Last Friday morning, I went with a few other EL kids to Maymont Nature Center. We arrived before the Nature center opened, so we walked around the man-made lake nearby. We climbed on the tree stumps and chatted, and I marveled at the sign advertising fishing regulations. It struck me as comical that a shallow, seemingly empty, concrete lake such as this could have fish living in it.
Once inside, we walked around the center. I took particular interest in all the different sea creatures that were there: eels, fish, turtles, and otters. I remember being surprised that otters were a native species. Additionally, I was stunned simply by the number of different species, as well as the presence of big fish. For such a small river, I was surprised it could hold so much.
After the fish there was an exhibit on the load of the river. I had learned that the James is a rather silt-filled river naturally, but this broke down what the river carried into suspended load, dissolved load, and bed load. I was very intrigued to learn that the big pollutants, such as chemicals and fertilizers, are part of the dissolved load, which is unseen in a moving river. In contrast, other types of load are more easily seen, though they contain mostly silt and rocks. It occurred to me that pollution is not necessarily seen, and that the clearness of the water does not have to correlate with pollution.
At the end of our visit we went outside and spoke to one of the animal keepers who was taking a small screech owl outside to sit in the sun. He talked to us about all the types of owls in the area. He mentioned during this conversation how he regularly spots owls. Trained to see them, they are easy to find.
At Maymont I got to really take a good look at the nature I was constantly surrounded by. Most of what I saw there I was previously uneducated or unfamiliar with. Visiting the Maymont website (http://www.maymont.org/page.aspx?pid=281), I find that I am not alone; many visiting are similarly ignorant. Is because of our lifestyles and our disconnection with nature or just nature’s way of hiding itself? Either way, we don’t see much of what is really there. I think back to the man-mad lake I first saw. What else does it hide? All of this seems to link back to the readings we recently completed, on how we need to start thinking about the wilderness as what’s in our own backyards. We need to think about the owls in the trees outside our windows, the squirrels behind the bushes, the fish in the man-make ponds in our neighborhoods, and the geese flying overhead. It’s all there just as much as it is in the unsettled remote areas; we just have to look for it.
Found in the James. And I thought we didn’t have big fish!