By Henry Lappen
One day last summer, I watched something small and brown fall to the ground. Not sure if I was seeing a leaf or a moth, I knelt to have a closer look. Sure enough, it was a moth—one so perfectly adapted in size and color and in its flying behavior as to imitate a dead leaflet from a honey locust or some such tree. I’m sure it must fool many a predator, whether dragonfly or phoebe, and continue to survive and propagate its species.
By David Spector
As I walk down my wooded driveway at this time of year I often get a strong whiff of grape, a smell very much like that of grape jelly or grape juice. Wild grape vines climb many trees along forest edges in western Massachusetts, and the grapes not eaten in the fall release their odor when damaged by freezing in the winter.
By Lawrence J. Winship
Even in our modern, instant-messaging, planned-obsolescence culture, something about really old trees still captures our imagination. If that tree could talk, we wonder, what might it tell us?
By Michael Dover
Last month I had the privilege of hearing all the Hitchcock Center’s educators talk about their work. They spoke about getting children outside, helping them see the natural world that is right around them— sometimes on their own school grounds, sometimes on local field trips. Instead of reading about the frog’s life cycle, kids see frogs develop in a stream. Instead of watching a video about pond life, they dip a net into a real-life pond and see what comes up.
By Micky McKinley
I stood before a classroom of eager fifth graders as I began teaching a group of classes called Energy Investigations. “How come the lights go on?” I asked them. They responded: “Wires.” “The switch.” Someone came close: “Something to do with a power plant.” As the discussion progressed I was reminded again that most fifth graders don’t know where our energy comes from.
By Michael Dover
Thanksgiving has come and gone yet again. The old English harvest festival, which morphed into a celebration of the first New England colony’s survival, later became our first true secular holiday, enshrined by presidential proclamations and eventual federal law. These days a skeptic might be forgiven for failing to see much thanks-giving among the shopping frenzy and football mania that seem to dominate the weekend. And there are those who question celebrating the beginning of the end of Native American sovereignty over their land.
By Elizabeth Farnsworth
The Pioneer Valley is an exhilarating place to be these days, rich in restaurants, eclectic music, boutiques and art museums. But if you think the Five College corridor is a happening place now, you obviously weren’t around during some of its most thrilling times— about 200 million years ago. Really, there was never a dull moment back then, when volcanoes and lava flows were reshaping the earth that now lies under our feet.
By Annie Woodhull
Bees are very small, but they have an enormous effect on the world as we know it. One third of the world’s agricultural production relies on bees. Yet bees have declined precipitously— 60 percent since 1950. This has huge implications for humankind.
By Ted Watt
When I was a kid growing up in the suburbs in Connecticut, the air on weekends in October would be thick with the acrid gray smoke of burning leaves. It was just a part of our world. Leaves were a nuisance, something to be gotten rid of so the green “perfect” lawns wouldn’t look littered. I never liked the smell.
By David Spector
One September day I looked out the window and saw a gray fox walking through my yard, pouncing on the grasshoppers and crickets that it startled. Among the benefits of my infrequent lawn-mowing is that the taller grass and more abundant wildflowers provide food for many interesting insects, including an abundant supply of crickets and grasshoppers. These, in turn, are food for a variety of other animals, including my visitor. As often happens, this observation led me to reflect on something larger: the so-called “balance of nature” and why I don’t find the concept useful.
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Hitchcock Center for the Environment
at Hampshire College
845 West Street | Amherst MA 01002 | 413.256.6006 | 413.253.2809 fax