On Our Way, Rejuvenated: Beloved Naturalist Poems

A beaver pond on a February morning.

Songwriter Bon Iver sings about “things behind things behind things.” This is where we find often ourselves: organizing chaotic spools of data, cleaning out an overstuffed garage, trying to understand the pain of a loved one, digging past one memory or symptom to the endless layers below it.

This reoccurring sense instead buoyed me with wonder while participating in the Georgia Beloved Naturalist program this year—whether I was hiking across fields of granite rock, peering through binoculars at a barred owl, staring at leafy lichen in a microscope, listening to the trickle of a spring-fed stream, or feeling the grit of compost between my fingers. In a variety of outdoor spaces, from local parks to urban farms to constructed wetlands, I was drawn in by a sense of kinship to our interconnected world.

Everyone in the nine-month educational program came from different professional and cultural backgrounds, yet I was struck by their welcoming generosity. When overwhelmed by scientific names and biological systems, sometimes I want to pretend I know more than I do—a species name or fact about a plant or animal. But when I spent time with the participants in this program, my anxiety melted away and I was free to ask questions, to gain knowledge with the intent to share. Rather than competing, showing off, or clamoring to produce or accomplish or prove, instead we kept looking up, learning to recognize our place among an abundance of life, to care for and coexist with it.

“This is the first day of the rest of your life as a beloved naturalist,” Revonda Cosby, a co-founder of the GBN program, told our cohort during our last session in the fall. Through learning about local history, environmental advocacy and natural communities, we gained hands-on knowledge and skills, but it was just the start of a lifetime endeavor. No doubt, I’ll keep writing about what being a beloved naturalist means to me as I continue to search, to recognize, to form partnerships, to thoughtfully steward. What I know for sure is that it’s not a lonely journey. And it can be refreshing, welcoming and fun.

Here are a couple poems I wrote during two of our field explorations: one on a winter hike in the Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area, another in late spring on a suburban farm.

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A nurse log bearing false turkey tail mushrooms.

On Our Way (Retreat House Trail)

The cold lake is capped with a blue winter haze

as we kneel in the leaves, uncovering

the purple-lipped leaves of crane fly orchids,

spring ephemerals emerging before the canopy fills in,

claiming the short bursts of sunlight

to spur their early-season growth.

One member of our walking tour,

a wise woman with a kind, eager smile,

tells us of the days when she would sit

on the front porch of the nearby

retreat house and look out over the lake,

now shrouded with oaks, pines and hickories. 

Each of us hikers are bearers of a story

like this one, on our way to revisiting it anew.

One of our guides preaches the wonders of beavers,

pointing out the gnawed, scrawny stumps

scattered along the banks of the lake.

We weave between drab gray pockets

of pluton granite on a switchback trail,

hearing of the coveted gland secretions

once used to flavor food and scent perfume,

the coveting of which pushed the industrious,

semi-aquatic rodent to the brink of extinction.

The other guide beckons us into a circle around

a towering, textured pine. Bright orange mushroom caps

cling to the trunk like domed stairs, ascending its bark. 

These are merely the fungi’s fruiting bodies,

an indicator of a network stretching

far into the tree and the forest floor below.

Earth is a closed system, he reminds us.

Everything in its current form will become something else,

brandishing brilliant color and strong aroma

on our way from there to here.

Rainfall across a moss-capped monadnock.

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Spring-growth comfrey.

Rejuvenated (Awali Farm)

A poem for today:

on this homestead called Awali,

with hissing breath

and swollen chest,

long, tired arms

stretching to the sky.

We learn clever illustrations

of dock roots and the subconscious,

of tree skeletons conducting electricity,

become aware of the many ways

we are fenced into ourselves.

But sometimes a circle of

fellow, curious explorers—

regular people who are anything

but ordinary—find ways to express to each other

how they want to see, to be, how

they are making a home

in a bold, beautiful, fragile world, sparked by

the memory of brewing tea with a parent

or an old man growing vegetables in a crowded city.

Today we are taking a step

toward balance, box breathing,

elderberries and asking more questions.

Toward recognizing how our places

inhabit us, just as we live within them.

Awali means “the source,”

the life blood, the origin,

the sustainer, the spring.

If it’s preferable to be entirely self-sufficient,

how come I am so rejuvenated

in this deep green space we share?

As I listen and relate, my pores open,

my vision is expanded like the stomata

on the underside of a leaf, my face

is brightened like the fruit trees in the clearing,

illuminated by the unfiltered southern sky.

Discussing banana leaves composting and local food systems.