Natural Selection

I think I was in 5th grade when my parents signed up for a Marriage Encounter weekend.  As a 12-year-old, that meant absolutely nothing to me, except that my paltry allowance might be a day or two late.

Their marital recharge didn't spill over into my life until a few days later, when we started getting mysterious phone calls in the middle of the day, nothing but silence following my perky "Hellos." 

For whatever reason,  I was spending a lot of time near the kitchen's wall-mounted phone those days, because I always seemed to be the one answering these annoying anonymous calls.  Finally, one day, when I'd grown tired of the shenanigans and mildly chastised the silence on the other end,  I was shocked to hear my dad's voice--a mixture of agitation and embarrassment--sputter "Just get your mom, will you?!"

Apparently, these prank calls were encouraged by the Marriage Encounter folks as some sort of telecommunicated "love note" to be transmitted from one pooped parent to another, a way of saying "I'm here and I'm glad you are, too."

The calls pretty much ended after that one, although the marriage managed to continue--happily, I believe--for another 20 years or so until my dad's death in 1993.

While I have no real desire to again take up pranking people on the phone--unless it's someone at Cheapest Damn Cigarettes, just to hear him say "Cheapest Damn Cigarettes,"--I've just come away from my own Marriage Encounter weekend of sorts, rejuvenated in my desire to make connections with the larger world.

Or, as the case may be, with the smaller, but much more populated world that is humming just outside my front door. 

Oh, to fall in love with everything all over again!

Really, that's what this past week in the Master Naturalist program has been for me--one, long, lovely reconnect with the natural world.  And, over and over again, I found myself uttering "I'm here and I'm glad you are, too."

Spend a sunny hour on loamy virgin prairie, surrounded by little bluestem, daisy fleabane, ironweed and goldenrod,  and just try to walk away unchanged.  Run your hand across tiny remnants of long-ago oceans now napping on sun-warmed limestone and tell me you aren't humbled by such history.  Stand knee deep in a wetland pond, trying to wrap your mind around the nitrate-eating microbes floating atop it, magically transforming poison into a harmless gas and come to terms with the ridiculousness of man's dominion over nature.

By the time I stood on the shore of Pawnee Lake yesterday afternoon, receiving my official "Master Naturalist" badge, I realized I'd made more connections in a week than a horny speed-dating bachelor will make in a lifetime. 

Beyond all the lessons in geology, birds, flowers, groundwater, reptiles and mammals--or maybe as a result of their collective effect--I'd learned that we are all a tribe--the termites, the grasslands, the aquifers, the rocks, the birds, and all the fine and funny classmates and instructors among me--and that, the more we can fall in love with each other, the better off we all will be.

Here's to a long and happy marriage between us all.