Blinding Them with (Citizen) Science

I can see how an overwintered, acorn-filled squirrel could bend a tree branch, but monarch butterflies?! Yet, that's what is happening in Mexico right now.  Consider that the average monarch weighs about a half a gram.  Get millions of monarchs together, though, and their collective weight bends limbs downward.  For the second year in a row, monarch numbers have swelled upwards, signaling, perhaps, a resurgence, proof that maybe we can turn things around.

And that is a lesson worth repeating.

We can turn things around.

I think that's why I love citizen science, a movement that is rooted in amateur volunteers who want to make a difference.  It certainly has made a difference in my own life.

Since becoming a Master Naturalist two and a half years ago, I've done all kinds of things I never imagined I'd do. From feeding tiger-beetle larvae and documenting milkweed plants to helping with a prescribed burn at the foothills of the Bohemian Alps, I've been stretched and invigorated, educated and enlightened.  And, in small but real ways ways, I've also been able to make a difference in this beautiful world that holds me.

While it has often been true for me that the less I know, the more easily delighted I am when I bump into something that is new to me, in the past few years, I've also realized how much more beautiful the world can be when I have new words to describe it.

Long-horned milkweed beetle, aka Tetraopes tetraophthalmus.  Salt-creek tiger beetle, aka Cicindella nevadica lincolniana.  Prescribed burns, aka control lines, drip torches and flappers--oh, my!

We live in a beautiful, wild state and I have loved getting to know it even better these past few years.  I am so grateful that there are generous people out there who know so much more than I do yet never hesitate to mentor me along the way.  These people have pointed my family to eye-popping glacial rock fields in the Oglala Grasslands.  They have shown me how to geocache, against the backdrop of Halsey National Forest.  They've led me down the most beautiful 60-mile-long road I've ever seen (Highway 250 out of Rushville).  They've shown my daughter and me Ponca buffalo pasturelands. Let me help release the beetles I'd fed over the winter.  Introduced me to rare plants,  salt-eroded landscapes, virgin grasslands, tiny stars sleeping inside of Cottonwoods.

Just typing these words makes me feel better.

We can turn things around.  This I know to be true.