
acquired by study; the art of it comes by practice or inspiration.  The art of seeing things is not something
that may be conveyed in rules and precepts; it is a matter vital in the eye and
ear, yea, in the mind and soul, of which these are the organs….So far as seeing
things is an art, it is the art of keeping your eyes and ears open.  The art of nature is all in the direction of
concealment.

(From The
Art of Seeing Things, and Nature Near
Home, by John Burroughs in American
Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau, Bill McKibben, ed. (New York:
Literary Classics of the United States, 2008), pages 146-159, and 168-171.)

The ramble
route today was down the hill, past the Dunson Native Flora Garden and over to
the White Trail, and up and across the power line clearing.  We moved from the White Trail to the Green
Trail, then to the service road and then on to the Blue Trail back towards the
power line to wrap things up.

Continue reading →

This
morning, fourteen kindred souls gathered at the arbor for the Thursday ramble,
dressed in flannel shirts and jackets to ward off the temps in the low 50’s
that greeted us as we gathered for the pre-ramble readings.

Don Hunter’s
photos of today’s Ramble are here. Don also did the write-up for walk.

Two people brought readings today; first up was Catherine Chastain
who read Night-Spider’s Advice by
Joyce Sidman, from
the book, The Dark Emporer and Other
Poems of the Night.

Night-Spider’s
Advice

Build
a frame

and stick to it,

I
always say.

Life’s
a circle.

Just
keep going around.

Do
your work, then

sit
back and see

what
falls in your lap.

Eat
your triumphs,

eat
your mistakes:

that
way your belly

will
always be full.

Use
what you have.

Rest
when you need to.

Dawn
will come soon enough.

Someone
has to remake

the
world each night.

It
might as well be you.

Then Dale Hoyt read
the lyrics from Misalliance by the
British musical comedy duo Flanders and Swann (click here to
see the text). This seemed appropriate and should have been read last week
when we were more focused on vines.

After the
readings we all headed off for the Threatened and Endangered Plants garden
before heading down the Purple Trail to the Orange Trail, where we headed down
river to the wetlands area and then  up
along the creek to the upper parking lots. 
The emphasis today was ferns.  We
observed several ferns but, as usual, there were plenty of other things to
capture our interest.

Continue reading →

Events of interest to Ramblers:

Fri., Oct.
4, 2013 9:00AM – 10:30AM

Linda Chafin
on Piedmont Prairies

State
Botanical Garden of Georgia

Our big native plant sale at the
Mimsie Lanier Center for Native Plants is this Friday and Saturday!

Friday, Oct 4, 6:00pm
– 7:00pm  is an SBG Friends Members event – preview party and sale. You
can become a Friends Member at the door!

 Species
list is on the SBG website, http://botgarden.uga.edu/eventdetails.php?id=13

Saturday,
October 5, 2013. 9 AM – 2 PM General Public
Welcome! 

2450 S. Milledge
Ave. Athens, GA 30605

This event is
free!

Don Hunter’s
wonderful photos of today’s Ramble are here.
We thank Don for allowing us to use a selection of his photos for our blog.

Several
people brought readings for today, but we only had time for two. Please bring
yours next time.  Lee read a story of a
revolutionary war soldier who stopped to think about the ways of a mocking bird.  Then Sandra read a very appropriate poem on
Kudzu.

          This morning about two o’clock, as I
was walking up and down past one of my sentinels, in order to keep myself
awake, I was very agreeably surprised by the singing of a mocking-bird. He sang
by himself and continued his notes till daylight. One would have imagined that
he was sensible of the merit of his accomplishments, and that it was in
complaisance to man as well as for his satisfaction that he was pleased to sing
when all was silent, (except the barking of some dogs) Nothing animated him so
much as the stillness of nature; twas then that he composed and executed all
his tones. He raised from seriousness to gaiety, and from a simple song to a
more sportive warbling, from the lightest quivers and divisions he softened
into the most languishing and plaintiff sighs, which he afterwards forsook to
return to his natural sprightliness.

(from: William Feltman, “Diary of the Pennsylvania
Line. May 26, 1781 – April 25, 1782, in Pennsylvania in the War of the Revolution,
Battalions and Line, 1775-1783, ed. John Blair Linn and William H. Egle, vol. 1
(Harrisburg: Lane S. Hart, 1888), p. 689.)

Next was a poem by Oliver (“Ollie”)
Reeves, poet laureate of Georgia from 1944 to 1963, presented by Sandra
Hoffberg:

Song of the Kudzu Vine

The Kudzu vine is a hardy plant

And it grows where other good vines can’t;

Where the land is poor and the clay banks stand

And the gullies run through the tortured land.

Here it spreads its leaves on the wasting loam

And it sends it roots and clusters home.

And it saves the farmer hours of toil

As it spreads these roots to hold the soil.

Ah, you may have watched the black snake run

To the shaded hole from the blistering sun, 

And you may have stood at the old race track

As the thoroughbreds came thundering back;

And you have seen the swallow’s flight,

And the shooting star in the deep dark night,

But until you’ve watched kudzu grow,

You’ve never seen the fastest show,

Over the rock piles, under the brush,

Climbing the hillsides on with a rush,

Down the ditches, into the glade

Shielding the earth with a comforting shade.

There goes kudzu ever in flight,

Swift in the sunshine, swifter at night.

Happy the hog and grateful the kine

Nourished by food that’s held in the vine,

Happy the farmer, happy the day

Gathering kudzu, tossing the hay,

Come join the chorus, help us to sing

Down with erosion, “Kudzu is king!”

Today our
theme was vines.  We do not always have a
theme, but this was a request from Sandra and Joan.  They missed last week when we started working
on vines, so today we went on a vine hunt. 
Our trail took us down the white trail by the Callaway building to the
Orange Cut-off, left on the cut-off trail to the Orange trail.  Right on the Orange trail through the
Powerline ROW, to the big tree by the Privet experiment sign.  We then turned around following the white
trail back to the Lower Parking Lot.

Continue reading →

Announcements of interest to Ramblers:

Pie day!!! Please come!!!

Sandy Creek
Nature Center 40th Anniversary Celebration

Sunday,
September 29, 2013; 3PM to 5PM

Trail walk with Dan Williams!

Sandy Creek
Nature Center

Tuesday,
October 1, 2013; 9:00AM

Photos of
today’s ramble are courtesy of Don Hunter (the complete set can be found here.)

Today’s
Ramble began with Catherine Chastain reading a selection from a wonderfully
illustrated book, Middlewood
Journal:  Drawing Inspiration from Nature
by Helen Scott Correll, p. 78:

I can tell summer
is losing its grip.  It’s interesting to
note that I understand more every year that the seasons, which I used to
consider fairly distinct, are really quite blurred.  Cat brier and Virginia creeper leaves begin
turning red as early as July: fuzzy spring-like oak leaves sprout until
frost.  During this morning’s ramble I
saw the first “fall” silvery aster bloom for the year, and the grass-leaved and
golden asters, which have been blooming for a couple weeks.  Thoroughworts (upland, round-leaved, and
hyssop-leaved) are in bloom, but fading. 
Tall goldenrods already brighten the woodland edges.  Joe Pye weed and pale indian plantain are in
full bloom down by Meetinghouse Creek.

While I drew, fall
field crickets trilled in the field behind me, and a white-breasted nuthatch’s
loud and nasal ank ank! ank ank! ank ank! gave away his position as he walked
head-first down the trunk of an oak looking for insects.  I remember the bird’s name and differentiate
him from the brown creeper, who also hops on tree trunks, by thinking what a
“nut” the nuthatch is to hop head-first straight down the tree.  The way a brown creeper does it, starting at
the bottom of the tree and spiraling up the trunk, seems so much easier.  The name nuthatch actually comes from the
bird’s habit of wedging nuts into cracks in a tree bark, then whacking at it
with his sharp bill to “hatch” the nut from its shell.

A pileated
woodpecker screamed several times close by. 
A breeze kicked up and stirred the leaves, eventually becoming a steadying
cooling wind that persuaded me to stay a while after journaling, just to enjoy
it. 

We then
walked through the shade garden to the road, down the road to the power line
and then to the river. Today’s theme was “vines,” but we saw many
other interesting things, both flora and fauna.

Continue reading →

Today it seemed appropriate to remember the Irish
poet Seamus Heaney who died a couple of weeks ago, so Dale Hoyt read one of his
poems. (Note: The flax-dam in the poem is a pond in which the stems of Flax stems are placed in the
water to rot, releasing the fibers that were used to make linen. Many Irish towns had such flax dams.)

Death of
a Naturalist

All year the
flax-dam festered in the heart

Of the townland;
green and heavy headed

Flax had rotted
there, weighted down by huge sods.

Daily it sweltered
in the punishing sun.

Bubbles gargled
delicately, bluebottles

Wove a strong gauze
of sound around the smell.

There were
dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,

But best of all was
the warm thick slobber

Of frogspawn that
grew like clotted water

In the shade of the
banks. Here, every spring

I would fill
jampotfuls of the jellied

Specks to range on
window-sills at home,

On shelves at
school, and wait and watch until

The fattening dots
burst into nimble-

Swimming tadpoles.
Miss Walls would tell us how

The daddy frog was
called a bullfrog

And how he croaked
and how the mammy frog

Laid hundreds of
little eggs and this was

Frogspawn. You
could tell the weather by frogs too

For they were
yellow in the sun and brown

In rain.

Then one hot day
when fields were rank

With cowdung in the
grass the angry frogs

Invaded the
flax-dam; I ducked through hedges

To a coarse
croaking that I had not heard

Before. The air was
thick with a bass chorus.

Right down the dam
gross-bellied frogs were cocked

On sods; their
loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:

The slap and plop
were obscene threats. Some sat

Poised like mud
grenades, their blunt heads farting.

I sickened, turned,
and ran. The great slime kings

Were gathered there
for vengeance and I knew

That if I dipped my
hand the spawn would clutch it.

We planned to focus on butterflies again today,
but it was cool when we began, not a good sign for butterfly activity.
Butterflies prefer hot, sunny weather, so we left the parking lot with low
expectations. But with so many sharp-eyed participants it wasn’t long before we
found lots  of interesting creatures.

Continue reading →

We started with a reading from Janisse
Ray describing the Altamaha River as a library, which Hugh read. 

This
river (The Altamaha) is a library, full of biota.  In these stacks, everything is written in
different languages.  There is a dialect
for motions at the surface of water, ripples and waves and mini- volcanoes and
sometimes only a shimmering of wind. 
Each species has its own vernacular, rasps and howls and bellows and
flutelike songs.  Fish have a lingo of puff
and plop, and wild speech falls off the tongues of amphibians and
reptiles.  There is also a language
beyond sound.

In
this library, one shelf is for mussels and one is for bream that live in
submerged bank roots.  There is a cabinet
for the life of canopies and a dictionary of grass.  This library contains a reference for
butterflies, a catalogue of birds. It offers a concordance of arthropods, a
circulation of seeds.

The
river runs and runs.  It runs until it
makes a circle, half in the sky, and finds itself again.  It runs not simply to haul rainfall out of
Georgia.

Not
only to water the land.

Not
only to nourish these forests.

Not
only because it is a storehouse of life.        

The
river runs because it is the keeper of mystery. 
It is the bearer of what cannot be humanly borne.  It is the course of transformation.  It is a sacred urn that,  once opened, changes everything.

(From Janisse Ray, Drifting into Darien (Athens: UGA Press, 2011), pp x-xi.)

Bob Walker showed photos of the Gulf
Fritillary that emerged from the chrysalis that Dale brought last week and
which Bob took home to protect and see what emerged.

Our ramble today was through the
International Garden to the Purple Trail and then back by way of the Orange Trail.  Went around the Beaver Pond on the Orange
Trail and took it all the way to the Upper Parking lot.

Continue reading →

Dale brought a Gulf Fritillary butterfly chrysalis
to show; Martha and Bob agreed to take home and give it tender care. Martha will give us updates
on what emerges (butterfly or parasitic wasp).

Hugh read the story of Milton Hopkins and
an indigo snake. Milton graduated from UGA with an MA in zoology, and intended
to become a naturalist on the Barrier Islands, but ended up, in his own words, a
dirt farmer.  He was an incredible
birder, and known throughout the state. 

Although
it was winter, the snake had emerged from a gopher hole to sun.  Milton collected the snake, thinking to offer
it as a live specimen to a professor he knew at Mercer University, the head of
the biology department.  At home he made
a pine box and attached the lid with nails nailed only half-way down, thinking
he’d give the snake water the next morning.

“Lo
and behold,” his story goes, “the next morning I awoke to find an
empty snake box.  The huge reptile had
forced the pine planks clean off the box and escaped into our home.  Wife Mary had a few-months-old baby girl at
the time and wailed, ‘That huge snake will swallow my baby.’ I knew this was
impossible but couldn’t convince her.”

“‘We
all turned the home upside down for several days in search of the snake, without
success.  I was certain it had not
escaped the house.”

“One
morning early, while we were eating breakfast my peripheral vision caught a
swift darting motion from behind a large upright freezer.  Here was our snake.  She was coiled in and out of the heat-dispensing
coils on the back of the freezer, which backed up to a closed window.  The freezer had recently been loaded with
over six hundred pounds of beef we had just killed on the farm, and I hated to
think of unloading and reloading all that meat, so decided the best method of
recapture of the snake was to take out the window casing from the outside and
remove the lower window.  This took some
time and effort, and I had three pairs of eyes watching from inside the house
to be sure the snake didn’t move to another hiding place.”

“‘She
had herself wrapped around and in and out of the coils of the freezer, probably
seeking warmth, and it took some time to get her to turn loose and come
out.  This was accomplished, the snake
again put in her shipping box and this time the lid was securely nailed down.”

“‘After
affixing the address on the box I added ‘Live Snake’ in big letters.  Railway Express agencies prided themselves on
shipping anything, but I thought it prudent to leave the snake box in the
pickup, enter the freight agent’s office, and tell him what I wanted to
ship.   He says loudly, ‘a Live snake?'”

“Yes,
Sir,”

“The
agent said, ‘Boy, don’t bring that thing any closer in here.   Push my scales outside on the loading
platform, weigh the box, and I’ll give you a label to attach to it.'”

[From Milton Hopkins book, In One Place:  The Natural History of a Dirt Farmer, we
learn that the snake lived for many years at Mercer University.  The end came when it bit a student.]

Hugh’s reading is from Janisse Ray, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 1999),pp. 189-190.

We then proceeded down through the Dunson
Native Flora Garden to go out the White trail to the Blue Trail up the service
road and back on the Green Trail.

Continue reading →

We started
today with an announcement: Emily and Dale will lead a walk at 9:00 AM next
Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2013, at Sandy Creek Nature Center. Everyone is welcome to
attend. This is the first of a monthly series of walks at the Nature Center.
Emily plans to have them on the first Tuesday of each month.

We had
three readings today; Hugh read an excerpt from Sean Beeching’s book, I Like You But What Can You Do Can
You Be A Bird, pp. 45-46.

Inland is a low forest of oaks and gums, holly
and willow, the floor is mud, muddy roots and soggy leaves, it is composed of
low mounds and water-filled hollows, and it is dark, even in winter, under the
live oak leaves.  The history of the
Ohoopee’s past wanderings is here, these are the old channels and banks, oxbows
and meanders, I suppose, but it is too confused and too dim to be read by
me.  The two great trees here are live
oak on the banks and cypress in the swamps. 
Both are covered with the other great player in the coastal
landscape:   Spanish moss.  Does this bromeliad cast (a) spell of
lethargy over the South?  Fully developed
on a big oak, ancient, shaggy, overextended. it billows in the breeze,
supported not by its own efforts but by the oak, dormant as often as not.  Should some fall, so what?  There’s plenty more.  Perhaps it exudes a substance, Tillandsiadol,
an invisible elixir that seeps into the minds of Southerners, that makes them
say, “Aw, it’s alright,” whether it is or not, and makes them think
that living is work enough.  If this
potion could be bottled I would carry it on my back and breathe it straight
through a tube.

Dale read a
piece about scientific names from Alpine
Plants of the Northwest Wyoming to Alaska, p. 12:

If we
can no longer argue for scientific names on the basis of stability, we can
still make an argument for clarity. After all, even after scientific names
change, there is still only one official scientific name-the new one. (Numerous
common names usually remain.) You can also learn scientific names to impress
people, around the barbeque or at other social gatherings. Inexplicably to
some, Carla Bruni married former French president Nicolas Sarkozy. She
explained that, after a courtship stroll in the Elysee Palace gardens, it
struck her that “He knows all the Latin names, all these details about
tulips and roses. I said to myself, ‘My God, I must marry this man.'”

Terry read
a wonderful poem by Janisse Ray:

Butterfly

Where does its fire go

when a monarch dies?

Does it vanish

in smoke,

or turn suddenly to rain?

Does it lay dead

against a mountainside

transforming placidly

to dirt,

which will harbor in its richness

millions of small burning ships

sailing a deep-green forest,

never to be seen?

Or does the fire seep

into the ground,

running in rivulets

toward the blazing core

of the earth,

one day to return:

a volcano spewing wings?

The subject
of today’s ramble was butterflies. Dale began with a few comments about books and
equipment useful for learning about Georgia butterflies. 

Continue reading →

Around
ten folks met at the arbor this morning for the weekly Ramble, led this week by
Andie Bisceglia, Director of Children’s Programs at the Gardens.  We left
the arbor and headed down to the White Trail, then to the Blue Trail, took the
access road to the right at the Blue Trail gate, then right on to the Green
Trail back to the power line clearing and home to the parking lot.  The
weather was overcast, with a cool temps and a nice steady breeze during most of
the walk.  The rain that was supposed to move in by 10:00 am stayed to the
south.  It was as comfortable a walk as you could want for the middle of
August.

We
began with the reading, provided by Andie, from Rachel Carson’s “A Sense
of Wonder”, © 1956, pp 42-45. .

            A
child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It
is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true
instinct for what is beautiful an awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before
we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to
preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each
child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last
throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and
disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are
artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.

               
If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift
from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share
it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live
in. Parents often have a sense of inadequacy when confronted on the one hand
with the eager, sensitive and of a child and on the other with a world of
complex physical nature, inhabited by a life so various and unfamiliar that is
seems hopeless to reduce it to order and knowledge. In a mood of self-defeat,
they exclaim, “How can I possibly teach my child about nature—why, I don’t even
know one bird from another!”

               
I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide
him, it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds
that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and impressions of
the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.

After
the reading, we made our way down the hill and to the White Trail.  At the
power line clearing, we played a game.  We divided into groups of two and,
taking turns, one partner was blindfolded and led to a tree by the other
partner, where the blindfolded partner explored the tree with their hands,
sensing bark, moss, lichens, size, etc, and was asked what type of tree it was.
The blindfolded partner was then walked back to the trail and, after the
blindfold was removed, tried to identify the tree they were led to, based on
their observations.  It was an interesting experience.

We
then headed out on the White Trail and quickly saw St. Andrew’s Cross
(Hypericum hypericoides) at the edge of the power line.  Nearby, and
also at the edge of the power line clearing, Gary pointed out a white Clematis
growing in the lower boughs of a large tree.  It appears to be a
Yam-Leafed Virgin’s Bower (Clematis terniflora).  From  there,
 we took the White Trail to the BlueTrail, where we immediately saw a
Chantrelle (Cantharellus cibarius) mushroom (Surprise!). As we rambled
along the Blue Trail we came across a small American Beech tree with a limb
nearly completely covered with the Beech Blight Aphid (Grylloprociphilus
imbricator) (This is the second time this summer we have observed these
aphids on an American Beech tree).  Also observed on the ground below the
infested limb were deposits of sooty mold caused by the fungus Scorias
spongiosa built up below the colonies of aphids and growing on the copious
amounts of honeydew the insects exuded.

A
little further down the trail, Andie pointed out terraces, most likely remnants
of cotton farming or other agricultural practices.  Also noted was a “wolf”
oak, a large oak tree with many limbs growing relatively close to the ground,
something only seen on trees that grew out in the open. The “wolf”
descriptor is also given to some pines that also have many lower limbs and is
probably a shortened form of “lone wolf” since the trees that display
this characteristic are generally solitary specimens, i.e., lone wolves. 
Andie referenced Tom Wessel’s “Reading the Forested
Landscape”.

As
we moved further down the trail, we saw large numbers of Elephant’s Foot
(Elephantopus tomentosus), also known as Devil’s Grandmother, a pretty
little purple Aster.  Nearby Angie noticed a Crane Fly Orchid
(Tipularia discolor) near the base of a large oak tree. It has been a good
year for Crane Fly Orchids at the Bot Gardens.   As we worked our way
back out into one of the clearings, we observed the White or Virginia
Crownbeard (Verbesina virginica).blooming.  This is one of the two
species of Wingstems that are found along the trails.  Nearby was a stand
of what looks like Blunt Leaf Senna or Coffee Weed (Senna obtusifolia),
a common, introduced weed and usually found in abundance in tilled gardens in
the southeast.  At this point the Ramble turned right up the access road
at the Blue Trail gate, where we quickly found some bright yellow green
boletes, maybe Ornate Stalked Bolete (Boletus ornatipes).  A little
further down the road we saw a small cluster of Cinnabar-Red Chantrelles
(Cantharelles cinnabarinus), another of the edible chantrelles.  Right
before the turn on to the Green Trail the tiny but beautiful Flowering Spurge (Euphorbia
corollata) was noticed and pointed out.  It was seen at several other
locations further  along the trail.  After turning on to the Green
Trail the very striking Elegant Stinkhorn mushroom (Mutinus elegans) was
seen emerging from the leaf litter.  It is bright orange, with a white
skirt and tapers to a hollow point.  And it does stink.  The last
find of the day was a lone Rattlesnake Fern (Botrypus virginianus) then
most folks headed up to Dondero’s for the after-Ramble refreshments and
conversation.  Thanks Andie for very ably stepping in and leading a great
walk.

Here
is the link to Don’s Facebook page with his great photos of some of the things
observed today: Don’s
Facebook photos.

Summary
of observed species:

St. Andrew’s Cross (Hypericum hypericoides)

Yam-Leafed Virgin’s
Bower (Clematis terniflora)

Chantrelle (Cantharellus cibarius)

Beech Blight Aphid (Grylloprociphilus imbricator)

Elephant’s Foot AKA
Devil’s Grandmother (Elephantopus tomentosus)

Crane Fly Orchid (Tipularia discolor)

White or Virginia
Crownbeard (Verbesina virginica)

Blunt Leaf Senna AKA
Coffee Weed (Senna obtusifolia)

Ornate Stalked Bolete
(Boletus ornatipes)

Cinnabar-Red
Chantrelle (Cantharelles cinnabarinus)

Flowering Spurge (Euphorbia corollata)

Elegant Stinkhorn
mushroom (Mutinus elegans)

Rattlesnake Fern (Botrypus virginianus)

Don
Hunter

Today we
first heard a reading by Carol from Forgotten Grasslands of the South,
p. 5 by Reed Noss on the importance of knowing our
environment.

Beyond its importance for conservation, natural
history provides a way for people to feel at home.  Nothing alarms me more than someone who has
no clue about what watershed she lives in and cannot name even five or ten
species of plants and animals in her neighborhood.  Such lack of awareness signals a pathological
disconnection from nature.  We need to
know our nonhuman neighbors and come to see them as friends.  Learning about the geologic history, flora,
and fauna of the place we live in helps us feel that we belong here, regardless
of our socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, or whether or not we were born
and raised in this place.  Natural
history is democratic–anyone can practice it–and it opens up limitless
opportunities for joyful experiences. 
These experiences then circle back to conservation.  We become more eager to save plants, animals,
and places when they are familiar rather than strangers.

Continue reading →