Journal #14 Ecosystem Interactions

My time in Slidell, LA has really focused on ecosystem interactions. I talk to my students all the time about how everything is connected. There is a great line in the movie " The Lion King" where the father lion Mufusa tells Simba about a time when he will die and become the grass in which the zebras will eat from. Simba is perplexed because they eat zebras. These interactions are so important for the world to continue. I came out here hoping to study climate change and I really thought that I would see the forest damage beyond repair. The wonderful thing is even after Katrina, thing are up and running in the forest. I saw spiders hunting, and caterpillars thriving. We found way more caterpillars than the researchers expected us to find for this time of year. This is good news because even though storms like Katrina rock our social order, the order of nature is still thriving.

This realization as a scientist is so obvious but is also very telling. In one sense it means the world is able to adapt within a certain range. This is hard for me to grasp because I strive for my kids to change the world especially the environmental world. I am glad and relieved the world can survive and it is not repairable. In the same sense that the forest has adapted there is a delicate balance. This delicate balance can easily be disrupted. Thinking about this I came up with an analogy I would like to share with you. Imagine being on a seesaw. You and your friend are peacefully seesawing along. Then the big kid comes over and sits on your lap and the seesaw tips a certain way forcing one side to have to adapt and except the pure brunt of the force. If the kid is too big then your going to be sitting on the ground. So in our lives and definitely the earth needs a certain sense of balance to thrive and continue.

The amazing part that I think I want the students to realize is in this big grand scheme of things, we are just one tiny little part. Standing among the cypress trees, they are way bigger than what I could ever rise to be ( no short jokes here). I am just a small part. Even on this trip I was just a piece of the data. All of the caterpillars we collected were adding to the data and there will be a result one way or the other. The future is in our hands, the seesaw really is in our hands. We can choose to tip the seesaw or we can choose to balance it out. We often think that we are just one person, but think if everyone though that way.

In another way of thinking of all of this....if we choose to destroy the earth I feel pretty confident that long after we are gone, the earth will still continue and mother nature will reclaim its land.