We were born to track; it’s hardwired into our brain. We just have to re-load the software–and slow down.
Seeing takes time. Listening takes time. Thinking takes time. Beauty takes time. Making meaning takes time. Tracking is not a contest or a race. You have to move slowly enough for your brain to sort the appropriate meaning out of what you are encountering. And you will find that you encounter a much bigger world when you slow down. This is a first step toward expanding that world.
animals
A Tribute to Marine Moms
A lioness licking her cub. An elephant twining its truck around her calf. A polar bear nuzzling its pup. These heartwarming images remind us that wild animals can be doting mothers, much like us. But in coastal waters, where survival depends on timing, camouflage and luck, motherhood takes extraordinary forms.
Amazing Grays
Blues are bigger; fin whales, faster; humpbacks, more acrobatic. But the nobly named Eschrichtius robustus (aka Eastern Pacific Gray)— splotched, blunt-headed, stout and muscular–is nothing less than amazing. World Whale Day, celebrated the third Sunday of February, is an ideal time to celebrate their awesomeness.
The Wonders of Whales
“Do you know what whale breath smells like?”
Our captain doesn’t wait for a reply.
“Rotten broccoli!” he bellows as a humpback spouts a few yards from our boat.
Awed by its size and unexpected stench, I almost forget that these majestic giants are, like us, air-breathing, warm-blooded, baby-nursing mammals. But unlike us, some whales have bodies as long as two school buses, tongues that weigh as much as an elephant and hearts the size of a small car, with an aorta (main artery) wide enough for a human to slide through.
Discovering New “Aliens” under the Sea
As a little girl watching a Blue Planet video, Madeline Frey dreamed of becoming a scientist and discovering a never-before-known animal.
“I wanted to find what no one else had looked at before,” she recalls, “to study what no one else had.”a nice post-turkey-day surprise.
Frey didn’t expect to identify eleven new species by age 20 — nor did she imagine that they would be slippery, slimy, alien-looking ribbon worms at the Bodega Marine Laboratory and Reserve on the Northern California coast.
Time Travel to the California Serengeti
Fire up your imagination, and buckle your seat belt. Archaeologist Breck Parkman is sweeping us back 18,000 years to the peak of the last Ice Age.
Deep winter had frozen so much ocean water into glaciers that sea levels dropped by 400 feet. The “California Serengeti,” as Parkman christened it, stretched from Monterey to Mendocino. This vast fertile plain, thatched with grasses and tree-lined streams, “was probably the most spectacular place in the world for wildlife. Think of thousands of animals moving together, living together, feeding together, sometimes feeding on each other. It would have blown our minds.”
The Rapture of Raptors
As I swerve along California’s Route 1, a small brown rodent darts across the road. Looking up, I hear a piercing shriek and see a broad-winged bird hurtling from on high. A few feet above my open-top convertible, the avian assassin, talons outstretched, tail fanned and beak gaping, brakes to a mid-air stop, flounces its feathers and jets back to the heavens. I watch, utterly enraptured.
Sea Stars Rising
They were the aquatic beauties of the Northern California coast: ochre sea stars in jewel-bright colors, web-winged bat stars and the spectacular sunflower sea star that reigned as the Beyoncé of the breed. Bigger, brighter, bolder and hungrier than other species, these voracious prowlers could unfurl as many as two dozen arms, rocket across the ocean floor and devour a purple sea urchin in a blink. As an apex predator, the Pycnopodia helianthoides–sometimes dubbed the Death Star– feared none and was feared by all.
Notes from an Accidental Ecologist
“So you’re an ecologist?” a doctoral student on a field trip asks.
“No, I’m not a scientist,” I hastily reply. “I’m just trying to get to know my neighborhood.”
With a patient smile, she informs me that “ecology” comes from the Greek words for “study of” and “home” or “place to live.” By this simple definition, I qualify–as, at the least, an accidental ecologist.
Frank Zappa’s Jellyfish
“Have you heard of Frank Zappa?”
Visitors touring the Bodega Marine Laboratory and Reserve often seem surprised by my question. Baby-boomers call out answers: Guitarist. Composer. Had a band called the Mothers of Invention. Named his kids Moon Unit and Dweezle. For those too young to recall, I explain that shaggy-haired, iconoclastic Frank Zappa (1940-1993) released more than sixty albums and rocked the music world in a career that spanned three decades,
