Let me keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and
learning to be astonished.
-Mary Oliver
Southeastern Iowa, August 2016
Birders aren't exactly renowned for
their impetuous outdoor prowess. The term 'bird-watcher' might
conjure images of retirees scooting excitedly from forest to pond in
matching Exofficio gear and floppy hats, or just gathering around
hummingbird feeders like paparazzi to the tiny feathered celebrities.
However, as an avian field technician,
aka professional bird-nerd, I spend more time in uncomfortable
situations than most people would choose. For instance, standing
statue-still while being marauded by armies of blood-thirsty
mosquitoes in order to get a good look at an unidentified bird
without scaring it away. Or climbing up and down a razor-back ridge
line of scree slopes that seem to be falling out from under my feet
faster than I can make any progress, in the hot summer sun, to count
and measure plants at 300m intervals. Or hiding in the lee of a
shallow crater on the stark Patagonian plateau while 120km sustained
winds sandblast my teeth and fill my tent in a thick layer of grit,
for hours until the cloudless storm passed.
I don't enjoy any of these
things. I love how these situations infuse adventure into my work,
but I'm not a masochistic adrenaline junkie or stamina performance
artist. In fact, many field biologists value comfort. We gather tools
and clothing that can protect our delicate bodies from the elements
in order to make endurance a little more bearable. Many wear long
pants and sleeves, in all weather, as a shield against cancer-causing
sun, biting insects, and scratching brush. Sturdy boots protect
supple soles from sharp rocks and thorns while hiking for miles off
trail. Sometimes a mosquito head-net is the only thing that keeps us
sane enough to concentrate. This summer, I even jumped in the
field-gear deep-end and got gaiters – little fabric “skirts”
that are worn over boot tops, so rocks and grass seeds don't pour in
by the gallon. Seriously, this saved me hours of picking needle-sharp
Bromus tectorum from my socks at camp each night.
But sometimes I wonder what I'm
missing. Part of the reason I got into this work was to connect
myself more deeply to the natural world. Most of the time, however, I
still feel like an outside observer, this clumsy, boot-clodding,
bino-swinging alien, lugging a giant pack full of everything I need
to survive in the wild because I am a human that can't survive in the
wild. I can't exist in nature as I am. Or so I am told by my modern
upbringing, and outfitters who develop high-tech must-have gear for
my every outdoor adventure need.
Unless you are a member of a nudist
colony, an “un-contacted” tribe deep in the Amazon, or the
Yaghan, original inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, you probably grew
up wearing clothes. In addition to fire, clothing is one of the most
important inventions in human history, allowing our ancestors to
populate every corner of a planet with highly dynamic climates. It
has also been a source of immense creativity, which can be
appreciated by the dazzling diversity of fashions throughout history
and all over the world.
Today I wandered to the edge of the
prairie, stripped off all my clothes, and stepped in. Tall-grass
prairies once blanketed much of Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota, before
the plow converted it all to corn and soybeans. A few remnants
persist in un-mowed ditches, old cemeteries, a handful of nature
reserves, and private restoration plots like the one I am lucky
enough to be staying by right now.
If you've never seen a tall-grass
prairie, in late summer it's almost like Honey I Shrunk the Kids. The
Indian grass is starting to bloom and its frilly, lance-shaped flower
clusters emerge from their sheaths around eye-level. In a week, it
will tower alongside all the Big Blue Stem, which waves its
three-pronged tassels a few feet above my head. Wild sunflowers,
descendants of early Native American cultivars, reach even higher,
their friendly faces bowing over the prairie in a hot breeze. And
it's unwelcomingly dense. Every cubic inch between grass stalks is
packed with wildflowers – milkweed and coneflower, boneset and
ragweed, partridge pea and others. Like climbing through a fully
stuffed dress rack at Goodwill and disappearing on the other side, it
feels more like swimming than walking in this mirror maze of
photosynthesis and wings.
As I pressed carefully into the glowing
green curtains, thousands of flying insects buzzed in my ears and
around fragrant goldenrod. Butterflies flit and grasshoppers flung
themselves out of my path. Tiny flower-flies disguised as bees
vacated their positions on stamens to land on my skin and tap their
probosces between my freckles. A pair of mating praying mantis
swiveled their heads to glare at my interruption. I tiptoed carefully
around a wasp as big as my thumb. My toes were surprised to meet
patches of cool damp soil and painful blackberry vines winding
between the shoots. The soft grass flower-heads tickled as they
threaded between my legs.
I continued, glancing back at the
herbal curtain shutting firmly behind me, locking me in. I wasn't
sure what I was looking for. I hoped a bird would flush from a hidden
nest but it's late in the season; only a single Field Sparrow trilled
his bouncing ball song in the hazy distance. It wasn't as bad as I
expected. The sun was shaded by cottony cumulus and I had yet to meet
a mosquito. Slowly, awkwardly, I squatted down into a space the size
of a bathroom wastebasket, watching the towering grasses grow even
taller, engulfing the space between me and the sky. Ringing of
crickets hidden deep in the grass grew louder. The smell of dank
earth and roots reaching deep into soil commingled with the scent of
my own skin, complimenting it: my animal fragrance.
I laid back, the grass reclining with
me until I was looking up at the clouds. Something about it felt
strangely familiar, and I realized, I'd been here before, but in a
dream. I looked down at my knees jutting up and remembered a vision I
created over a decade ago: ink screen-printed on tan paper with
rough edges, the image of a supine nude body from first person
perspective, surrounded by blonde and auburn grasses, with one nipple
occupied by a miniature girl standing there shyly in pink socks. The
fantastical image vaguely represented my reluctance to let go of a
childhood sense of wonder. Today, I had brought a piece of paper and
pencil with me into the prairie, just in case inspiration struck. But
I didn't feel like I needed them after this revelation. As if
predicting this future moment, I had already painted this scene long
ago, the little girl begging me not to forget what I am constantly
endeavoring to sustain.
Looking up from the cradle of grass,
time warp haze buzzed in my head along with the flies, and a hot sun
burst from behind the clouds. Bugs were landing on me and the grass
was itching my back. Like that awful, disorienting feeling of waking
from a deep nap, I sat up and tried to find reality. The flies were
biting now and a I swear a leaping frog hit my spine and disappeared
into the green. As if refreshed by the beating sun, humid breath
wafted from each trembling blade.
I stood up, it's time to go.
I stumbled back toward open air, where
my skin wasn't being licked by a thousand knife-edged leaves. I threw
on my clothes and headed back to the house, in a dreamy, satisfied
state with tiny yellow grass flowers in my hair and a burning
sensation growing stronger on my skin. What I thought was going to be
a mini act of defiance against my own cultural habits had served to
connect me to myself, in a thread through time, as well as to the
sensations of the earth.
After a cold shower, I saw in the
mirror that my back looked like it had been attacked by a hundred
rabid kittens. There's a reason grass leaves are called blades. The
greatest evolutionary feat of grass is its ability to grow back after
being eaten. But it would rather avoid being eaten in the first
place, and has a few tricks to deter ravenous vegetarians.
If you look at a grass leaf under a
microscope, you can see that each edge is serrated like a steak
knife, like a row of shingled shark teeth, ready to slice anything
that slides along it, such as the vulnerably supple tongue of a
herbivore. This doesn't seem to deter the herds that (used to)
blanket plains in Africa or the central United States, but if you've
ever felt the leathery sandpaper tongue of a cow, you know why. Next
time you pick a blade, carefully run your finger down the edge, but
don't be surprised if you bleed.
If you look at the surface of the
blade, even with the naked eye sometimes, you can see tiny hairs,
called trichomes. These hairs help retain moisture in dry or windy
conditions by reducing evaporation. Scientists believe they also
serve to obstruct the passage of potentially predatory insects, and
some trichomes even ooze an irritating substance which causes
additional itchiness. Both the serrated edges and the trichomes are
made of silica, aka MICROSCOPIC SHARDS OF GLASS.
The silica grinds on all sizes of
herbivorous teeth, causing ungulates to evolve extra high crowns and
rodents to evolve teeth that never stop growing. It also reduces the
digestive abilities of grasshoppers, robbing them of nutrients and
carbohydrates. As if that weren't enough, when some grasses are
damaged by a herbivore (or your lawn mower), it can trigger the grass
to suck up more silica from the soil and incorporate it into the leaf
surface, making it even more irritating to potential predators. Or in
my case, brashly exposed skin. The First Nations who lived along the
Mississippi, growing corn and beans and pumpkins, hunting game and
gathering seasonal foods, wore long buckskin leggings to protect
their legs from the vegetative and arthropodic onslaught when
straying from well-worn paths through wood and field.
Silica and other minerals absorbed by
plants, called phytoliths, persist in soil and the geologic record
even after the plant has decomposed. Amazingly, highly trained
scientists can interpret the structure of phytoliths left in a
geologic strata to tell what kinds of plants were present at the
time. Some of our major crop species – rice, wheat, corn – are
descendents of grass and therefore high in silica. Archeologists can
study phytoliths in excavated settlements to help them understand the
history of agricultural development, piecing together the story of
civilization. Even a few prehistoric human remains have revealed
phytolith traces in their teeth, helping archaeologists to understand
what plants the ancient people ate. In a way, the very defense
mechanisms plants evolved to keep the world at bay now inadvertently
serve to connect us, through science, more closely to the past of
both humans and nature, to understand the bonds we share.
Evolution is a constant, tinkering push
and pull between competing and consuming organisms. Perhaps what's
missing from my current “nature connection” philosophy is meeting
nature on its own terms, allowing it to bite back sometimes. I don't
plan on striding nude through tall-grass prairie again any time soon,
but next time I have a picnic, I don't think I'll mind the itchy
ankles so much.
Sources:
Environmentalscience.org “Phytoliths:
What they are and what they tell us.”
http://www.environmentalscience.org/phytoliths
University of Santa Barbara Science
Hotline: “Why does human skin itch when it reacts with grass?”
Indiana Public Media A Moment of
Science: “Plant Hair”
J. W. Hunt, A. P. Dean, R. E. Webster,
G. N. Johnson, and A. R. Ennos
“A Novel Mechanism by which Silica
Defends Grasses Against Herbivory” Annals of Botany 2008
MuseumLink Illinois State: “The
Illinois”
I have that painting you described and love that I have another way to view it with the prairie scene in mind. Lovely writing Kaitlin. I know it takes a lot of time to put these thoughts on paper (or laptop) and to do it so eloquently.
ReplyDelete