O Alpine Lakes, O Azure Witches,
wardens of the Mountain’s bounty
a window to a World below Water
one of green-gray monotone and Logs lost
to Algae’s Fog, Puddles and Ponds pave
the path to your otherworldly Origin
to man You are alien
You are fae
You are divine
Your Nature so striking it cannot be so
O ever-moving Aquamarine
Your Crystal view yielding to Cerulean hues
Your Waters painted with Glacial pigment
sheltered by Stone spears, shielded by Pine Glades
the Wind whispers on Your Waves as you lap against Land
They sing stories of Old, sown on Your surface
yet our thirst finds You, O Well,
our discipline but fledgeling failing
to hear Your humble bounty’s limits
may You live on, O Alpine Oasis
baptize me in Glory of Your Glacial Grandfathers
as We sit together
in silent vigil
I am not a scientist. My studies focus on the political, on people, on polls and patterns. In this sense, I’d more readily consider myself a creative with structure than a scientist. This distinction is far easier with “soft” sciences than the hard, on-the-ground science I’ve immersed myself in. In this world of fact and instant information, it seems that we’ve developed a hunger for numbers, a thirst for truth in structure and pure reasoning, but what happens when the doors to the wealth of knowledge we call The Internet become overgrown? What happens to science when exact data rots away and is replaced by blooming experiences? I’ve found that as I’ve lost myself in wild wonderment of the world around me, the need for knowledge has been traded for a burning, primal, spiritual urge: the need to create.
This need to create, to allow imagination to govern observation isn’t just a part of “soft” sciences, but rather a part of all science; something our digital separation has allowed us to overlook. My experiences in the backcountry, the Bob Marshall Wilderness, Welsh Lakes British Columbia, and all natural sites in between haven’t necessarily unlocked some new, profound truth, but rather reminded me of creativity that hid in morning dew, or nestled itself between lichen and log. I first felt the call of creativity within nature in the dense verdure of the Bob. It greeted me like an old friend, patiently waiting for my return. My pen, dusty from months alone in the back of my mind, found its place in my hand once more as words flowed forth onto paper. At first I hesitated.
“You’re not scientific enough,” I told the stories of shrubs on my page, “you are folklore, you are fantastic, you’re beautiful image in place of fact.”
“According to who?” The shrubs whispered back.
I cannot place where this idea of a wall between science and art came from. Maybe it was from the precise hell of calculus; maybe it was from the vast web of ways to classify and contain nature, distilling it into function and purpose; maybe it was from something far older than my experiences alone. What’s clear is that this wall, as impenetrable as it may seem, is only imaginary. This course has opened my eyes to new ways of knowing, ways that embrace a relationship between art and science. Robin Wall Kimmerer explains how Indigenous Knowledge relies on an imaginative, spiritually-centered relationship between ecology and researcher. In discussing her studies of moss, she explained that she’s not going to study it in a lab, but rather that she’s “going to go to wet places and be with the moss, and [she’s] going to go to dry places and be with the moss…” (Kimmerer, 2016). This process is one built on curiosity, discovery, and creativity that is unique to the outdoors. It may not be what Western science demands, and it may not be instant, but studying nature in this way allows us to reconnect with it in ways our society has minimized.
The collective forgetting of art in science has also worked against building public support and understanding of scientific—particularly conservational—goals. Many in the general public associate science with dense reports full of jargon, produced by PhDs in ivory towers; the public feels, at best, inherently separate from scientific understanding. In restoring art to science, perhaps the bridge between the researcher in their lab and the layman can be rebuilt. Jack Turner echoes this sentiment in his book The Abstract Wild: “what has contributed most to our love of wild places, animals, and plants […] is the art, literature, myth, and lore of nature” (Turner, 1996). Modern science, at least in the U.S., is lacking this lore. It is on those of us who study this wild, natural world, to discover a mythos that can reconnect all of us to this biotic community.
All that being said, I am still not a scientist. Neither are you. We are all, in some way, creatives with different rules. I know that’s a bold assertion, especially from a humanities major, but before you leave this literary common ground I’ve created for us, I’d ask you just one thing: go outside and create. Go find art wherever you are, find prose in pine-needles, fables in flowers, aesthetics in the air. Find it and keep it, weave it into your work as you find your way in this wonderful, wild world.
