Natural Beginnings...

As a child, I cannot single out one particular experience that shaped my inexplicable draw towards nature. Perhaps I can attribute it mostly to the hikes my mother and I would take when I was younger. I recall having a somewhat ambiguous to downright dislike of them at first though, being the chubby adolescent as I was. I remember begrudgingly coming along and huffing and puffing on the way up, looking forward to the prospect of the lunch that awaited at the summit. However, then there were a few hikes, such as Rattlesnake Ridge, where the summit view was so spectacular, it was hard not to remember--and I would recall them as I got older. Maybe not the name of the hike, but simply the memory of those breathtaking moments looking out across the Pacific Northwest landscape after the long climb.

Rattlesnake Ridge

These memories, mixed with some deep sense of urgency to care for the planet and counter the trend of 21st century apathy towards the natural world, brought me eventually to the Environmental Studies major at UW. While this helped me foster an academic sense and appreciation of the environment and the issues surrounding its conservation, still I felt no particular need to really get out in the field and directly interact with the nature I was so intent on protecting.

However, this last summer helped change my perspective drastically. I spent almost 4 months studying abroad in Costa Rica and then in Peru, completely immersed in a culture and environment I had never encountered. When I first arrived in Costa Rica, I remember being struck with the thought, "Huh...This just looks a lot like Washington. Grey skies and a blanket of green" and feeling slightly disappointed.

Costa Rica, a new kind of green

Strangely enough, I was reading a book called Tropical Ecology at the time which was required reading for the Peru trip. This book mentioned at the beginning how the untrained eye sometimes observes this "blanket of green" perspective. The authors argued that this is why it is important to be able to distinguish different species. This enables one to make out the incredible biodiversity--to see the forest through the trees, as it were--but also, more importantly, to create a passion and excitement for nature. During my Costa Rica trip I read on, and as the authors had done much field work in Costa Rica as well as the Amazon, I found myself encountering many of the species I was reading about on our hikes and field work/study for class. I soon became one of the students offering up an identification and description of the flora and fauna when the professors asked us, "What is this?" The naturalist nerd was definitely a role I never saw myself in, but I grew to like it. And it did not stop there. When I arrived in Peru in late summer, all we did was field identification in the Amazon, drawing in our notebooks, making field observations, and comparing and contrasting the species of different landscapes. Ultimately we would learn what was the functionality of all these differences and adaptations. I think that was what fascinated me the most: learning the "Why?" question for life itself!

Lastly, I have one silly anecdote to add and it has to do with pikas. If you don't know what these are, you need to see a picture or watch a video narrated by David Attenborough, like now. These things are damn cute. Here, I'll just show you:

Flowers? For me!?

Pikas are small mammals in the Ochotonidae family, which includes rabbits and hares. They live in montane habitats, make a high pitched call that sounds like "Eeeee! Eeeee! Eeeee!" and eat flowers. They actually just bounce around all day collecting flowers in the winter to line their burrows (for survival purposes). The pika could not BE any cuter. But I digress... The significance of the pika for me was that after I watched a Youtube video on them (I may or may not have watched this video several times), I inadvertently found myself able to accurately identify the call. The next hikes I went on after watching this video, I actually saw these elusive tiny pikas on three separate occasions bounding on or hiding amongst the rocks This was only because I had picked up the sound of the call and then thoroughly looked around for them. Who knows how many times I had breezed right past them.

All these experiences have led me to this class and made me realize the joy that can be found in being able to identify and distinguish the natural world around me. This quarter I hope to establish a strong foundation in being a naturalist in the Puget Sound region.