Digital Maps to Nature Literacy: Part Two
ON GETTING WHERE WE WANT TO GO
Continued from Part One: Tools to Meet Our Needs
Given the struggles of ancient botanists like me, the instant digital plant (bird, salamander, tree) identification now possible for the there’s-an-app-for-that generation seemed on first consideration like a cheap shot. I resisted. Spoiler: my technophobe rejection yielded to conditional acceptance. Read on.
Against the decades of slow, painful, jargon-heavy plant identification by the book (a technical dichotomous botanical key several inches thick) these new-fangled eezy-peezy digital tools for quick ID in everyone’s pocket threatened to make the process far too easy; to demystify botanical variety and reduce a season’s blooms to just so many pretty faces in your grandchildren’s image galleries.
Snap it and forget it, and with practically no investment of time, energy or effort. These kids got no skin in the game. Harrumphh! Just CLICK and add one more species to a life-list, because it’s all about having the most numbers. Some bird watchers have the same itch.
I confess: I have had a change of heart. I recant my former heresies and skepticism. I can’t live with the hypocrisy any longer. And I justify this in my own mind, thusly, and by analogy:
You will no longer find me carrying a yard-wide Virginia Gazetteer, splayed out or crumpled in the passenger’s seat when I explore the backroads.
That would be foolish now when all I need is Google Maps on a three inch screen–a tool I don’t even have to touch but can simply tell where I want it to take me or show me where I am.
This mapping ease-of-use leaves me free to focus on the details of the terrain and the town or countryside I’m driving through. The technology not only offers convenience; it allows me to center on the journey without anxt-ing about with the route to the destination.
Granted, I am still a better navigator because for so many years, I poured over paper maps until they fell apart at the creases. I gained a visceral knowledge of the cardinal points and stayed oriented in space by the seat of my pants–after sufficient hours attending to the exact WHERE of my life in the environment of the moment.
It can still be done the old way, and I am better off for the early struggles. After all, My Vascular Flora of the Carolinas weighs only five pounds and does not require recharging its batteries!
I’d prefer we NOT (young or old) have a screen under our noses 24/7 but that ship has sailed. And if a body is going to be always with said screen, it could be used for worse uses than finding our way, geographically or botanically.
But there is a balance. And let me be clear: Identification is just the BEGINNING of a relationship with the creatures you have come to know by name by pointing and clicking.
Come back for Part 3 Next Saturday:
Not seen a dichotomous key since my first quarter of intro to botany. I loved using it!