Trail Notes by Sara N. '28
learning from nature
Summer in Alaska, I learned this July, is an exuberant, unrestrained triumph of nature. For just a few months, the landscape alters dramatically: the snow folds into itself & the green pushes out; fireweed lights valleys and mountaintops alike with a sharp, consuming pink and rivers grow heavy and silver with fish. The air is warmer, though not warm, and on brighter, bluer days, that perpetual mist wrapping around mountains dissipates slightly, its sheen broken through by sunlight. Despite never reaching the heavy heat of Kentucky summers, summer in Alaska feels more concentrated, more intense, though all of Alaska is like that – it demands full attention.
My summer at home, before and after Alaska, was mellow. Restful, if aimless. I re-read all the Newbery-winning books I loved in elementary school and worked my way through a beautiful collection of nature essays my neighbor gave me as a graduation present. I went on long morning walks and ate many large meals every day, and on most days, found time to nap on our staircase’s landing, one cheek pressed against the carpet, the other facing the sunlight.
Nearly twelve uninterrupted weeks of this, and then: MIT.
The month I’ve spent here thus far reminds me of the Alaska I saw in July. This school, too, feels extreme and intense and demands my full attention, something I fear I’m not always giving it. Some days, I stay up late enough to witness the sky begin to lighten, and I remember those equally persistent summer days in Alaska, where the sun would only begin to dip below the horizon near midnight and would be back up by 4. I walk through the Infinite Corridor and get that same giddy rush I felt in Alaska whenever my family would pull over into a scenic viewpoint, when we would get out and stand just the width of a road away from the base of a mountain and crane our heads upwards, our eyes tracing a pathway up until our line of sight would disappear into the skyline. Standing that close, I could never see the top. I remember that awe, that sense of disbelief, thinking just how incredible, how unlikely it is that I stand on the same ground as such giants, that both of us exert some force on this planet. It was – and MIT is – a rapid expansion of context, a humbling rescaling, this epiphanic realization that the world I am growing into is so much larger than anything I could have imagined.
The essay collection I started this summer and brought to MIT with me is called Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants and is written by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Kimmerer is a botanist and an author, and Braiding Sweetgrass is “an intertwining of science, spirit, and story.” It is a generous and warming collection, with each essay affirming the deep and time-honored relationship between humans and nature, but also serving as a reminder of the values that rest at the roots of the ecosystem we are all a part of: generosity, reciprocity, fundamental kindness towards ourselves and others.
One of my favorite ideas that I’ve come across in the collection is the rejection of the “recognized hierarchy of beings” common in the Western tradition, which places humans at the top and plants at the bottom. Instead, in indigenous knowledge, according to Kimmerer, humans are often referred to as “the younger brothers of Creation;” as one of the youngest species, we have much to learn from the world around us.
My friends and I joke that “there is no original experience,” but I truly believe this and think this goes even beyond the sort of universal experiences we have as a race; it also extends to other species, and I think it remains true on both the molecular and macroscopic level. I watched a biology lecture over the summer that explained that simple biotechnology problems – isolating certain molecules, cutting specific segments of DNA, etc. – faced in modern labs were solved by observing and adapting the behavior of primitive bacteria. This, I think, is the meaning of interconnectedness: every fundamental struggle, every ultimate question we face about the nature of things, has probably already been reckoned with by some species before us.
On our last day in Alaska, my family went on a guided three-mile hike within the Denali National Park and Preserve. It was easy and mild, more a nature walk than a hike. We were led by a wonderful ranger who pointed out all the little things we never even would have thought to look out for. I took notes: a running list of details, sentence fragments vaguely transcribing some of the stories our ranger told, and isolated scientific words and phrases I wanted to look into later.
What I saw that day:
1. The labrador tea plant, which is a small shrub with dark, shiny leaves with slightly fuzzy underneaths— Labrador tea leaves contain ledol, a toxin that causes cramps and paralysis, though when boiled, it is used to make herbal tea with medicinal properties. Our ranger said – and I have unfortunately not been able to corroborate this anywhere else on the Internet yet – that when boiled past a certain threshold, the labrador tea leaves once again become poisonous.
2. Many, many willow, birch, and dogwood trees, though the tallest were around three feet tall and the shortest were just a couple inches— Alpine dwarfism is a common adaptation within trees living in harsh arctic and subarctic environments; permafrost limits root growth and soil acidity limits nutrient availability, so for trees approaching the treeline, scaling down in size and growth is a fundamental requirement for survival.
3. Lichen, which grows like a copper-green crust upon rocks and trees— In one of her essays (“Umbilicaria: The Belly Button of the World”), Kimmerer writes that lichen “blur the definition of what it means to be an individual, as a lichen is not one being, but two: a fungus and and an alga.” The alga, being an autotroph, produces all the energy and the fungus collects minerals and maintains the moisture levels necessary for the alga to photosynthesize. Their symbiotic relationship is supported by a tightly intertwined architecture – fungal filaments wrap around and directly penetrate algal cells to deliver nutrients and siphon off sugar.
To study the lichen relationship, researchers attempted to recreate it in a lab setting. When conditions were ideal for both the fungus and the alga, they were surprised to see that nothing happened. Eventually, the experiments were neglected, and as a consequence, the resources within the petri dish started to diminish. It was only under this stressful environment that the fungus and the alga came together to become lichen.
4. A recently-deceased spruce tree with visible scarring from a beetle infestation— Spruce bark beetles are native to Alaskan forests, and have maintained a tensely balanced relationship with the forests they feed upon. In the summer, these beetles bore holes into the bark until they reach the phloem. Laying hundreds of eggs and releasing pheromones to invite others, the beetles push the tree to its capacity, gnawing through its phloem and cutting off its access to nutrients until the tree starves to death. Healthy trees have their own defense mechanisms – they are able to release bursts of sap that either flushes the beetles out or drowns them – so the victims of bark beetles are usually trees weakened either by age or disease.
This delicate, brutal balance has recently been disturbed by warming conditions. Summer now arrives earlier, and the beetles, dictated by simple biological instinct and nothing more, have now compressed their life cycles into half the original time. This means that summers now contain two attacks, and healthy trees weakened once by the first attack hardly have time to recover before the next.
Evidence of the beetle outbreak is obvious and unavoidable. As we drove across Alaska, we noticed huge swathes of forests discolored, the landscape stained with large masses of trees colored reddish-brown instead of the usual mint green. The dead trees stood like skeletal ghosts. Still standing, but in all ways that matter, gone.
“But it’s not their fault,” our ranger had said, regarding the spruce bark beetles and their changing biological cycles and the resulting massacre of trees. “They can’t help it.”
In a world where a simple existence of any kind is miraculous by definition, I sometimes wonder — what does it mean to be a human? We are, of course, one node in a vast, interconnected web, but there is also something that undeniably sets us apart.
There is an academic answer: a recent study found that the distinguishing feature of human intelligence is not our social reasoning or our ability to build and use tools, but is our ability to process and share vast amounts of information.
I think this is ultimately what makes us different from spruce bark beetles – we are ruled by more than just instinct.
Being human means we can read books and make art and learn from the world around us and become better people. The fact that we have greater agency and control over our actions and lives than most other species means that we are not only capable of change, but are designed for it.
This past month, this has become a sort of affirmation for me. On days when I feel overwhelmed by the change from Kentucky to MIT, I try to imitate nature. From the labrador tea plant, I am learning that the search for balance is ultimately a function of trial and error, and that the inherent nature of life is that I’m bound to get things wrong before I get them right. I am learning from the alpine dwarf trees, who know there is no shame in bending down and starting small if it’s necessary for survival, and who know that anything worth doing at all is worth doing poorly at first. And I am learning from the lichen, who know that hard times call for immeasurable kindness and partnership.
But being human means that I can also deviate if I choose to – unlike the lichen, I don’t necessarily want to discover the wonders of connection only when I’m at the precipice of catastrophe; I want to appreciate all that is around me, even while it is abundant. Especially while it’s abundant.
I am not always doing my best at all of these things, but I am trying, and I will get better.
One of my most fervent beliefs is that the most beautiful things in this world — gratitude, warmth, the kind of enthusiasm that gets you rambling — are abundant and overpowering, as long as we remember to intentionally and explicitly keep in touch with them.
Inevitably, there will be discomfort along the way. For me, coming to MIT is a little like a fishbowl being dumped into the ocean. It can be overwhelming and uncomfortable, but the discomfort is a symptom of growth, and is thus an ultimately positive process. The fish born in a fishbowl is inherently lucky to have ever even seen the ocean.
This is my goal for my college years: to be grateful when overwhelmed, and when comfortable, to be fueled by excitement rather than panic or urgency.
As one of my favorite bloggers wrote in 2012: “If I didn’t love the world and want to interact with it in a big way, I wouldn’t have come to MIT.” As the poet Jessica Abhugattas said in a poem I have loved recently (Eureka!), “Here in the heat / is where I need to be. This world is frightening; / I’m trying to enjoy it.” And as per one of my favorite lines from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: “This expedition has been the favourite dream of my early years.”
If I ever require a little more inspiration, the world around me is evidence of the fruits of discomfort. Our Earth has faced six mass extinctions; I am facing college.
I think about the Alaskan land at the cusp of summer. Great, vibrant things await it, and it hardly knows. Spring is the season of softness, so the land must be at its most vulnerable before it is at its prime. I imagine that first thaw, those first roots breaking through the ice, the discomfort the land must grow round with before it tips towards transformation. And then— the fireweed, the sunshine, the blue, the green. The transitory awkwardness is forgotten, and exuberance becomes second nature. At its core, how can my experience be any different from the land’s? We’re both part of the same story.
