How You Get Interested in the Natural World Around You

You may come to it by growing “natives” in you garden

Or by feeding birds

Or by having a pet snake

Through school or a teacher, or a family member or friend, even via TV or web

Or through the back door, a side-trip from Anthropology or Agriculture, or from birth, or in old age

However it comes to you, I hope for you sake it does [come]. It will make you richer. Mainly, it will (I hope) help connect you. We are becoming ever more isolated. 

This is one of the saddest features of our New Improved ersatz world. 

Only a generation ago, a lot of kids didn’t know where acorns come from and now it’s the adults. 

If you can do something so basic as tell a pine from a fir tree or a crane from a heron, you’re probably already well ahead of the average American in biological literacy. Not that long ago, even the dimmest kids could tell you what kind of pine you had and where it grows and what it’s good for.