For myself, I don’t like to focus on ‘goals’. Goals are evaluated in a fairly binary met or not met. I like to think in terms of quests or journeys or explorations. And, I might have a strong desire for X to happen but I have learned that I need to be really flexible with those desires. If I hold too tightly to them, I can get really downhearted if they just aren’t happening. (And things like pandemics, personal health, house remodels, weather, etc can really impact wishes and dreams!).
That said, here’s what I’m excited about possibly happening in 2025.
ONE
I have a park near me that is part multi-use mowed and part lakeshore, allowed to go wild. There is a group (led mostly by one person) that is trying hard to advocate for proper management of the lake and park. Since it’s so close to me, I have made many observations in this park and those, along with all the other observations made by others, have been of benefit to this advocacy. Recently, patches of native wildflowers have been planted and last summer I was finding tons of insects on them. I want to make it a personal project to try to regularly document how many and what kind of species I can find interacting with these wildflowers throughout the growing season. I’m hoping it can help with stewardship efforts going forward.
TWO
I am always looking for opportunities to either find a new life form (for me) or find a new place to look for life forms. I learned about turning over rocks and logs. I watched a plate monitoring for zebra mussels pulled out of a lake and found my first bryozoan colony. I started looking at the underside of leaves for insects, cocoons, or eggs. I attended a event for mothing sheets and UV lights for fungi. I attended another for aquatic invertebrates. On a cold, winter day, I got out for a walk and happened to look at the top of an old stump and found a snail shell nestled in a crook. That got me looking at every tree stump in the area. I experimented with using a inexpensive handheld microscope to look for tardigrades and found them! I can’t wait to get other things to examine with the microscope. Someone here mentioned looking in leaf litter and I can’t wait for things to thaw out enough for me to go digging in ours.
I really want to figure out the new frontiers around me that have been, up till now, overlooked by me. I’d really like to find ways to explore the plethora of water I have near me (lakes, lakes, and more lakes, a creek, and three rivers within a half hour of me). Compromised agility makes that hard to navigate but I haven’t given up hope for opportunities.
THREE
Just aggressively take advantage of the best nature travel months. In Minnesota, we hope for good travel weather in May, June, Sept, and Oct. If we’re lucky we get it in April or Nov. But it can snow on May Day and we were hitting 80 in Oct last year. For the past few years, the weather has been really volatile and it does affect our enjoyment of being out in nature. Deep snow that lingers till late spring, or high temps and dew points, persistent wind, wildfire smoke, droughts, floods - those are all things we’ve experience in the last 4-5 years.
That just means that we can’t sleep on a few weeks of good weather! Circumstances kept us from traveling (other than a few overnights) last fall. My husband and I are both aging and we can’t foresee how long our eyesight and health will hold out allowing us to travel. Neither of us is comfortable with driving at night now. It may seem a bit trivial to put this on my list but it is way too easy to just let days blithely pass us by and we can’t afford to.
FOUR
And finally, I want to get more mindful of making annotations and filling out observation fields for my observations. If I am making the observation, how much more work is it to note some of this stuff? I’m looking forward to the upcoming zoom meeting for plant annotations.
I’ve been thinking about ‘legacy’. What does that mean? How does it play out? I don’t have grandkids so when my kids are gone, my line is gone. And what impact might my life have made that could linger, even if not attached to me by name. I have made impacts in my life and they have been ripples in the water. But it occurred to me that my contributions here at iNat could have meaningful lasting impacts. Both on their own and in concert with all the contributions made by other folk. We’re collecting some pretty cool data and I have faith that it will prove useful in ways yet to be realized. I’m happy in nature. I’m happy documenting my time in nature by making observations. And I’m happy that my observations can be of use to someone. That might be some of the most tangible legacy I could leave.
