Essay: Last Fall in Williamsburg

The thing about nature isn’t that I don’t experience it, because I do. However, I tend to rush past, running along the trails and past the lake almost daily, in my quest for an elevated heart rate and some time alone to think. In this sense, nature’s nothing special, it seems like I rush through everything these days. Always in motion, like I’m afraid that if the inertia caught me, I’d never break free.

But tonight, for a change, I’m going to make myself slow down. Night is falling in a warm, romantic September way, and I’m running my new favorite route, across town and out along a country road to this beautiful little park with the dock out into the freshwater marsh. I write in my head as I run, enjoying myself as I hear fewer and fewer cars; more and more cicadas.

Descending into the empty park, I slow to walk and head out to the dock. The upland cicadas’ resonance is broken by sharper vibration from within the marsh grass. It’s the kind of overwhelming resonance that your body can’t help but internalize, and soon I’m not really hearing it anymore, just feeling it. Sitting on the dock, I take a deep breath. I was here with a lab class a few days ago, and I recall the professor saying that there’s not a wetland more beautiful than these tidal freshwater marshes. Alone in the dark, I’d have to agree.

But actually I’m no where near alone. There’s a goose calling across the lake, and several insect mating serenades are blending together with my heart rate, like standing too close to the speakers at a rock concert. Peripheral vision catches a water snake gliding across the surface: A short fat pug-nose snake trailing a long elegant ripple in the dark water. He disappears into the maze of Spartina and the blade-leafed plant whose seeds can float for years. Can you imagine that? Floating for years, waiting for the perfect place and the perfect time to make your attempt at life. And even then, so few succeed. Looking around at the plants thriving on the wetland edge, we forget about all of the other lost seeds, that these plants we see are the chosen ones, with the right combination of luck and genetic advantage to win the chance at living. Then again, I’m only here because I’m a winner too.

Focus. My legs are getting twitchy and my mind is jumping, ready to return to forward progress. I’m tempted for a moment to dive into the dark water and glide across, neglecting to consider the shallow bottom and that my pug-nose probably has friends. A car honks violently on nearby 199. I start to get indignant about the intrusion of the human world into my nature bubble, before I remember that it’s those ingrained distinctions: Us, in here, separate from Nature, it out there, that stands between us and a real chance for environmental change.

But I’m drifting off topic again, and back into my more pressing reality. Dinner to cook, reading for class, and Friday night plans to find. I almost don’t want to get up and run back to the busy world of people. Lengthening my stride, I’m running again instinctively, and whether he intended to or not, the goose honks again for my departure. Like a child, I wave towards the sound, and quicken my breath as I hit the uphill path.

Scrub Dinosaurs

I was almost eaten by a dinosaur at work this afternoon. I was lucky to get home alive. And no, dinosaurs are not a typical threat in my average work day as sampling wetland vegetation in central Florida. Normally, at it’s worst it’s knee-high muck, hot sun, and several indistinguishable species of sedges. But today, I stumbled into another world. After crashing through the scrubby palmettos that surround the ponds I work in, on the way to plot 167, I suddenly left the florida scrub and entered a scene from Jurassic Park.

Already ankle deep in a dark pond, looking around at the unfamiliar landscape I was instantly unnerved. Tall pines shaded the swamp to dusky-dark in the mid afternoon, and fallen and rotting limbs covered by the thick grass clumps created a unseen maze that threaten to trip my every step. The temp dropped 15 degrees and the air was perfectly still, as if nothing living had been there in a very long time. Well, except for the spiders, who were more numerous then I have ever seen- giant orb-weaver webs filled almost every open space at approximately head height. Smaller spiders had stretched nets between every fern.

And the swamp was full of ferns. Ferns dominated areas are always disconcerting, the primitive plant immediately creates a sense of other-worldliness. Suddenly, you’re back in time, before the evolution of flowers and mammals…so that crash in the brush behind you must be ancient as well. Turn quick, but you can’t quite catch a glimpse of the velociraptor that you sense has been watching you. Into the fern-swamp, add plenty of bloodroot, a thick, 3 foot tall plant with its end of season black leaves and stems, and flowers heads that can look like a nest of little black spiders. It looks burnt, charred unnaturally in the middle of a swamp.

Every step and stumbled I took shook up eerie clouds of fern spores, and sent the little spiders scrambling. My heart began to race, adrenaline pumping as I tripped over hidden limbs, knowing that I’d be unable to run if the raptors decided to attack. My hands shook, trying to adjust my GPS and find the plot I needed to survey so that I could get the hell out of there.

Half an hour later, still amazed that the raptors hadn’t jumped out from behind the thick red bay trees, I struggled back out into the palmetto scrub and hot sunshine that I normally work in. Without thinking, back in my natural environment, my body began to relax and I began to realize the absurdity of being scared of a small dark swamp. I’m a biologist for crying out loud, my daily life is mud and bugs and plants. Although not usually dinosaurs. My brain knows it was ridiculous to be in the early stages of a fight or flight response to long extinct predators, but my body couldn’t deny the reality of its fear.

Why does something as simple as a change of scenery, a new set of surroundings, have the power to so thoroughly unnerve us? Sometimes it’s beautiful, the awe-inspiring view when you finally break above the tree line on a long hike as see snow-covered peaks spreading out to the horizon. But it’s disconcerting too, stepping out of your tent for a late night pee into a moonlight, shadowy forest, when we’re used to the electric hum of urban life.

It has a lot to do with the plants. I’m not just saying that because I’m a plant ecologist. When you've grown up surrounded by oaks and maples, a dense tropical forest is subconsciously scary. So are the oaks and maples, if you've just arrived from a lifetime with southwestern cactus or mountain aspen. We all notice the vegetation we live our daily lives in- the territory we know. And, like the animals we still are underneath, I think we subconsciously know that safety and success lie in our awareness of our surrounding. Shaded by unknown trees, with unsure footing, and suddenly, you know you’re out of your element. Whether or not you’re about to slide down a notch or two on the food chain is more of a question of imagination, but the anxiety is there. Thrill too, when you survive, back in the sunshine again.

I know you don’t entirely believe me, I didn’t believe me either, except that the way I felt was unmistakable. I don’t know when I’ll be back at plot 167, and I don’t know what will be lurking in the trees, but I know that stepping into that swamp, my heart will race again. I’ll bring my camera for the dinosaurs too.