Copyright 2002
Wilderness Drum, Inc.
All rights reserved

Closer to the Earth
Steve Beyer

Introduction Before you leave home Fears and prohibitions Beliefs Your senses Asking permission Sensory powers Camera walk Being something else Changing perspective "Artist Unknown" Thinking about nature On not naming things Gratitude Gifts from the wilderness Writing about nature Getting close Watching quietly One creature Decomposers Wilderness symphony Competency

Thinking About Nature

Nature educator Steve Van Matre has said that there are four principles that are essential to an understanding of the natural world – energy flow, cycling, interrelationships, and change. The next experiments are ways of applying these principles to enhance your experience of the wilderness.

Energy flow

All the energy used by living beings on this planet ultimately comes from the sun. Green plants can convert this energy into carbohydrates through photosynthesis. Herbivores eat the plants, carnivores eat the herbivores, and some carnivores eat other carnivores. This sequence is called a food chain – for example, plant > grasshopper > swallow > hawk. Every plant and animal uses up some of the energy it receives for its own purposes – digesting food, creating new molecules, moving, growing, reproducing. Thus, solar energy undergoes a net loss in being converted from green plant to herbivore, but herbivore contains more energy per unit of weight than green plant matter. That is why there are carnivores.

Find a place and sit there quietly. Think of the energy pouring down from the sun. What kinds of green plants are in your place? What strategies do they use to reach for the sunlight? What animals eat the plants? In your mind follow the flow of solar energy from the green plants to the top predators. If you needed to survive in the wilderness for a long time, where would you want to enter into the food chain? Why?

Cycling

The basic materials of life are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur. There is a limited supply of these substances on the earth, so they have to be constantly recycled to be used again. Plants absorb their nutrients from the earth through their roots, and pass them on up the food chain; and the chemicals are returned to the earth from the waste matter and dead bodies of living things by decomposers – bacteria, molds, fungi, earthworms, centipedes, and insects. Hydrogen and oxygen in the form of water evaporate from the rivers, lakes, and oceans to form clouds, and fall back to earth in the form of rain, snow, sleet, and hail, to fill the rivers, lakes, and oceans once more. Plants absorb carbon dioxide from the air during photosynthesis, and release oxygen; animals absorb oxygen from air and water and release carbon dioxide. Everything is cycled to be used again, as part of the great web of mutual dependence of living things on earth.

Sit quietly and think about your body. Think about the water that cycles through your body. Picture the journeys that have brought water from oceans and clouds to be your blood, sweat, tears, and urine; picture the journeys that will transform your bodily fluids into clouds and rivers. Think how the nutrients that sustain your body have cycled countless times through the food chain and back into the earth through decay and decomposition. Think how the carbon dioxide that leaves your lungs is needed by plants to produce the food you eat, and  the oxygen transpired by plants is needed by your body to produce the energy you need to live. Picture your body connected to the natural world through these cycles. Is there any part of the earth to which you are not connected?

Interrelationships

Living things group together into communities in particular habitats. The role a living thing plays in a community is called its niche. A bat's niche is to fly around at night and eat insects; an owl's niche is to fly around at night and eat small reptiles and mammals. All the living things in a community interact with each other in many different ways. Predators eat prey: owls prey on rabbits; deer flies prey on deer; rabbits prey on green leafy plants. Living things compete with each other: green plants compete for places in the sun; predators compete for prey. Living things benefit each other: berry eaters carry plant seeds to new places; trees create homes for squirrels; woodpeckers remove boring insects from trees. A community – the entire planet – is bound together in an enormous complex web of relationships.

Find a place and sit there quietly. Think of the different niches available in your particular habitat, and consider which creature fills each niche. Which living things are predators, which are prey, and which are both? What are the top predators in your place? What has been the relationship between human beings in your place and the competing top predators? Think of all the ways the living things in your place compete with each other, and think about the things they are competing for. Think about the ways in which the living things depend on each other for some part of their needs. In your habitat, what would happen if you took away the hawks? What would happen if you took away the rabbits?

Change

Everything on earth changes. Climates change. Habitats change in well-ordered successions, as communities of living things affect their habitats, and the altered habitats then open the way for new communities. Living things change by adapting to their environment. They develop strategies to get food and water, protect themselves from predators, and reproduce. The strategies may be structural – for example, the long beak of a woodpecker, the webbed feet of a duck, the spines of a cactus, the allergenic oil of poison ivy. And the strategies may be behavioral – flying south in the winter, nurturing offspring, losing leaves in the cold. Those living things with the most adaptive strategies live to reproduce and pass those strategies on.

Find a place and sit there quietly. Observe a living thing. What strategies does it use to get food? How does it protect itself from predators? Can it run fast, or hide, or camouflage itself, or secrete nasty substances? Does it distribute offspring widely throughout the environment, or does it have relatively few offspring which it nurtures and protects? What keeps it from overpopulating its habitat? What unique adaptations does it have for its niche? How does its behavior help it survive and reproduce? Is its habitat stable or changing? What will happen to this living creature if the climate becomes hotter or colder, wetter or drier?

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