All isn't doom and gloom. We've enjoyed beautiful weather here this week perfect for taking two of my classes to Wildwood Metropark near Toledo, OH on Tuesday. My students usually paid close attention to our naturalist guides, and the occasional muttered "cool" or "huh!" or "that's crazy" told me at least a few were learning something new. Their interest, plus some time in quiet, shady woodlands were an unexpected spirit tonic.
The guides showed us an assortment of striking or ecologically significant plants, pointed out different habitat types, and explained the role of floodplains and how the one we walked along had been impacted by last week's rains. They identified whatever animals and birds crossed our path. One guide, Kim, did a stunningly accurate imitation of a barred owl. A woodchuck ambled by, indifferent to us, which delighted several my students who had never seen a woodchuck before. I suppose they are kind of cute, if they're not undermining your house. One young lady said she wished she could have one as a pet. I'd gladly give her the one burrowed under my porch, if I could ever lure it into my trap.
What stood out to me Tuesday was how the tour differed with the style and personality of the guide. Over the last two years I've taken that tour with four different guides. Last year, we had a gentleman who seemed to have a story for nearly everything he showed us--how pioneers used the plants, superstitions about certain trees or creatures, some colorful characters associated with the park, and so forth, all related with unflagging enthusiasm. His stories were usually entertaining, and they helped fix their objects more deeply in mind. Kim, a grad school classmate of mine in long-gone days, is authoritative, enthusiastic, and radiates a love of the land she works on and and shares with others. Today, with my morning class I walked with a guide named Tammy who was not much older than most of my students and less formal in her presentation than some of the older guides. I think her style helped my students to relax and enjoy their walk. In the afternoon, we walked with Linda, whose presentation proved to be the most instructive, albeit not in the way it was intended to be.
Linda was heavyset, and walked with great effort and the aid of a cane. Her comments on the sights along the trail were by contrast breezy (if a bit wheezy) and assured--and nearly constant. Within the first hundred feet of the trail she had pointed out four different plants, offering a couple minutes' commentary on each. Moving on, she promised she wouldn't be stopping so often on the rest of the trip, but she did. Nearly every step brought us to some item whose features required a meticulous explication. While my students didn't appear to get impatient, I did. Looking at my watch around the halfway point on the trail, I saw that we were scheduled to leave the park in five minutes. I mentioned this, and she apologized and took us back to the visitor center--actually, pointed us back, since she couldn't have kept up with us if we walked quickly enough to catch our bus.
We missed some notable sights--a remnant prairie, a pond, and a marsh where you can glimpse at least two or three different kinds of woodpeckers. But musing about this on the way back to campus, I recognized that we hadn't come up short in experiences of the preserve. Linda had abundantly compensated us for what we missed. While we might have covered more ground with another guide, we would have walked unawares past a number of plants and insects I hadn't known of before: knotweed, leafy spurge, oak caterpillars, witch hazel, twigrush, among others.
In the last twenty or so years, the phrase "differently abled" has worked its way into the American lexicon as a euphemism for "disabled," but in Linda's case I think it is quite apt. Moving more slowly, angled toward the ground, she of necessity focuses on short stretches of terrain for longer periods of time than someone looking straight ahead and walking briskly would. Some might call her condition an impediment, but it is also an opportunity to pay more attention to the particulars that crowd nearly any seemingly inconsequential piece of ground. Her disablity supports an ability to see what most of us will only notice with expert guidance or long observation.
I don't know if Linda looks at her infirmities this way--she may well wish she had sturdier legs. But I certainly don't wish she had given us the standard field-tripper's view of Wildwood. Our relation to the outdoors is always largely a physical one, so that relation will be influenced by how our bodies are built, whether we are tall or short, weak or strong, male or female, near or far sighted. Being physically situated in a particular way to one's surroundings means a particular perspective on them. Can we say that any perspective arising from this fact is without value? Or that only one or a few are worth heeding?
That depends. How much of the world do you wish to know?
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