WaterNotes

Natural Literacy

A child camping overnight on a spoil island off the coast of Florida single-mindedly follows a long skinny slide in the sand. He ignores the mosquitoes and happily jumps over the roots of red mangrove. He loves reptiles and he knows the trail will lead him to a snake.

The cool sand in the track indicates the age of the print in the hot sun. He follows it further, nearly losing the track in a maze of blanket flowers, until he comes upon a slab of coquina rock near the beach. The very end of a scaled tail moves slowly into the shadow of the rock.

At a respectful distance of five feet, he crouches low to the ground and squints to see into the darkness. He might have reached in to grab it immediately a year ago, before a bite from a rat snake had taught him a lesson. He doesn’t hear hissing or rattling, but the shadowed body clearly displays ominous red, yellow, and black stripes.

Red on yellow, he considers for a moment. He smiles at the coral snake, takes a mental picture, and turns to leave the intensely venomous animal behind.

Scenes such as this are common throughout the woods and waysides of North America. When children are free to explore and experience the natural world outside of school, they learn without lesson plans through their observations. In summer, our young herpetologist will head to camp, where counselors encourage children to enjoy nature by reading signs and looking for the stories in the flight of a red tailed hawk or a splash in the lake. Each day spent outside with the birds and worms teaches them a different type of reading, a natural literacy, and the ability to interpret and comprehend natural messages.

Counselors never mention to students that they are reading when they spot gopher tortoise prints and troweled slides in the sand. To most children, reading involves boring passages from textbooks in school or the pleasurable escapes in a volume of Harry Potter. And yet, their literacy of the natural world increases with each track they recognize, each foxtail millet spray used to feed wild birds, each ripple of water made by sociable mosquito fish they proudly call Gambusia.

Children are not the only people skilled in observing and interpreting nature. Hikers, fishermen, hunters, and weekend warriors build their understanding of plants and animals through a lifetime of observation and attention to detail. Natural literacy for these people, and for their children, serves their needs and provides enjoyment. It gives them the knowledge to avoid the dangers of wild places and to fully explore and enjoy their hobbies and pursuits.

 This ability enables our young snake enthusiast to happily track an animal through a mangrove swamp, have the thrill of seeing a wild coral snake, and avoid a deadly bite. For children at summer camp, natural literacy makes them appreciate the defensive behaviors of Florida scrub jay just as much as it protects them from poison ivy growing alongside the trail. Their reading of the shape and glossy cuticle of the leaves indicates precisely which plants are poison ivy and which are harmless passionflower and grapevine.

Sailors from a time long past were consummately literate in the language of nature and movements of the ocean. Some of their predictions still exist, distilled down into short phrases of advice about the sea.

“Red sea at night, sailor’s delight,” forecasts a calm night and a fine tomorrow.

“Fish scales and horsetails mean tall ships have full sails,” predicts plenty of wind for the voyage from the scattered patterns of clouds.

Mariners charted courses by constellations of stars and predicted land from the presence of sea birds on the wing. Sailors were not always so lucid in their observations. They are the same people who envisioned beautiful, half-human mermaids from the upturned tails of manatees. And yet, natural literacy includes folklore of creatures and fantastic beasts. Such stories echo the importance of culture, history, and the human perspective in the process of interpreting nature’s hidden messages.

Natural literacy can enhance the education of children and adults in the formal classroom environment. Students of biology may be able to recite the Latin name for barracuda, but unless they have been deep-sea fishing, they don’t know what to use for bait to catch them. Unless those students have been diving, they may have no idea that the predatory fish like to hang out in the shadow of anchored boats, waiting for easy prey.

Natural literacy enables a graduate student to predict the next spawning of horseshoe crabs under a full moon and to recognize their covered nests as slightly rounded depressions in the sand. She knows that where the seagulls and terns pluck at the beach the green eggs of the crab-like sea creatures are sure to be found.

Unfortunately, our culture no longer values the skill of natural literacy as a necessity of survival in a modern world. Tracking animals for food might be a necessity if our modern day freezers were not full of farmed meat. The knowledge of edible plants could help foraging campers survive should bears attack the lockbox of food in their car. The ability to recognize the songs of birds might help us keep time if it were not for the clocks on our wrists.

Natural phenomena became a lost language in this century and reading them turned into a hobby instead of an armament for survival.

Despite the pleasure in reading nature few children today seem interested in the habits and movements of the natural world. In a childhood full of iPods, cell phones, video games, and organized play-dates, children frequently form relationships only to the cartoon versions of the natural world.

They live within a wired reality that leaves no room for the natural world of dirt, insects, earthworms, and scraped knees. Most are hard pressed to tie a slipknot, let alone employ it when raising flags over campsites or tying horses to the post for a morning groom.

These housebound children view dirt as a nuisance on the keyboard or something their mothers admonish them to leave on the doormat. They do not read the wind for flying kites, they cannot follow footprints on a riverbank to track otters, and they cannot predict which wave in a set will carry them the farthest up the beach on their kickboard.

Those people that still read the natural world fear the loss of this skill and the loss of children who are literate in the language of nature. They hope for the day that natural literacy, and this way of reading, becomes a part of every person’s education.

Inspired by a Goldfish

I named my first pet goldfish “Spanky”. His moniker reflected my mischievous disposition and behavior as a child rather than my parents’ sense of humor. A gift on my second birthday, the little fish helped me fall asleep at night and taught me clandestine lessons in observation and responsibility. At dinnertime, I remarked on the color of his scat and the missing scales on his body. I authoritatively tutored my grandparents in changing the water in his bowl. I bragged about his beauty and intelligence to my friends across the street.

Yet I don’t remember the little fish for any of these reasons. Instead, I remember his last moments in the vivid details and colors attached to pivotal memories. Eight months after my birthday, I decided I had grown up enough to gain command of Spanky’s food bottle. I shook out its entire contents into the bowl with great conviction and satisfaction. I watched Spanky consume flake after flake of food from the slurry of flotsam suffocating his little home.

Did you know that gorging goldfish explode? Until Spanky self-destructed, I hadn’t known that truth either. I remained unexpectedly undisturbed by his passing even as I witnessed his journey to the afterlife through the toilet bowl. Instead, I remained fascinated with the memory of him eating an enormous quantity of food. Though I already occupied the annoying Why stage of childhood questions, I grew more curious after the accident. Ultimately, Spanky’s demise set me up for a lifelong obsession with fish and nature.

Throughout my childhood, I developed my sense of natural literacy by playing in streams, ponds, and meadows. I pulled the tails off anoles long before I learned the advantages of such an adaptation. I hiked trails in Pennsylvania and Delaware and hunted beryl, mica, and quartz rocks during the climbs. I raised tadpoles into tree frogs and a bristling army of caterpillars into painted lady butterflies. I kept aquariums full of fish fed on my sister’s SeaMonkeys and watched them court mates and defend territories. I even learned basic concepts in chemistry and nutrient cycling from the water quality of the aquariums.

Above all, I learned the value of firsthand experience and felt the effects of it as a confidence in my abilities and my knowledge about biology. While I enjoyed Wild America on PBS and read Zoobooks, my connection to nature remained tactile. These experiences directed me towards a career in science and encouraged a sense of responsibility that still influences my decisions as an adult. Eventually, I realized that a career in environmental education, a structured type of natural literacy, fit into my passions and experience.

These days, I fondly recall Spanky when I share my knowledge of fish and nature with children on field trips at zoos and public aquariums. My favorite programs include fieldwork that enables students to learn their own firsthand knowledge of nature. I teach them to dip net and seine, to avoid stingrays, and identify their catch. I attempt to inspire an appreciation for wildlife in these students by weaving information about each species into tales full of delight.

“Croaking drumfish may successfully call for mates in murky water, but the sounds also attract hungry pods of dolphin like a ringing dinner bell.”

“Breeding fish use many strategies for protecting their babies. While many species build nests, seahorses and pipefish incubate the eggs in pouches on their bodies almost like kangaroos. The aptly named mouth-brooders gargle the eggs in their mouths to keep them away from hungry predators.”

“Tarpon, like the Bettas you might keep in jars at home, can breathe air to survive the low-oxygen waters in a mangrove swamp.”

I coach my students in the lost art of natural literacy and in the relationships of fish and other wildlife to the ecosystem. I encourage them to observe the world minutely and to focus on the stories in nature. I teach them a unique way to employ their senses in interpreting a lost language from the wild. With this skill they develop a connection to a world more real than any video game and full of more mystery than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Like other essential life skills, natural literacy builds throughout the life of a person as they acquire new techniques and experiences. Even now, I follow brown pelicans with binoculars to locate boiling water and hunting dolphin. I navigate mangrove islands on long kayak paddles by following schools of fish. I discern osprey from red-shouldered hawks and point out the faint differences between the species to my students.

In the future, I hope to share the ability to read nature and continue teaching environmental education. Since unstructured time had the greatest influence on me, I may encourage campers and field trip students to return to and explore areas we visit with their families. I will certainly continue to use natural literacy to provide examples that explain complex ideas in science.

For example, the concentration of pink carotenoids in the feathers of flamingoes and spoonbills elegantly illustrates the idea of bioaccumulation. This observation can lead to a discussion of the food chain and, later, the bioaccumulation of nefarious pesticides like DDT. It can lead further into a lesson on conservation and the role of citizens in environmental policy.

A simple pink feather inspires so much information that I often think all education should incorporate natural literacy. Language arts students could write sonnets about birds in flight. Art students could sculpt waterfalls from clay or make tile mosaic birdbaths. Plotting heights of trees in stages of succession on graphs and estimating miles traveled by tagged gopher tortoises might enliven math problems.

Perhaps in a future full of naturally literate children and adults, who act on a sense of responsibility for nature, we will have cleaner air and healthier ecosystems. Perhaps we will not lose endangered species such as red wolves and indigo snakes. Perhaps we will retain more knowledge about countries and geography by investigating the natural places other cultures inhabit. And perhaps, we will raise better artists, scientists, carpenters, accountants, and engineers if we teach them to read the natural world.

Wildlife Up Close.. Too Close

There I am, sitting in the lovely green grass a few feet up from the reflecting pond on campus.  It is pure heaven.  The wind is light and breezy, it smells a little like my favorite confederate jasmine, with a lovely mixing of crispy french fries from the cafe.  Its 80F and the sun is beaming. 

I’m munching away happily on lunch, looking over my notes from class, and otherwise blissfully enjoying the day.

How was I to know I was being stalked?

Halfway through lunch, the pair of sandhill cranes that had previously been on the opposite side of the pond were suddenly less than ten feet away.  I was charmed by them until I realized that the male was headed straight for me.

So I ruffle my papers and try to slowly stand up and make myself look too big to mess with.  Yeah.  That didnt work.

He charged, I ran, the kids on the benches near the pond start laughing.  Stinking birds.  Who cares if they’re “threatened” if they’re threatening me!  (Okay, so they’re just listed least concern.  But I guess you gotta be tough if your species has been around for 9 million years.)

Two rather compassionate fraternity brothers helped me out by creating a distraction so I could retrieve my life (papers, cell phone, notes, etc.) though my dignity was pretty much gone at that point. 

I didnt realize I could lose all sense of personal pride until later when the guys, who were being friendly (and probably evaluating me for post-traumatic syndrome symptoms), asked me what my major was. 

Wildlife major, attacked by cranes, news at six. 

Land lobsters and Jays

One of the decided benefits of living on one of the largest peninsulas in North America is the easy access to the beach.  I also happen to live a short drive from a jewel in the national wildlife refuge system, and find myself there often. 

We are still in the dry season here in Florida, our excuse for winter, and the tidal mangrove areas that lead out from the lagoon towards the Atlantic ocean are down to bare sand.  The alligators are restless, and there are mud slides everywhere from their wanderings.  Fish jump nervously in the remaining pools, hoping for rain.

Its no wonder most of the fishing birds nest during this season.  Small pools with many fish make the hunting easier.  I spotted a flock of roseate spoonbills, wood storks, cattle egrets, an osprey pair and a great blue heron on my drive towards the beach.  This is as far north as most of these species nest in the U.S., and I feel privileged to see many of them.  The spoonbills and wood storks in particular give me a sense of pride.  It wasnt so long ago that these birds were down to the hundreds - leveled by hunting for their feathers and the effects of pesticides in their environments. 

In fact, its the spoonbill feathers that make for such irony.  Spoonbills are a beautiful shade of pink - not too gaudy, not too drab.  They’re the only endemic pink birds in Florida, those flamingoes belong elsewhere.  And yet, when you trim the feathers from the birds, the coloration doesnt stay. 

Its actually derived from their diet.  Pull the feather from the bird, no diet = no color.  Its that simple.  So when they hunted the birds for their feathers, it became a neverending circle in the quest to keep ladies in fashion.  Fans and band feathers had to be replaced every few months.  Thankfully, fashion has moved on. 

The beach is something to see at this time of year.  Without the freshwater rain clouding the coast, you can see down to your toes even when you’re head high in the surf.  The water is a beautiful brilliant sea green and blue, the plankton are blooming. 

Florida, of course, has many tourists at this time of year, just past the easter holidays and during the traditional spring break season.  And there were many land lobsters passing by as I read Fahrenheit 451 and lay out on the sand.  I prefer paranoia and slather myself in spf 55.  These people want to gild themselves before they reboard their planes.  Well, they’ll certainly glow - like Rudolph’s nose - when they finally get back home. 

Back off the beach, I witnessed something amazing.  The refuge is home to one of Florida’s endemic - found nowhere else - birds, the scrub jay.  These are fiesty critters, and they work in teams.  Basically, adult siblings help parents raise more siblings, so its a family effort to raise baby jays.  I’m not sure if its nesting season now or not, but I certainly saw them show their capacity to defend a territory.

As I drove back towards home, out the left window I saw small blue-ish wings dive bombing a very large red tailed hawk.  Four, then five, then six jays were railing on this raptor.  She would lash out with beak and talons, and they would twist just out of reach.  It was impressive, to say the least.  In less than two minutes they had harassed her into acrobatics and pecked at her wings until she finally gave up her original flightplan through their territory. 

Brazen.  Remind me not to stumble through jay territory during nesting season.  I doubt they treat humans any differently.