What IS a Naturalist, Anyway?

Lately reviewing material I wrote back in 1988-1993, when I was walking up Mt Falcon on a regular basis, I've been reminded of the naturalist’s perspective. In 2006, I found myself engaged in an extended attempt to reach consensus among diverse users of a local open space: hikers, bikers, trail runners, geologists, equestrians, and those I can only call naturalists, for lack of anything more definitive. In an effort to explain what the latter were about when they went about, I came up with the following:

First, naturalists are not hikers. They may appear to be hiking, because their feet are their mode of transportation. Hikers, however, are going somewhere. Naturalists, most often, are already there as soon as they set foot on the trail. Here’s an example. I led a Native Plant Society field trip at Mt Falcon one summer. I think we got about 200 yards in the first two hours. Maybe.

Naturalists look at things (that’s why they’re usually so slow). Hikers, bikers, others may look at scenery, I’m willing to admit that, but naturalists LOOK, really look, at things. (And touch them and smell them and whatever else.) They may, depending on their type, be looking at or for birds, butterflies, insects, flowers, trees, ferns, spiders, grasses, shrubs, lichens, geology, rocks, fossils, water, patterns, snakes, salamanders, frogs, fish, fungi, bugs, big critters, little critters, or scat, to name a few --but they are most likely looking AT something. They may be looking at or for a specific KIND of something, like carrion beetles, zeolites, sulfurs, oak galls, rock tripes, or moonworts. They may even be looking at or for all of the above.

Naturalists have expectations. If they observe a certain plant or animal or rock at a location in May, they will expect to see it again in September. If they observe it in 1994, they will know exactly where to look for it when they come to the spot again in 2004.

Worst of all, naturalists are unpredictable (though they expect Nature not to be). They are prone to sudden right-angle changes of direction whenever their eyes or ears or noses catch something. They are likely to stop dead right in front of you or walk to the edge of the path or drop to hands and knees without warning. They are alert, but not to other trail users. They may be lost in another world, and probably don’t even hear people coming because their senses are tuned to different stimuli. They're dangerous.

Lastly, I can believe that naturalists could travel on horseback. I can’t believe you can experience the naturalist’s perspective from a mountain bike, though I accept that bikers enjoy the outdoors, the aspens, the historic discoveries, etc, in their own ways. First there’s the speed, which severely limits bikers' ability to see the minutiae naturalists are so fond of. Second, the constant off/on, mounting/dismounting if you DID see something would take the fun out of the ride. Third, there seem to be social and physiological benefits to biking that naturalists rarely experience, traveling alone or in small units, and rarely if ever getting to aerobic levels. Let’s call it a different kind of fitness.

Thus, naturalists are just different. Not right or wrong, just different. All part of that human diversity we cherish. The thing is, they need open spaces, especially relatively untrammeled open spaces, for their chosen “sport.” Tamed urban spaces just don’t cut it the way remnants of the wild, however modified, still can.

In hopes of engaging a conversation about this idea, and the fate of naturalists in today's world, I set up a separate blog. Meet me there if you'd like to help create a conversation on what we do and why we do it.

A Matter of Perspective

The "usual view" this morning looks more golden to the camera than to the eye. I find it much more of a flat gray out there beneath these glorious clouds. The weatherfolk tell us to expect snow later this week.

This is about all of Nature I get to see lately, being housebound with an injury. Having finished reading all seven of the Harry Potter books in recent weeks, this morning I opted for a change of pace and picked up Faith in a Seed, the final—previously unpublished—works of Henry David Thoreau. The book contains his work on The Dispersion of Seeds and several of his last essays. It also expands our perspective on who Thoreau was and what he was doing in the final decade of his life.

Once the naturalist whose travels and early accounts grounded us in a philosophy of place, now he launched an intensive effort to collect data on the activities and adventures of seeds in the woods of Concord, creating a detailed calendar on the flowering and fruiting of more than two dozen species of trees. He became a scientist, though that word was not widely used at the time and is understood differently in our time. Unlike his contemporaries, who believed that plants could arise spontaneously, Thoreau wrote:

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up
where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed.
Convince me that you have a seed there,
and I am prepared to expect wonders.

In 1860, just two years before he died, Thoreau was also introduced to the master work of Charles Darwin, which then became "an authoritative context for his observations." * He was among the first Americans to explore and appreciate its implications in the field and on his own work.

Thoreau apparently kept his perspective as a literary naturalist, even as he wrote about the details of his investigations. He shifted from poet to technical writer, naturalist to scientist. I look forward to this opportunity to develop and perhaps shift my own perspective on his work as I explore our shared interest in seed ecology.

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* From the foreword by Gary Nabhan. Thoreau had previously read The Voyage of the Beagle and was familiar with the developing ideas of natural selection, but this was his first exposure to On the Origin of Species.