Moldy Bread (7/9)

I got lost on the refuge today.

It was bound to happen, have you seen the photos? Everything looks the same. North, South, up, down. I can pick apart the different regions of the refuge, but the right side of the road looks exactly like the left.

It wasn't bad, though. I was up on the Northwestern corner of the refuge, wandering from staff gage to staff gage, making my obersvations. On my list of structures to check is the one at the intersection of Camp and Jericho. Jericho is too muddy to drive down, and there was a fallen log in the way on Camp, so I hiked it.

Round trip, it was 4.6 miles, which didn't seem terribly far. On my way there, I had plenty of time to think about what I was doing, which was hiking.

Ohh, the walk was so nice I could hardly stand it. It was in the eighties or nineties today, and cloudy. I was walking down the road, so no brittle wood, no blackberries caused me any harm today. The song birds were out to celebrate my comfort with me and everything. There was a little mud, but I clomped on through to the site, writing this post in my head as I went. (This I frequently do, having a post already in the works before I even finish out my day.)

I've never really thought of myself as a conservationalist.

I've never thought of myself as such because I never thought there was a place for me. I was tucked away in my cozy, scholastic niche in the hard sciences. I spent my time in labs, moving genes in fruit fly genomes and making biofuel and ketones. I've never felt that studying the enviornment in a non-biology setting would be as relevant to me. What did a four hour bird identification field trip have to do with me?

I realized today, while I was out walking, that I was wrong to think that there wasn't a place for me. When I think of conservation I think of building trails, bird identification, interpretation, or even activism. I've realized that there's a place for me in this field, and there's certainly a place for anyone that inherets this funny little globe. I've never thought of myself as an outdoors person, either. I booked my flight in late May, right before I purchased my first pair of hiking boots.

I've also always mentally limited hiking to those hyper-athletic, with crazy strong arms and an addiction to Cliff bars and a pure hatred of soda. So while I was out hiking today, and having a fine time listening to the birds and trying to identify trees, I recalled what Mamie Parker said about going somewhere with an open mind, as she put it "With your glass empty."

So this is me, dumping out the glass I thought I had already emptied.




Also, this post is entitled "Moldy Bread" because that's what my sandwich was made of today. I also feel a little moldy because I got rained on again.