Refuge Notebook
Article
February 11, 2005
I Love Nature
By Mari Reeves
"I love nature." It's what my field crew and I have been
saying to each other all summer. "I love nature", as the eye-level
spruce branch thwacks abruptly into my waiting face. "I love nature",
as I pull the bug net down around my neck in response to the sharp pricks
on my shoulders and the never-ending buzz in my ears. "I love nature",
as my foot punches through the bog mat into the untold depths of unstable
peat moss and water below, hip wader filling with brown muck and heaven
forbid, leeches. I yank it back up, recovering concentration on my path
with a start. I love nature.
I work in nature. I’m a biologist.
Nature can be a difficult place sometimes, especially in Alaska. I
often think of our state as possessing the soul of a manic depressive
woman. First she lures you in with her mystery and beauty and maternal
abundance, then she threatens you with a landscape bigger than you are
and the dangers of residing in the dark near, but beneath, the top of
the food chain.
Alaska's lure lies in everlasting pink and gold sunsets. It shines
from snow-capped green mountains with cracked ice-blue glaciers in their
crooked elbows. The vast tracts of wilderness sing their siren song,
untouched and untrammeled by mankind. There is incomparable beauty in
the never-ending light of the three-month long arctic summer, and the
mystical dark of winter dances with flickering, colored northern lights.
I have flashes of gratitude for the beauty, which I call Alaska Moments.
Nevertheless I said bipolar for a reason, as the more unsettling moments
exist, too. In the summer, the rivers fill with glacial water running
fast and there are moose and grizzlies in the alders. In the winter
the light never intensifies beyond the golden pink hues of early morning
and the twilit blues of late afternoon. The slopes rising thousands
of feet above tree line threaten unspeakably large avalanches. The sting
of winter cold, while exhilarating, carries with it the unspoken threat
of life on the sidelines of our warm and cozy civilization. The dangers
that lurk in the Alaskan woods, extreme cold, everlasting dark, large
avalanches and wild animals make me more nervous outdoors here than
I am in other, gentler, places.
In our quest for biology to research, we are standing at the edge of
one of the lakes on the far southwest end of the Swanson River Canoe
Route, in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, a four-hour paddle and
portage from the trailhead. We're tired from portaging the canoe and
all of our camping and field gear, yet because of the compressed timing
of biological events during the Alaskan summer, we press on to survey
a few ponds after setting up camp.
We point our compass in the direction indicated by our weathered topographic
map in its ziploc bag. The bearing points us into a dense thicket of
two-inch diameter spruce spaced one to three feet apart. We should see
our pond in about half a mile. The twelve-gauge shotgun we shoulder
for bear protection catches and hangs up on the spruce boughs we squirm
through. The mosquitoes and black flies buzz in the sheltered woods.
The moss and lichen beneath our feet crunch with uncharacteristic dryness,
the result of three atypically dry summers in a row, themselves the
result of a changing global climate.
Tired though we are, we follow the compass arrow diligently, not wanting
to stray from our course through the forest. An edge of anxiety rides
on my shoulders, I am pushed just that tiniest bit beyond my comfort
zone in these woods, being too tired in this situation. I channel the
nervous energy into bear avoidance and dredge any snippets of college
fight songs from my memory to shout them at the top of my lungs to the
woods at large. When I fade off, my coworker rallies with her own tunes.
Our nervousness seems to be good for something, as today we don't see
any bears.
After surveying our last pond, we pull out the map to navigate back,
and my tired mind blanks briefly on compass skills. As I stare at the
colored paper and the spinning circular object, the pang of fear returns.
I'm freaked out by the tiredness, the dark spruce forest, and the disorientation.
We pull it together eventually and get back on track to the canoe and
to camp.
Moments like these, when I feel disoriented and just a little bit scared,
are the moments during which I understand some of the impulses of prior
generations of humanity. It made good sense to cut the forests, and
fill the swamps, and dose the mosquitoes with fast acting fogs of DDT.
Humans generally prefer human habitat to the wild. Nevertheless, when
cooped up in the car stopped in traffic, or speeding along in a subway
train, or stuck in front of my computer in my fluorescent-lit office
for hours on end, I wonder how well suited to this engineered human
environment we really are. I am more at peace with the world when I
can at least think about the nature that I know is still there; nature
in all its uncivilized, buggy, catch-as-catch-can glory. Its mere presence
makes me feel better.
Which is why I do love nature. I love that its rivers and oceans wash
away life's stresses and give me peace. I love the quiet of the lake
at the end of the day and the lonely, wafting cry of the loon in the
late dusky arctic evening. I love the blankets of snow that cover this
place in the winter and quiet the land. I love the fact that I have
to turn around on trail runs because a moose and her two calves stare
unflinchingly from the woods ahead. And I accept the bugs, the dense
spruce, and the swamps because without them we wouldn't have the moose,
and the birds, and the frogs (although I do sometimes like to kill mosquitoes).
I love nature because it takes me out of my comfort zone, makes me grow,
teaches me humility, and offers me peace.
Mate Reeves is a contaminants biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife
Service in Anchorage. She has been studying wood frog deformities on
the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge for the past several summers. Previous
Refuge Notebook articles can be viewed on our newly remodeled website
http://kenai.fws.gov/.
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