Walking and Wondering
Love of Nature
Today I walked along a new trail behind the Wheeler Wildlife Refuge. During January and February this area is covered in Sandhill Cranes, but they have all returned to their summer homes by now. The walk was quiet once I moved away from the road. A few songbirds flitted about, and I heard a couple of woodpeckers, Northern Flickers, I think. The trail starts in scrubby woods, then borders open fields. Farmers use these fields and leave some of their crops for the cranes to eat in winter. Continuing along the trail I cross a slough, still water covered with old water lily plants and not much else.
I looked along the muddy banks and saw no footprints, no birds or raccoons or anything. At first I saw no insects except wasps, but finally I spotted three water striders. Looking in the water I saw no fish, no tadpoles, nothing at all. Perhaps it is the wrong time of year to see much, I walk on. The trail crosses a land bridge between two sections of water, and finally I hear a splash. Water rings spread out from where I think a carp has jumped and slapped against the water. On the return to my car I see a vulture and wonder what even he can find. All I have seen is a few bugs, a couple of other walkers like myself, and one tractor. In January during the same walk I would hear the cranes calling, their strange warble like sound caused by ridges in their long throats. I love that sound, and love seeing them fly overhead when I am out. This year the center counted 6 whooping cranes mixed in with the hundreds of sandhill cranes. The whooping cranes are always mentioned as a success story from near extinction. I’m not sure six birds are much of a success, but six is better than none. I think there are supposed to be around 500 whooping cranes in the entire of the eastern part of the US, up from 15 in the1940’s, so I guess six dropping by Alabama is OK. While walking I thought about the book I’m reading and I tried to imagine how I could impress on my friends and family the need to protect our wild home, our wild house and neighbors. If I were an excellent photographer, maybe, I could take the kind of pictures that would make people care, or if I were a better writer I could paint the picture with words. I really can’t paint, no one would know what my message was in that medium. I am a teacher, and I hope to inspire my students, but I teach a World Language, not biology or nature. What do I do? I walk. I enjoy. I hope.
The book I am reading is called “The Invention of Nature, Alexander Von Humboldt’s New World.” I have learned so much about one of the most prolific and famous scientists of his time, now nearly forgotten. Humboldt was a scientist in the naturalist style. He took measurements of everything, kept records and then had the skill to understand and explain to others what he had learned. He realized how interconnected all of the natural world is, and he created an atlas/mountain style drawing to demonstrate how all the plants, animals, fungi and even geology on the planet are connected. He wrote about the movement of continents before plate tectonics was ever thought of. From comparing the plant life on the west of Africa to the plant life on the east of South America, he believed those continents had been connected at one time. The big revelation of his thinking was the interconnectedness of all the world. He invented a way of looking at nature that another writer later coined Ecology. This other writer, also a famous scientist, Ernst Haeckel, wrote about Humboldt: “All the earth’s organisms belonged together like a family occupying a dwelling: and like the members of a household they could conflict with, or assist, one another. Organic and inorganic nature made a ‘system of active forces.’ he wrote in his own book, using Humboldt’s exact words.
This was the book I was thinking about as I walked, looking and trying to see any kind of nature being connected to any other type of nature.
