Autobiography of nature
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grew up in a broken home. My parents eventually divorced, but only after many years of intense struggle and pain. It is in this context that I found my love for nature. I was hooked for as long as I can remember--I am thankful beyond words for this attachment. As I look back, I am convinced that this connection saved my spiritual life and helped in my search for personal identity.
As I look at my career as a scientist, I see several distinctions in my connection and interaction with nature when compared with my childhood. I owe a large debt to my childhood experiences. I am now a scientist because of these experiences. Science was the only choice for me. As a child, though, my connection seemed somehow more complete. More fun. More true. My adult connection has matured. I still feel the excitement while doing research in a tropical lagoon, or while exploring the rainforest or snorkeling over coral reefs. Teaching is special as well. Yet, my enthusiasm has been tempered by life's many demands and responsibilities. As a kid, I was one with nature. As an adult, I only get to visit now and then. I miss it.
Images. Five years old. A spring day. A squall line is moving in from the west. The sky darkens as rich, moist winds are drawn towards the approaching storms. Lightning is intense and getting closer. My friends are running for cover, inside away from harm's way. I'm mesmerized, frozen in place not by fear but by wonder. I want to be in the storm, part of the rising updrafts and streaking lightning. Reluctant to stay outside while my friends are inside, I leave but only after I'm drenched, excited by my boldness.
Images. Hunting for toads on a summer night. Flashlights shining, kids searching for calling males perched neck deep in a temporary pond. Who can find the most, the biggest. Only days before I've played baseball in these very fields--I had pitched a no-hitter. Now they were filled with frantic reproduction.
Images. A Cape Verde storm moving westward across the Atlantic Ocean, formed by a ripple in the steaming atmosphere over Africa. I'm excited by the prospects of tracking the storm across the ocean. Will it become a hurricane and reach New Orleans? Probably not. But.....
Twenty-five days later the storm is moving through the Bahamas only to be blocked by a massive high-pressure system to Betsy's north. Remarkably, Betsy turns completely around aiming is 150 mph winds towards southern Florida and eventually, into the Gulf of Mexico. New Orleans is right in the path.
My mother has me painting a privacy fence the morning that Betsy strikes. "Mom, the fence is going to be history by daybreak" I say as I watch the cumulus clouds- racing, racing from the east. I continue to paint.
Ten o'clock. Dark, kinda scary. Winds about 90 mph from the northeast. Parents withdraw to the showers. Mom, drunk, asleep in the bathtub. Dad, sitting with her, one step behind. Brothers, terrified. A sliding glass door shatters into a billion pieces, fragments whipped into lethal missiles thrown without conscience like buckshot into the living room wall.