Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

A Safe and Dangerous and Magical Place

2019; Wiley; Volume: 28; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/lob.10321

1539-6088

Eric S. Nagy,

Climate Change Communication and Perception

Tonight, 35 high school students are clambering around recklessly, maybe dangerously, in the dark, in the woods, in a cold, rocky, muddy creek, far from civilization, far from lights, telephones, internet, security cameras, cell service, even earshot, of anyone, for miles. Well, in a real emergency I would hear the radio crackle here on the kitchen table of my tiny 1929 Appalachian mountain cabin (Fig. 1), equipped with one of the few landlines at the biological station. I know where they are. I know the way to the hospital. This is my job of 23 years. It is a drippy, foggy, and unseasonably warm May night. My wife, the first female chair of our biology department, and a squad of graduate students and postdocs are out there with the high schoolers and their teachers. They are diving into the mountain woods, hunting amphibians, stirring up invertebrates, and listening for owls, deafened by the chorus of frogs surrounding them. On the way back from the creek, they will turn off all their lights and stand quietly in the dark—a dark many of them have never experienced. It is magic. They, and students like them lucky enough to visit field stations and marine labs all over the world, will never forget this night. Some will fall in love and become professional biologists, but most will just carry this memory with them as they follow other paths through life, as humans, friends, partners, parents, and voters. Field stations, often funky, sometimes primitive, are microcosms, rich with quirky nerdy characters who make science accessible, human, friendly, an adventure. Creative problem solving is the way of life at a field station—science problems of course, but also, how can I plug this leaky boat, or jury-rig this radio tracking antenna to run just one more time, or keep the flying squirrels out of my attic? Field stations are supportive diverse communities that build confidence and self-assurance, and shape the paths that cross them. This is what they tell us—the students from 5, 10, and 50 years ago who come back, or write to us, or whose children make pilgrimages to the lab to thank us for changing their parents' lives, for changing theirs. It happened to me, twice. At age 16, I collected bathythermograph data (the old kind, etched on a glass plate) from a 15-ft Boston Whaler in deep and treacherous seas off Cape Cod in the Gulf of Maine. We went out year-round, as safety (but not necessarily weather) permitted. Twice, I piloted the boat so a harpooner could target humpback whales with his suction cup-tipped radio transmitter. On one of those days, the suction cup never stuck, but the hunt landed us in the middle of a bubble net surrounded by a ring of feeding whales rising up out of the water, mouths open skyward, full of fish. So it is no surprise that I find myself at a field station, sending high school students into the woods at night, and raising my two children here. As an early teen, my daughter would disappear into the forest at the field station, alone, running barefoot, and without navigational aid of any kind. The same woods, mind you, that we issued dire warnings to visitors about the dangers of getting lost, turning an ankle, or hypothermia from fast-moving thunderstorms. Hours later (just in time for lunch, of course) she would return, dirty, tired, scratched, but exhilarated and proud, having made real discoveries—an old garbage dump, a clay deposit, a blueberry patch, a dead deer, or large bones of some unidentified creature! “Here Dad! What is it?” At 23, she is now a national park ranger, skilled and experienced at caring for park visitors. Confidently and with real wisdom she shares with them the wonder, mystery, and infinite detail of the natural world around them. She guides them on quests for primitive horsetails. She helps them really hear the sound of a river, smell the bark of a tree. She plays the part of a doomed ponderosa pine as visitors act out the impacts of beetles, fire suppression, and climate change. She makes it human, friendly, an adventure. Wonderful, brave, wise adults asked me to join them in that Boston Whaler 40 years ago. I do not think they knew what they were giving me. Maybe they did. They showed me it was all right to let my daughter run wild on a mountaintop, and that sending 35 teenagers out into the woods at night, in the fog, hunting salamanders, was a good idea. Their wisdom now looks out of the eyes of a young top-notch naturalist park ranger opening the minds and hearts of eager visitors to our national parks. I hear the high school group emerging from the woods. Their exuberance drowns out the frogs. Mission accomplished. At breakfast the next morning, the lead teacher tells me how many alums from this program have contacted him after seeing his posts about last night's adventure. All express how much fun the field station visit was to them and how it shaped their views of the world. There is no better job satisfaction. My daughter is driving this weekend from one national park to a new one where she will work for the summer (number four so far). She drives, camps, and visits, alone the way. She is no fool. But she is also not afraid. By growing up in a field station community with kind, excited, inquisitive, and trusting people, she understands the world differently from many, and better than me, I dare say. The young people touched by field stations are changing the world. Trust them. Get them on the boat, in the woods. Let them go.