A Naturalist's Perspective
by Dave CrawfordI am grateful to you, the reader of this guide. Green Space advocates much like you had a hand in shaping my career and my life. I grew up in Minneapolis, within biking distance of a free-flowing stream and an undeveloped lakeshore which had been set aside, with considerable foresight, before the city spread to engulf them. It was these places, more than once-a-year family trips out of the city, that "hooked" me.
It would be hard to imagine a better place to grow and to learn, to develop awareness and understanding of the world that supports us.
As a youngster I caught (and was caught by) crayfish, marveled at gulls and turtles and muskrats, and explored seemingly endless reaches of forest , with the assurance that these places would always be there for my enjoyment, week after week, year after year. As my interests became more sophisticated, I learned to identify birds, to observe animal behavior and wonder at the reasons behind it, to anticipate the changes that each cycle of seasons brought.
Examining a rare plant at Seminary Fen
photo: Jeff Strate
If it hadn't been for that regular, easily accessible exposure to natural areas and non-domesticated animals and plants, I would be a computer programmer right now. Not a bad job, but a difficult one in which to share joy and wisdom and commitment. I love nature. I seek it out. I look for the "best" places, and I share them and what I find there with others. I get the pleasure of seeing those others make discoveries, gain understanding, even change their lives because of their exposure to natural areas.
We can find nature anywhere. Breathe. You're participating in nature. But it takes more than breathing for people to learn the world around them and live their lives meaningfully. We can find "nature" on television and the Internet. But without real-world, personal experience of natural areas, we have no anchor for whatever knowledge we gain through secondhand means. For someone who sees it only on television, nature is as distant and unreal as the computer-generated dinosaurs of Jurassic Park. Cool, yes, and potentially valuable, but meaningless unless there's a nearby place in the real world where nature can be experienced first-hand.
We can all be naturalists. We can all explore, and learn, and share discoveries. We can all find perspective and stability in a culture whose complexity all too frequently sweeps us off our feet. But we can't do it without you. We need you to find those "best places." We need you to provide for their preservation. We need you to insure that we will be able to share them with all the generations of naturalists yet to come.
Dave Crawford works as a naturalist at Wild River State Park on the St. Croix River.