Earth Explorations

Fellows and National Geographic staff toast This past weekend I returned to National Geographic to help mentor the next cohort of Grosvenor Teacher Fellows. A bittersweet experience, to be sure, since it marks the end of being part of the current cohort and the beginning of being a part of a previous cohort. But once a Fellow, always a Fellow. National Geographic is practically synonymous with exploration and in many ways is the impetus for this blog. Because of this blog and a couple of other explorer-y projects I am working on, I can honestly say that the close of this year does not feel like the end, but rather the timely transition to the next thing. I'm not being coy or mysterious when I say I don't know fully what the next thing will be but I suspect it will involve the following: Build the field of exploration education. Inspire and equip educators to first see themselves as explorers and then teach exploration. Spend time in the outdoors not just to recr...

The birds are arriving. I drove out to Farm Island on Sunday and saw a flock of meadowlarks, warblers by bird feeder and heard a red wing black bird, also by the bird feeder. I hiked all the way out the old Izaak Walton league cabin, 3 miles one way if you believe the trail map though I'm not sure I do. The birds were still not in full voice way out on the island. And there are still a lot of Canada geese left flying about town, probably because it is still cold and snowy further North. I should not be so impatient for spring. We need the moisture and an early spring can mean a dry summer. While hiking I saw a burl. I see a textured beauty in these burls. Burls are caused by a tree's response to some sort of injury or disease. Something to keep in mind about life. On the way back in to town I stopped at the greenhouse just to enjoy the sight and feel of growing things. Art, the owner, told me that it's only with their second and third shipments that they have e...

Daylight savings time started last Sunday. So not only are the days getting longer, it is getting dark much later thanks to our fiddling with the clock. Unfortunately, spring is slow to arrive here in Pierre. We've had several winter storms lately and when it is not storming the weather is raw and cloudy. We have had a few days of flirtatious sun but we can tell it's not ready to commit yet. We are due for another storm this coming Monday, I believe. But still. She approaches. I noticed that there was a bit of golden light left this evening when the clouds cleared so I zipped up and went for a walk around the neighborhood. The temps were in the upper 30's and with no wind it wasn't bad. The snow and ice had melted off the sidewalks, even the unshoveled ones, so the footing was sure. I heard multiple bird species: mourning doves, robins, finches. Such a difference from the winter silence when you maybe- maybe -hear the contentions of house sparrows on a sunny winte...

This past week I went to Sioux Falls for a few days to present at the Sioux Empire Water Festival. Doing these sorts of things is one of the favorite parts of my job. My presentation was How Hot Is Ice? This was an introduction - when you only have 20 minutes almost everything you do is an introduction - to the Arctic in general and sea ice and glaciers in particular. I showed them video and photos from my  expedition as a Grosvenor Teacher Fellow to Svalbard, Greenland and Iceland . I used to think no one but my nearest and dearest would ever want to see these but changed my mind after several conversations on social media where we talked about how the photos we saw as children from our teachers impacted us. And, indeed, when I was 10, I saw a photo from my 5th grade teacher's trip to Europe that made me realize the world was bigger than what I knew. That photo made a lasting impression. In my photos and video we looked at sea ice and glaciers, talking about how scien...

I've mentioned the Prairie Ecologist blog before. Chris's most recent post dedicated to his friend and inspiration hit me right in the emotional xiphoid process. I noticed immediately how Chris described his friend Ernie as an explorer of landscapes and philosophy who was "incessantly curious, thoughtful and kind". That description checks two big boxes on the NatGeo Learning Framework which describes the mindset of an explorer. In case you are wondering, those boxes would be the curious and responsible boxes. I also like the post because, well, clouds and sky. I've been nattering a lot about robins lately but clouds via  GLOBE observer app is one of my two other citizen science activities, iNaturalist being the third. During the winter we have lots of cirrus, stratus, and nimbostratus clouds around here. I am not-so-patiently awaiting the first cumulus cloud of spring which is a surer sign of warm weather than even robins. Cumulus clouds, the Rorschach fl...

International Women's Day is March 8th.   I love the resources I saw on social media this year that amplify the history and contribution of women to science , art , and literature . I almost felt a little overwhelmed. How could I get to know all these amazing stories of the women featured in the video above, or the  15 Trailblazing Women  or the first woman to set up a school in India Until these stories are part of the mainstream narrative-and you know they are part of the narrative when they show up in the K-12 curriculum-it is incumbent on us to seek them out and listen to them, learn from them.  We can't learn ALL the stories, unfortunately, as once we look outside the mainstream the options are numerous. But we can and should learn some. This is part of being an explorer. The first attribute of an explorer, the one that comes before all the others, is to be curious. If nothing else, our mindset should be "What's it like to be that person,...

As I left the SD Discovery Center last night after meeting with the GLOBE team, I saw AND heard a male robin. Yes! The reason for my exuberance is everyone else in my household has seen a robin; I was feeling behind. Not that first robin sighting is a competitive sport or anything, but I am quite eager for a sign of spring. He did a peek and tut call and then flew away with the low, skim the ground then arc up swoop. I watched him till I lost sight in the late winter dusk. Of course I immediately reported this sighting on Journey North when I got home. When I logged on FB there was another post proclaiming first robin heard. The robins will probably flock back up today with the high winds and snow we are having. But for a few brief hours last night they, and by extension I, were feeling the spring. Further happiness, I saw a Great Horned Owl sitting in a tree down the block and around the corner from my house. One of the household reports hearing it in the morning dark when ...

One of the ways I explore is through food. I am, as I have said earlier, a tentative food explorer . But when I compare myself to David Fairchild, who in the  early 1900's was a legit food explorer, I feel  positively meek. To be fair, David Fairchild literally traveled around the world on behalf of the USDA looking for new foods for America. My food exploration consists of buying and trying unfamiliar ingredients like coconut milk and nutritional yeast seasoning. Tame stuff, to be sure.  We modern day folk would be adrift without Fairchild's work since he helped us become aware of kale, avocado, mangoes plus much more. I mean, those are the key ingredients of a smoothie, if not a full salad. I learned about David Fairchild from this article from National Geographic. Not only does it introduce us to a fascinating character but it gives some pretty good advice on how to be an explorer. I have reprised it here. The words in parentheses are from the National Geograp...

I write in the About section of this journal that doing field research is not a requirement to be an explorer. However, if you want it to be - and who among us doesn't want to live that Walter Mitty fantasy of the intrepid scientist doing field research in an exotic locale - you can make it so through citizen science. GLOBE is my professional citizen science project while iNaturalist is my personal AND professional project. I also use Journey North for robins. As this journal develops, I anticipate that it will become a citizen science document through the power of tagging and search. 

Living as I do here in the northern plains, bird migrants from tropical areas don't show up until May, late April if conditions are good. There will be plenty of migrants moving through the Eastern side of the state in the next few weeks, mostly geese, ducks, and birds like robins but they won't be warblers and orioles. Here on the western most edge of the central flyway, we will have robins and a few geese this month. Weather plays a significant role in migration. I found this Weather Map Primer  resource from Journey North. Since it touches upon some of my favorite explorer topics- birds, maps, weather-I was excited to see it. I really like how the weather map reading is applied to birding. I am facilitating a monthly online professional development opportunity and March's topic is migrations. This resource will make it into the lesson. Also on that Weather Map Primer page I found a link to current global wind conditions which is not only interesting but visually ...