It Knows Everything I Don't Know

Some people say it is the most magnificent thing you’ll ever see, incomparable to your heart’s most tangible desires. Undeniably captivating. Its beauty is unmatched, but only if you choose to see the beauty.

Great Exhuma, Bahamas

Man has sought control over it, yet it is something from which we protect ourselves.

It is constantly renewing itself in a cyclical, habitual manner that is usually predictable yet unpredictable all the same.

It is unforgiving, grim, and at many times distressingly heartbreaking.

It welcomes – rather, it expects – competition in the most savage form. The only options are to fight for, or defend your life.

You can see it, you can touch it, you can experience it… but you’ll never adequately understand it. It has no boundaries, it has no ambitions, and the sky is barely the limit.

It has the power to foresee everything we cannot. It is by no means discriminatory but yet is highly selective. It allocates a purpose for every biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living) factor in this global ecosystem we deem our stomping grounds.

It is hardy as the ocean shoreline bombarded by storm waves, yet simultaneously fragile as a powdery snowflake gently resting on a car windshield.

It knows nothing I know yet it knows everything I don’t know.

Looking into the sunset on Hummingbird Cay, Great Exhuma, Bahamas – Research Trip, March 2013

Nature provides ample corridors upon which your entrapped mind can wander, expand its boundaries and connect its fragmented islands of knowledge to facilitate learning in various ways.

I’m here to breach the window standing in between what you see, what you don’t see, and what you think you see in nature. Having already breached those preconceived windows myself, I discover something new every day only to discover that I know so very little about this planet.

I can only open a few doors to peek at fundamental elements of nature, but you have to take the step and explore the path on your own.

Unidentified intertidal bivalves anchor to rocks on the uninhabited Hummingbird Cay

This is my call to action. A call to encounter the awe-inspiring story nature offers within reach. A call to discover everything nature knows that we don’t know.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for reading, if you got this far! This initial entry was purely for introduction purposes. I view nature from a vastly different perspective than most people. I firmly believe that in order to holistically interpret the nature around you, all preconceived paradigms must first shift and subsequently broaden to accommodate and process it all.

My hope is for you, my reader, to walk in my shoes first before you can fully appreciate my entries in the manner in which they are intended. Only once you appreciate something for more than face value do you begin to care for said thing.

With that being said, many fun and useful facts are on their way in proceeding entries (yes, I heard you all in the back asking about the factual writing I promised). I did, however, incorporate one major factual tidbit that introduces a relevant portion of restoration ecology – take a second look if you didn’t catch it the first time.

Love,

Lauren