The purple sea urchin I’m holding doesn’t look like an environmental terrorist—more like a domed pincushion bristling with needle-sharp spikes. I can’t look this echinoderm (pronounced ee-KINE-o-derm), a cousin of sea stars and sea cucumbers, in the eye. It doesn’t have any. Nor does it have a brain, heart, backbone, or blood. Yet urchins, among the most ancient animals, date back 450 million years and inhabit every ocean on earth.
To me, Jim Sullivan seems a combination of Davy Crockett and David Attenborough: A scientist by training. A landscape designer, newspaper columnist, and college instructor by various career twists. An environmental activist, pleine-aire painter, philosopher, author, and drummer by personal passion. A living legend among the hundreds of tracking students he’s trained.
Years ago I learned to sail by the wind on a 26-foot sloop in San Francisco Bay. After the initial terror, I came to relish the exhilaration of skimming across the water, rocketed by gusts and tugged by currents. At times I’d imagine endlessly drifting on the open sea with the sun and the stars as my only companions.
Velella velella (from the Latin for “veil”), commonly known as “by-the-wind sailors,” live this fantasy. Ancient mariners found in oceans around the world, they have no need for seaworthy vessels. They are shaped like exquisite toy sailboats.
On a wildflowers hike at the Jenner Headlands Preserve in Northern California, Ranger Jill Adams of the Wildlands Conservancy asks what we expect to find.
“Sex,” a voice calls out. Giggling like school kids, we turn to a small woman in a tan bucket hat and sensible boots. “My father was a botanist,” she explains. “He taught us that when you go into the woods to look for wildflowers in Spring, you’re going to see lots and lots of sex.”
