What struck me most about our visit to David Kline’s farm was his appreciation of insects. So many farmers are quick to insect loathing because of pest damages and loss of crop yield. In our lifetimes I hope to see insects and biocontrol agents become more prevalent, especially in organic farming. It was refreshing, both in conversation with David Kline and in reading Great Possessions, to see a farmer appreciate not only the many services insects can provide as pollinators and natural enemies of pests, but also appreciate the diversity and unique survival strategies of this diverse group. He outlines some of these in the chapter The World of Insects and wraps up with the quote “Maybe we should take more time to study this fascinating part of God’s Creation instead of swatting and spraying everything that crosses our path.” As an entomologist, it’s hard to disagree.
Author: groberts
Campus Trees
I traverse the path from the Kenarden Hall towards Beall Avenue daily, diagonally lumbering between Ebert Hall and the Arch. The trees cultivated here are always beautiful, but today they strike me differently. The first one I notice is northwest of where I stand, a relatively young Ginkgo biloba. Its little fans are green at their stems, a delicate chartreuse, and radiate out into brilliant yellow, making the branches look as if they are glowing. The next to catch my eye is a Japanese maple outside of Ebert, to my northeast. It is so red I would not be surprised if it had erupted from an enormous wound, bleeding leaves all over campus. To the south I can peek through the arch to see red and green static, the blurry leaves of trees farther away in the academic quad. I swing my gaze back towards the west to see the magnolia tree, which looks like it has only been dipped in decay, with its top branches extending into large brown ovals, and below those yellow, and down, closer to me, as brilliant green as if the seasons had not yet changed.
Caterpillar Dance
When I was young I kept a pet caterpillar. I found it on a tree at recess. I carried it around with me, everywhere I went, for a month or so. I did not know the species nor was I particularly entomologically inclined at the time. It was not host-specific, and I would go into the garden to find an assortment of leaves and plant matter for my little friend, bringing it a haphazard salad. I remember holding it in my hands and let it climb over my fingers. At their tips it would dance, swaying the front of its body and legs in search of a new structure to climb, a new thing to explore.
One day I woke up and didn’t have a pet caterpillar anymore. Instead a dusty and webby pupae was stuck to the side of the jar, yellowish white and ghastly. I went on my father’s outdated PC with its comically large monitor. I found photos of my caterpillar and its pupa on a site about invasive pests. The moth it would have become was most notably harmful to native fruit trees.
I took my companion and friend outside and used a stick to place the pupa on the stone steps leading into my house, and crushed him underfoot with a sickening pop. It left a stain on the stone for a year, and on my conscience indefinitely.
“Society is commonly too cheap.”
Reading Walden, I think each student faces many moments where we wonder just who Thoreau is. Who in our lives could we compare him to? What archetype does he neatly fit in? At times, he seems very serene and sensible as he talks lovingly about nature. This is when I most enjoy his work. On the other end of the spectrum, though, he paints a picture of himself, almost unknowingly, as being completely beyond the pale, as in the following quote:
“We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war.”
Choosing to compare people (and himself) to “musty cheese” would be enough to paint a picture of disdain for the stale and unoriginal without suggesting that societal rules are the only thing that keeps him from “open war” with dining mates. Open war! I also wouldn’t be thrilled to eat dinner with a man of so many judgements and such an oppositional identity to the times, but this phrasing makes me wonder just how nasty a disagreement with him could get.
Solo Venture to Johnson Woods
Something wonderful about trees, anywhere you might find them, is the effect of sunlight peeking through pseudo-canopies where foliage at different heights paint strokes of variable and translucent greens and yellows which overlap each other. It is a seemingly infinite collection of stunning layers, with your eye travelling up and up until instead of a new shade of green there is only the blinding sun. Noticing this foliage effect always takes me to a place of wonder, but walking into Johnson Woods for the first time, alone and just before the sun began to set, was like being transported to an entire world of that wonder. Once I was deeper along the trail I could spin around and see nothing else. No sounds were there to distract me: no other visitors, not a bird peeping. There was only me, the green, and the enigmatic hum of an unseen insect army.
The Living Wall
With each step you take deeper into Ruth W. Williams Hall, you can see nature was a large consideration during its design. As students learn about climate change and natural selection, they find themselves surrounded by walls covered in green: be it paint, photos of the outdoors, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, or living, photosynthesizing, growing plants. They are stapled against a faux-wood backdrop in large brown sacs filled with packaged potting soil. Above them is a single ever-burning light-source—not a grow lamp or a window, but a single fluorescent bulb. While caring for these plants in the last few months, I would wait for a guest of the college to ask me why the plants looked so unhealthy. Instead tours would pass by one after another, cooing over the plants. Alive! Can you believe it? Nature, but in here!
Without a proper light source or light-dark cycle, the plants on the wall are not the most beautiful, not the favorites of faculty and the community, and not significant to the wildlife beyond the walls of Ruth W. Williams. They are only the survivors. They have sustained themselves only because of their ability to suffer through sub-optimal conditions. They stretch themselves thin and etiolated, as if being taller or longer than their neighbor would bring them bright and plentiful sunlight. They grow where less hardy plants grew and stopped growing, also searching for light.
Perhaps, in that, there is a piece of nature growing in the living wall along with them.