Reflection

It's often said that neuroscience and psychology are the expression of a brain studying itself. I fancy, then, that the field of ecology takes this self-study to fantastic scales -- from community, to landscape, to biosphere, as it were. Every scientist surely thinks of their field as the most intricate and fundamental, and yet I can't help but wonder: How lucky am I, to be engaged in a science that creates, in me, a small mirror for the Earth herself? To be a piece of the whole dedicated to the greatest act of self-reflection?

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When I was younger, I wanted to be an astronaut. My parents love to tell how, without fail, toddler Maggie would drop everything to stare at the opening credits of Star Trek: The Next Generation. My desire to go to space was aided by a natural proclivity for mathematics, and an eventual degree in the subject.

On applying to graduate schools, I wanted to join a field that used the mathematics I loved, rather than studying it directly. Naturally, I first gravitated towards planetary sciences and astrobiology. I thought to finally approach the skies. I spent workdays meant for programming FDA new drug applicant interfaces instead researching astrobiology programs.

But as I took my lunch breaks out by the honey locusts and lilypad-filled ponds near my office, I began to realize that I didn't want to spend all of my life behind a computer screen--just most of it. I didn't want to go to space; what I wanted was to be in space, to gain the vantage with which so few have been honored: To observe our home, in full. I wanted to experience Earthrise. I wanted to understand how this extraordinarily unlikely place came to be, and how it persists.  The only planet I wanted to study was our own.

And so, ecology.

I struggled to call myself an ecologist for a long time. I spent years feeling like an interposing mathematician who brought her computational skills to the real ecologists. It wasn't until I went to South Africa and engaged with savanna ecology directly that I realized I had always thought like an ecologist. I just needed time to build up a language and literature background to feel a part of ecological conversations.

As I look back on my childhood spent mucking around in the woods, foraging raspberries and spicebush, I wonder how I could have thought I'd be doing anything else.

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Is the production of conservationists and environmentalists, then, an act of planetary self-preservation? What of the myriad Indigenous ways of relating to our biotic and abiotic siblings, of connecting to the Earth with mutual respect? These ways of knowing go beyond study; they are action, intention. I like the term caretaker. Or perhaps, caregiver. Something in between the two -- someone who knows and sees, but also takes action to protect and nurture.

I don't know what exactly I'm getting at here. I suppose, in my life, I hope to be a caretaker/giver, a co-conspirator and conservationist. A piece of the Earth taking care of herself.