Finding Our Bearings

Kentucky frontiersman Daniel Boone allegedly said he had never been lost but was once bewildered for three days. It’s hard to separate truth from fiction with pioneer icons, but no one would deny that Daniel could find his way around.  His forays were long, sometimes covering hundreds of miles across territory poorly mapped. Once, while he was away for a couple years, his wife took him for dead and gave birth to a daughter fathered by Daniel’s brother. But I’m getting off point. 

Birds are great navigators, even better than Daniel. Their migrations are well documented and some are incredible feats. The arctic tern takes the prize for the longest migration in the animal kingdom: 31000 miles round trip from its Arctic breeding grounds to wintering areas in the Antarctic. Closer to home, many midwestern songbirds winter along the Gulf of Mexico or destinations farther south. They manage the distance remarkably but are experiencing significant losses from the effects of climate change and land use practices. 

Insects like monarch butterflies and some of the dragonflies handle similar distances and can require several generations to complete the task. Each new cohort is born with an internal map and the wherewithal to read it. Grey whales travel 12000 miles from the Baja to Alaska and Russia. Sea lions navigate from California to Alaska twice a year— once to have young and mate, once again to molt. 

But distance is one thing, precision another. A honey bee flies up to three miles to forage then returns to a hive entrance that may be mere inches from an adjoining hive. A rabbit in the middle of a grass field knows precisely where to find its nest. The ant on the rotting log, the butterfly on the monarda, the albatross gliding across open ocean— all know exactly where they are and where they’re going.  Their sense of place and direction is sharp and innate. 

Humans share the sense, supposedly, and when I think about Daniel Boone, early explorers, or indigenous peoples, I know it must be true.  But put me in an unfamiliar big box store and I’m pretty helpless to point north, or take me on a cloudy day hike off trail and I’ll try to walk circles while arguing with my compass. 

It’s a sense not equally shared, and many westward immigrants would have never made their destination without gifted navigators at the lead. Science tells us our directional capabilities are generated in brain cells known as head direction neurons. Evolution doesn’t encourage nonessential traits and our map apps are not exercising our neurons. Take away our cell phones and we may think we’re more lost than ever, but our ability to find our way still exists for now.  

There is no shortage of metaphors for being lost— lost in thought, in the maze, in the crowd, in the weeds, in the fog— and no shortage of evidence that our country is in dire need of finding its bearings at the moment. 

The people of 1930’s Germany were not happy with the inflation in their country so they elected a man who promised to fix it. He completely dismantled their government in fifty three days and became a dictator. It’s likely that Germans, like most people, saw government as necessary but preferred it stay at arm’s length.  Their country needed improvement and they'd put a man in charge so now they could focus on paying bills, pursuing ambitions, and living their lives. By the time they were fully aware of what was taking place it was too late to speak out. 

German history is a lesson for those whose minds are not lost, who can navigate a barrage of disinformation while staying the course, who can experience  bewilderment but never lose direction or hope.  We’re living in a time that can’t be wasted in complacency or ignorance. We have an innate sense of choosing the right direction. We need to use it. 

 

Plant Talk

I’m in a rut with our national security and institutions and democracy under siege. I take some consolation from political commentator Robert Reich who writes that what we're going through might “awaken Americans to the truth about what… we must do to get back on track toward social justice, democracy, and widespread prosperity.” But I need a distraction, so I surf the web looking for a rabbit hole and stumble across a piece on communication among plants. I go down the hole. 

Mycelium, the vegetative part of fungi, appears as a mass of branching, thread-like filaments winding through the soil. When we head to the woods in search of morels we’re actually looking for the fruiting bodies of morel mycelium— the vast majority of the fungi is below ground, breaking down organic matter and linking plants by attaching to their roots. These connections allow plants to share nutrients and communicate by way of chemical messaging while providing the fungi with necessary carbohydrates. It’s a win-win. 

If an acorn sprouts in a fencerow and the young seedling finds itself under a thick growth of brambles starved for sunlight, the mother oak detects the struggle and uses mycelium to send sugars and nutrients to her offspring, fueling its growth until it can gather sunlight on its own. There are similar  responses when plants are attacked by pests or disease or are physically damaged.  News spreads quickly through the network and the whole community may pitch in, even unrelated plants.  

Fungi thrive in woodlands but live in soils everywhere— in our potted plants, yards and gardens, pastures and croplands. Their function in helping plants communicate is bolstered by soil microbes which are likewise capable of transferring nutrients and messages.  Both fungi and microbes are often damaged or destroyed by pesticides and poor land use.

There’s talk above ground as well, by way of airborne compounds which alert plants of potential threats.  It’s a real thing, caught on film. That sweet smell of new mown grass alerts other grass plants of impending danger. They respond by moving sugars and other compounds to their roots to speed up recovery after being sliced.  Equally impressive, some plants can hear the buzzing of a nearby bee and will increase the sugars in its nectar in response. These are all things to haunt us when we’re next pulling weeds or digging potatoes or mowing grass. They are also things that offer a powerful teaching about community, cooperation, and the hidden networks sustaining life; things that stand in stark contrast to the disjointed and often divisive nature of human society. 

There are people who claim they can literally hear plants speaking, though there isn’t the science to back them up.  But neither does science explain this: In the Amazon lives a primitive tribe known for developing a powerful hallucinogenic brew using two unrelated plants. In a land of 80,000 different vascular plants, how did the tribesmen discover which two to use?  According to Harvard anthropologist Wade Davis, it’s a stretch to say it was solely trial and error.  The tribe explains matter of factly that the plants talk to them. And when asked how they establish plant taxonomy, they say that on nights of the full moon, plants sing in different keys. It falls short of a full explanation, but opens the door to more questions about plants and our ability to listen and understand. 

I leave the rabbit hole with a thought, that in spite of all we know, we don’t know jack. Maybe one day we’ll learn that plants are conscious, or that consciousness exists in the very fabric of the universe and pervades everything.  Leading physicists and philosophers are batting that question around right now. It’s heavy stuff, life altering, and compared to the drone of daily news, genuinely refreshing. 

Groundhog Day Reflections

Groundhog Day dawned with a cloud cover that hovered overhead like a suspended gray comforter.  It lingered the entire day so there was never a shadow cast by a groundhog or anything else.  Accordingly, rather than an early spring, we can expect six more weeks of winter, which puts us about mid-March. Sounds spot on. 

For those who have had enough of winter, Feb 2nd is a consolation.  Groundhog Day marks the midpoint between the shortest day of the year and the spring solstice.  The days are getting longer, the northern hemisphere is warming and there are changes afoot.  Great horned owls are incubating eggs, cardinals are singing  at daybreak with a growing enthusiasm, roots of maple are primed to pump sweet sap to its outermost limbs. On the frozen marsh stands a lone wood duck, a drake, eyeing a nest box mounted on a pole nearby.  He knows.

Our days might be gray and drab but an orchestra is tuning up for a grand annual performance with a repertoire refined over millions of years.  Every component plays a critical role and is blended in perfect harmony. Anything absent or off key rattles the entire ensemble. 

As we await the opening curtain we are lambasted with news that rattles our world: our well established institutions, our privacy and personal information, our national security, has all been compromised. Our constitution and democracy and form of government is being upended. It’s big news, and some of the damage already done cannot be undone. 

We were in Indy today and pulled into a fast food joint for lunch. It was a chain restaurant, one of those we detest for serving food-like products discovered in food science laboratories and brought to market via destructive agricultural practices, but their jalapeno burger is to die for.  The young man at the drive up window wore a huge smile and looked me square in the eye, thanked me and called me “brother.” Maybe I caught him at just the right moment and circumstances beyond his employment were responsible for his bubbly happiness, but I think not. And it just so happened I was at the window with a head full of national news and was bathing in discontent when this kid’s exuberance caught me off guard.  I pulled away but was ready to take a lap and order more poison food just so I could talk to the guy again.  

I thought about him on the way home while listening to a podcast about another young man, a 31-year-old rancher in the Texas panhandle.  He’d lost his herd of more than 700 cattle in the Smokehouse Creek fire late last year.  He’d adopted the latest regenerative ag practices and was making great strides in converting 4000 overgrazed, long abused acres into productive native grass pastureland. He was doing everything right. The fire had taken away almost everything he had and left him with the overwhelming tasks of rebuilding miles of fencing, cleaning up hundreds of charred carcasses, and navigating a nightmare of insurance logistics. He took it on while still taking time to support his local community and lending a hand to neighbors, some who were worse off than him.  His spirit remained intact, his determination unscathed. 

These two guys live in different worlds. There’s no comparing the challenges of running a ranch to manning a drive-up window, but I see in both an enthusiasm and optimism for life which cynicism has taken from my own. In their separate ways they demonstrate a resolve to find something good in every day and pass it on, and their actions are contagious. 

So this grumpy old man is feeling a bit inspired. There are people, a majority, many of them young with heads squarely attached, holding onto a belief that a happy and prosperous life is still possible in the greatest democracy on earth; that freedom is not yet lost and justice can still prevail; that we can do what it takes to keep the orchestra of spring finely tuned and blowing our socks off with its annual performance. 

It can all be true if we insist.