The Best of Nature

The outdoors will provide the best lessons in nature study. Outdoor experiences should take precedence over lectures between four walls, or browsing through books. What can be learned in the outdoors should be learned there. The printed page about the outdoor world is a poor substitute for contact with nature.
After sessions in the outdoors with the physical and biological world, there may be turning to books to gain broader understanding. Some will say that text-book study is better than nothing, but why settle for mediocrity of experience?
We learned long ago that the best way to learn about an area is to take careful observation of everything in sight. This is best done while going very slowly, and even by standing still for awhile as one tries to understand not just some details, but the whole inter-related natural scene. There is a difference between a nature walk, a nature hike, or just the overall hike. It is only in the movement best described as the "creep" that one attunes best to nature. The hiker has a different goal. There is a goal ahead, and a time to reach it. A camera moved about rapidly as one snaps a shutter yields blurred pictures. So a hiker at best gets only a vague impression of the area he rushes by. He does not have time to appreciate the many offerings of nature that he hurries to pass by.
A nature hike of a mile or more is a travesty. It is an insult to the term "nature", for there is too much time spent hiking, and too little on becoming aware of what is underfoot. To get acquainted with an area is to walk over it. The slower the walk, the better. Thus we have the nature "creep", a movement at a snail's pace, often punctuated by standing still, looking, listening, smelling, and conjecturing.
The distance traveled is far less inportant than the amount seen, appreciated, interpreted, and really felt through the senses. Thus a patch cut out from a leaf may designate where some denizen of the outdoors feasted, or even perhaps a hailstone cut its mark. A mound of dirt felt underfoot in a lawn may reveal where an earthworm had been busy.
Good companions on such "creeps" can offer challenges to interpretation, add eyes to help discoveries, and lend ears to catch sounds of the natural world.
Someone has described a naturalist as one who calls attention to things we have seen all our lives, but never noticed. The primary objective of interpretation is to create a sensual and personal awareness! To be aware, one should develop a personal identity with the environment. To develop such awareness, there must be some knowledge of the environment, for it is here that awareness begins. Definitions, facts, mere knowledge -- these do not necessarily create awareness. We must have a feeling for the environment. We must have involvement with the environment. Tasting, smelling, feeling, seeing, hearing, wondering -- these are the avenues for involvement.
-- by Stanley B. Mulaik