NOTE: I will be meeting tonight with some spring-breaking students, spending the week nearby as part of their Appalachian Experience (APEX), and, as they have done for years, staying at Apple Ridge Farm. We will have a conversation about community and the future. I will read this essay, and give them a copy of my book—where they can read it again. And maybe give names to things, and begin a life-long relationship with Nature.
On a clear, crisp afternoon in the first week in September, I spotted my first Monarch of the year over a meadow of goldenrod, boneset and milkweed. Some students were with me that day in the field along the New River Trail to see these creatures first hand, and to give them names for the first time.
I held up, pointed out, and identified several dozen flowering plants and trees that afternoon. Afterwards one young lady asked if we might do this kind of hands-on outdoor study again. “This is the way I learn best” she said enthusiastically, a fact about herself it seemed she had only that hour discovered.
I had decided to take the group outdoors when I learned not a one of them could name a single wildflower in bloom in the nearest forest or pasture. These young people are not unusual in a generation that lacks names for things outdoors. They don’t see deeply into nature, it seems, because they’ve not had much encouragement to look there.
So many electronic and virtual distractions compete far too successfully for their attention. They have grown up in an era when our language in the digital world has grown rich while our vocabulary in the real world of nature has become sadly impoverished.
Beyond the vegetables and animal foods we purchase shrink-wrapped from the grocery store, many of us no longer can call our fellow creatures by name. The naming of things is often essential to our understanding of them and to our belonging among them, and there are costs to our ignorance.
These young people who field-tripped with me are not sad in the way I am that the eastern hemlocks are dying, because they don’t distinguish between a hemlock and any other kind of tree. Maybe it is significant that God set man the task of naming the creatures early on in Genesis as the first and necessary part of assuming our responsibility as stewards.
What we have names for, we are more likely to notice and appreciate, less likely to ignore, abuse or consider of no consequence. We know our friends by name, and attend to them better than we do rank strangers. I wonder if we couldn’t be better caretakers of the planet if we were on a first name basis with more of its inhabitants, and knew more about their families and their kin.
But should they care to, can a parent, a teacher or a newly-enlightened field trip student reclaim the names of the things forgotten and ignored? Can we learn our way around the meadow or forest where our children are so sadly out of touch? Yes, I think we can: by nurturing intentional vision.
Go slowly in nature and stop often. Look for the particulars. You might even take notes and draw sketches. Learn a dozen trees and recognize them in leaf, fruit and branch in every season. Learn a dozen wildflowers from spring, from summer and from autumn.
And rekindle curiosity and wonder. Each insect or flower holds its own mystery and unique form and fitness. Be able to name a dozen birds, first by sight, then by their call alone. Know some salamanders—while they last—and a few dragonflies and even some common spiders and snakes.
Then, teach your children to see more deeply as you have done. On regular walks around your back yard, pasture or woods show them your own care for detail and watch how quickly they come to see the small world at their feet and give names to its creatures.
Pick twigs from plants like spicebush, sassafras, and teaberry; scratch and sniff them and resurrect the neglected sense of smell that so powerfully builds memories in the out-of-doors. Turn rocks, and pluck blooms (not entire plants.) Use a hand lens to see more detail.
And after seeing, find the names for the things you see. This has never been easier to do. The computer is a quick and convenient tool for this, but my first advice would be to build a library of field guides you can carry with you and hold in your hands over the years.
Study what you have found while sitting in the grass under the trees and ask for help from your children. Even the smallest can compare pictures.
Never before has the natural world needed each of us to know it, care for it and act on its behalf in such a way as it does in our times. We cannot be responsible stewards of a threatened planet if its creatures are distant, anonymous and irrelevant strangers. Be more aware than you’ve ever been in this cathedral made without hands, as John Muir called our world. Make friends of its inhabitants and call them by name.
I remember this excellent essay. I hope your field trippers have a good time and learn to call many different living things by name.