Natural Thoughts: It's not the answers that I need

It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.  
                          -Eugene Lonesco

As a professional naturalist I am filled with heartwarming stories I can tell of seeing a child's eyes light up when he learns something new, or the amazement of a young girl's eyes when she find a butterfly, or the comical screams of startled visitors when they pop the spring-loaded seeds of jewelweed (Impatiens capensis).  Our role as an interpreters is not just to recite the names of different plant or animal species, but to connect those "resources" to the people and places who are impact by those resources.  Our hope is that people will not only learn about nature, but will reap the personal and emotional benefits of the "awe"someness that Paula Spencer Scott elaborated on in her recent Parade Magazine article (2016), which highlighted some of the key positive psychological effects findings of people being in "awe" of things such as scenic vistas or natural landscapes.  The experience of awe has been shown to be effecting at reducing depression and fostering a greater sense of community.  As an interpretive naturalist, the most rewarding part of my job is being able to successfully inspire someone to appreciate a quality of the natural world that they might not have appreciated had they not interacted with me.  My metric for determining my success is not only based on their display of "awe" but on the types of questions they ask.  I know I've gotten the ball rolling when a visitor or a student starts to ask more inquiring questions, as this is a true sign that active learning is taking place.

But sometimes things don't always work out as glamorously as I had hoped.

Questions from visitors and other constituents to the nature center that I serve that have the tendency to "burn out" my sense of triumphant accomplishment include topics like:

  • Simplistic or unenlightened questions.  "Is this turtle real?  Who takes care of all of the trees in the woods?  How did all of those bees in your honeybee observation hive get in there?  Am I going to get attacked by a snake or a coyote?"  As a naturalist I of course am here to educate the general public about the natural world around them, but it can be difficult for me to get excited about basic and simplistic questions that show not only a lack of general knowledge but of any sort of enlightened inquiry.  I even had a teacher that wanted to know how naturalist staff trains the birds to come to our nature center bird feeders (they're wild birds, we don't need to train them to find food!).  
  • Questions of an irrelevant topic.  As an interpretive naturalist with years of training and experience in customer service, I am well suited to answer questions from the public about natural history topics, such as what types of trees are found in the local area, what to do if you find an injured or orphaned animal, or what kinds of activities people can do at our nature center.  But it often seems we'll get phone calls or questions that have nothing to do with any of those subjects.  "What number do I call for the highway department?  Can you transfer to me the front desk of the Department of Health?  Can you come over and fix my roof?"  Or I'll get questions that perhaps have an indirect question to natural history topics, such as needed referrals for an exterminator (or asking naturalist staff to come out to their house and get rid of their mice problem!) or who they should contact about cleaning up a dead deer carcass on the local interstate highway (which would be the state's department of transportation and thankfully not us!).  
  • Questions about facilities management or organizational operations that naturalist staff is not involved in.  Working in a large forest preserve system with tens of thousands of acres of land is a management challenge, but sadly I have nothing to do with all of the trash that's in a fishing lake 10 miles from the nature center, nor did I have any say about when and where benches will be placed a long a new bike trail.  I can pass on their comments to one of the 11 departments within our agency, but unless it's directly tied to my job duties or to the nature center where I'm stationed, I'm about as helpless as my concerned visitor in getting their message across to the right people.  
In a picture-perfect world, I would only respond to intelligible and relevant questions.  But the reality is that with organizational problems with the agency I work for combined with the low environmental awareness of many people, there exists a sobering reminder of how badly our society needs interpretive naturalists to connect the public to the resources they have and need.  It is not always going to be graceful work, but in the long-run environmental education programs for the public will continue to have a positive impact on our society and our natural resources.  

In the summer of 2014, I piloted a new environmental education program for disadvantaged youth in an urban park near Washington, DC.  My triumphant vision was to connect urban youth with nature in their backyard so that they would fall in love with and cherish their local natural areas.  In reality., this pilot program left my audience scratching their heads for a while...  

References
Scott, P. S. (2016, October 9). Awe: How the soul-stirring wonder sparked by a shooting star or a majestic peak can transform your health and happiness. Parade, 5-8.

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