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Return to Wonder

Subscribe at the right for a monthly post with writing explorations for creating your own ecobiography.

I had to look up a lot of things last week. It’s amazing how much, at middle age, I still don’t know. For example, what do you call a group of butterflies? According to the internet, possible collective nouns include a flight, a flutter, a swarm, or, more poetically, a kaleidoscope.

All of these answers evoke the lovely assembly of color and movement displayed by butterflies, but when my grandson and I were encircled by orange and black fritallaries on the Nighthawk trail of rabbit brush and yucca framed by red Colorado buttes, “cloud” was the word we chose. Sweeping and brushing above and around us as if we weren’t even there, dozens of butterflies accompanied us thirty feet down the trail, alighting only long enough for a five-year-old to touch a wing with the gentlest of fingers while I snapped a few photos for future ID.

Back from our hike, we loaded the photos onto my laptop and pulled up my go-to page for “butterflies of Boulder County.” I have to admit I’d never heard of fritallaries before, so we had to search by individual photos rather than type. Once my grandson and I zeroed in on the fritallary family, we found 10 to choose from, each with a different pattern of spots and stripes on both sides of their wings. Comparing each species with our photos, we decided the butterflies circling us were Northwestern Fritallaries. We had to look up how to pronounce their name, too!

Five-year-olds are all about understanding their world, whether through books, play, or jumping with both feet into whatever curious mud puddle of a situation presents itself, despite the appropriateness of their boots. Children of that age take time to ask questions to help them learn how the new and often odd things they encounter line up with what they already know. My grandson stops me when I use a word he doesn’t yet know, or asks me what something means when he’s reading on his own. He favors non-fiction, but he’s always up for a good story like My Side of the Mountain. His favorite area of inquiry is the animal kingdom, which extends to insects when confronted with those of particular interest such as butterflies swirling alongside as we hike.

Five is a powerful age for blending fact and fiction, magic and science. On the trail where we saw the frittalaries, my grandson also glimpsed the back side of two retreating mountain lions in the scrub oak, members of the feline family, as he reminded me, I wasn’t quick enough to see. When in imagination mode, he often pretends he’s an animal himself. After our hike, he gave me a “bear” kiss. “That’s the best bear kiss I’ve ever had,” I said. To which the little bear replied in his growly voice: “I don’t think you’ve had very many others.”

Our next hike was at a place we call Heron Ponds since a heron rookery, or heronry, is located nearby and we often spot great blues on our walks there. This time, we spotted a bird neither of us had noticed before, a black bat-winged duck with an orange beak and long neck down which it was struggling to swallow a very large fish. We watched duck and fish in their mortal tug-of-war for ten minutes before the duck won, its neck stretched fish-shaped as the prey slid down its throat. Was the bird a loon? A grebe? We weren’t sure, so again we turned to an internet source for Boulder County and quickly found our duck was a double-crested cormorant, an increasingly common resident to our area because of the shared heronries.

But that wasn’t the only interesting animal we encountered at Heron Ponds. Out in the depths of one of the ponds lurked a dark shadow from which thin branches protruded. “There’s a hippotamous!” my grandson cried.

“Really?”

“Yes, I see it.”

“Maybe so,” I say. “Don’t they usually live in Africa?”

“Yes, but it might have walked here.”

“Across the ocean?”

“Yes, it walked underwater,” he says, although the giggle in his voice shows this idea doesn’t quite square with his knowledge of how the world really runs.

The next time we drive by the ponds, my grandson says we should call them “Hippo Ponds” instead of “Heron Ponds.” He still insists he saw a hippo there, and I don’t disagree. Instead, I suggest what we really saw was a “Hippopondamus,” a hybrid creature blending a hippo and its adopted habitat, the pond. Hybrids are a new interest for my grandson. After we’d looked up the cormorant, we watched a video about strange animals like the “tion,” a combination of tiger and lion bred in captivity, and the “groler,” a grizzly/polar bear mix that has occurred in nature as a warming climate brings the territories of these creatures together.

Clouds of butterflies, fish-necked ducks, and animals from another continent taking up residence in our own backyards. I know my grandson realizes that no such thing as a “hipponpondamous” exists, but we like to say its name and tease each other about it. When we’re together, I remember the planet is too amazing to worry about what’s scientific and what’s imaginary. The world is big enough for both. Everything we experience is curious and beautiful and alive. Five-year-olds remind us that nature is full of wonder. Just look around and you’ll see.

Writing Exploration: Ecobiography is a way of writing about who we are and how we live through our relationship with/in the natural world. As adults, we’re trained to look with the eyes of science in which facts are true until proven otherwise and imagination is relegated to fancy, magic, or art. But by only looking through the lens of a so-called rational system, we may miss out on how incredible the world can be.

What might we see if we suspended the science we already know to look at the natural world with fresh, five-year-old eyes? A leopard lurking in spotted shadows? A winged tornado? Trees that grow upside down?

For your ecobiography, write about a childhood discovery of the natural world. What did you observe and how did your evolving sense of the world help you understand what you saw? Write it from the perspective of a five-year-old, too, to bring an even greater sense of wonderment into your writing voice.

Or go to the natural world and try to recreate a child’s view. How might you look at nature’s habitats and creatures differently by forgetting taxonomy or biology? How might your imagination create a new story about the world swirling around you as you walk?

 

 

 

 

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If You Were a Bird, Where Would You Nest?

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I’m not a birder, but I love observing the many species of birds that take up residence or make a migratory stop on our farm. When I see a bird I can’t identity, I consult one of our talented birding members like our young friend Joel, whose photographs of birds in the wild are as much portraits as they are ornithological research.

Despite needing back-up for the Western Tanager I spotted on a crabapple tree, I do recognize some stand-outs: Lesser goldfinches pay an annual visit to our farm when autumn leaves start to turn, while bald eagles are regular visitors here, along with red-tailed hawks and a pair of great-horned owls that sometimes nest in our trees. Common birds like house wrens, mourning doves, blue jays, magpies, and starlings are in residence, too, some building nests in inconvenient places like tool racks, downspouts, and barn walls.

Once, a robin built a nest on the bristles of a push broom leaned upside-down against the tractor barn, the tip of its wooden handle balanced on the slim edge of a pail. We assumed that the nest was attached to the rough wall against which it rested. Everyday when we passed that broom, we wondered when the whole contraption would fall. We worried about the eggs so precariously perched as the mother flew protectively to and from the nest.

While we watched the robin nesting for days on that broom, we shared a parent’s concern for the future of its young. After the babies hatched and fledged, we were relieved. Then we discovered the nest was simply resting on the broom, not affixed to the wall in any way. How easily that nest might have blown down in the wind or fallen as the fledglings pushed off on their first flight. The happy outcome seemed to attest to the robin’s skill—and some luck that we wouldn’t need our broom or pail.

The answer to the question, “If you were a bird, where would you nest?” depends on what type of bird you choose to be. According to their habitat and breeding practices, birds build as many different kinds of nests as there are species. Most birds nest once per year, but robins may have 4 or 5 nests during a breeding season (maybe because they build nests in precarious places?).

In fact, not all birds build nests or live in them regularly. Some birds lay eggs on the ground or on ledges. Others, like cuckoos, lay eggs in other birds’ nests. Around our farm, birds often nest inside tall trees. We see the holes pecked by flickers and downy woodpeckers, but not the nests or young. For birds, nesting has one purpose: breeding to produce the next generation. Nests provide a place for eggs to be laid and hatched and to keep chicks safe until they are ready to fledge.

Humans have borrowed the idea of nesting to mean making a cozy home. Humans don’t “nest” just to breed, although expectant or expecting-to-be-expectant parents might fix up their homes to make them more suitable for raising children. Often, nesting is related to décor and the desire to make one’s home a refuge from the busy, workday world. I found over 800 shops with “nest” in their name on the crafting and vintage platform etsy.com alone. Looked at that way, nesting is about creating a habitat conducive to survival for humans and birds alike.

Nesting is a reverse example of anthropomorphizing, the term for placing—some say imposing––human characteristics on other-than-human objects, creatures, and landscapes. Anthropomorphizing can be a form of privileging human actions and agency over all others and reducing the intelligence and consciousness of other beings to what is only observable or understandable by humans.

Scientists have generally denigrated the practice of anthropomorphizing as lacking objectivity or overlaying behaviors with conscious intent, but more recently some scientists have acknowledged that animals may exhibit the kinds of emotions or intentions associated with humans. Further, emotions like empathy between researcher and animal are recognized as important to the understanding of animal capabilities and conducive to the research relationship itself.

In borrowing the idea of nesting from birds, we could say nesting is a human concept that has been ecopomorphized from an animal practice. As the opposite of anthropomorphizing human characteristics on other beings in the natural world, ecopomorphizing adopts the habits of animals or plants onto human behaviors. This adaptation may be practical, experiential, or metaphorical, but all begin with an other-than-human trait.

By recognizing the basis in nature of ecopomorphizing relationships, humans hopefully learn to empathize with other-than-human beings through gaining insight into their needs, habitats, and characteristics. Through ecopomorphizing we can also expand our care for and about the natural world through acknowledging our mutual interests with creatures, plants, soil, rock, water, and air.

Which brings me back to our broom-nesting robin. When I told a friend the story, he said, “We can learn a lot from that bird.”

“Like how to build a nest!” I joked, but I didn’t mean to be glib. Nest-building is an admirable skill, requiring the ability to find the right location and materials, as well as knowledge of construction techniques to ensure strength, safety, and warmth.

But nest-building means more than that. My friend was right. From that robin, we realized our mutual concerns for protection of habitat and family. Even our need to use the broom and bucket was superseded by our empathy with the bird and its chicks. Our kinship may have been temporary, but in our shared space, we went about our daily lives, coming and going, crossing paths, trusting that the land could support all our nests in kind.

 

Writing Exploration: In answer to the question “If you were a bird, where would you nest?”, write about aspects of nesting you share with birds in making your own home. How might starting with an actual bird’s habits and habitats influence how you think about home and shelter differently? To learn more about the birds around you, consult the Audubon Society or other birding organizations’ websites for your area.

Next, think about examples of ecopomorphizing with which you are familiar. Nesting, rootedness, and hibernation are a few. Describe the ideas or practices borrowed from nature you recognize in your own life. How does acknowledging them open new perspectives on mutual needs and concerns shared with others in the natural world?