Alex Palmer's Natural History Notes and Thoughts

"I...uh...am a naturalist," I stutter to the person next to me at the bar.  I quickly chug a swig of beer as the person I'm talking to gives me a puzzled look.  "What kind of work do you actually do?" he inquires.  "I mostly do environmental education programs for youth and the general public," I respond, trying to sound astute and sophisticated.  "So do you like teach kids how to camp and fish and live out in the wilderness then?"  "Sort of," I respond.  "I focus more on teaching  about and engaging people in the natural history and ecology of a certain area," I reply.  "Oh...I see..." he says as he fades away to order another drink. It seems that many people do not understand what I do for a profession.   Part of the reason for this I think may be that my "profession" is one that is more causal and laid back; it is a form of recreation, leisure, science, and activism all mashed up into one enterpris

In just a few short weeks, I will be making my journey northwestward from the warm tidal area of the southern Chesapeake Bay towards the sandy and wind-driven dunes of the south shore of Lake Michigan.  In doing so, I will be crossing many political boundaries.  For a naturalist, though, I'll be crossing much more than just mere state lines and congressional districts, but I'll be traversing ecological boundaries. I will likely cross two major geological boundaries on my road trip to the Hoosier State of Indiana.  On the grandest scale, I will start off the in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and move across a great divide into the Mississippi/Ohio River watersheds.  A watershed is simply an area of land that sheds surface water (such as rain or snow) into a larger body of water.  For example, your gutters likely poor into a storm drain which empties out into a nearby stream, and then that stream drains to a river, which then flows to an ocean or a large bay.  A great divide is t