Last Child In The Jungle

Chicago Illinois has little to nothing to offer from the “outdoor” perspective. Skyscrapers line the streets and grass and the occasional maple is the extent of my encounters with environmental diversity. Field trips consisted of museums and historical visits but never a location that had any sort of ecological significance. Our science experiments would consist of growing an herb garden or observing a potato spread roots but never the classification of plants or animals, maybe in the inner city the idea of our environmental involvement is so far reached that a lesson on the topic would prove to be unconscionable to students. As an adult student, I now believe that education based of a concept and lifestyle so far removed from those you are teaching would be ineffective and seem meaningless. It’s disheartening to admit but as an adolescent, my school system did not, so much as introduce the concept of “environment”. Advising children on how to recycle does not constitute an acceptable level of instruction on the topic.

It is only when I moved to Florida that my environmental studies transformed into lessons of; species protection and revival, climate change and non renewable resources, destruction of rainforests and other woodland based ecosystems, alternative renewable resources, water and air pollution as well as erosion and the detrimental effects of mining and drilling. I had moved into the most rural (I can not stress this point enough) area of Collier County where panthers and bears still owned the land and the term “jungle” described the view from my bedroom window. I was not only able to recognize plants and animals I was taught about in class the day before but I was able to analyze and utilize concepts about how these plants and animals fit into their immediate environment, their state, their nation and what importance this animal had to the world as a whole, to Mother Nature. It wasn’t until I began to live in the world with animals that I could understand why we should save them. Ill never forget seeing a dolphin leap in the ocean for the first time, never be able to erase the memory of a panther hunting deer, never let go of the fear I felt when listening to the rattle of a diamondback or let go of the excitement of swimming with a pod of manatees.

It is only now that I can have a true passion for nature, understand our minimal and frankly useless contribution to it as humans and wonder in the awe of other seemingly “tiny” creatures that supersede our value to the world in the most shocking of ways.