The crepe myrtles near the street did not get trimmed as I intended in February, thanks to my mind being on other things. Despite that oversight, the largest of the street-side trees/bushes display beautiful, bright red—almost cherry-red—flowers. Had the plants been trimmed, the volume and density of flowers would have been much greater, no doubt; but they are just fine, anyway. The damage to the forest around us, from the March tornado, will be with us for a long, long time. Eventually, though, the hundreds of fallen trees and broken branches will decay and join thousands upon thousands of pounds of leaf litter, becoming nutrient-rich soil to feed the forest flora. We have to give nature time to heal self-inflicted wounds.
+++
The tools of serenity can include a magnifying glass, microscope, digital camera, net, pooter, chloroform jar, and a mounting board with pins. Those would be tools of the serene lepidopterologist; a person whose intense studies of butterflies brings about an overwhelming sense of tranquility. A serene herpetologist, a person who studies turtles with the same ultimate outcome, might need similar tools as well as some specialty tools. A serene dendrologist, one in whom serenity accompanies the pursuit of knowledge about wood science, might require a microtome to cut very thin slices of wood for microscopic examination. But the single tool of serenity that is absolutely required in all of these endeavors and every other—no option—is intense, unwavering focus. That singular focus must be powerful enough to prevent the bombardment of unwanted and irrelevant information from sabotaging the peace those practices bring. Information about wildfires, terrorism, political assassinations, airplane crashes, child abuse, dependency on dangerous drugs, domestic violence, relationship failures, train crashes, fatal diseases, and a million other emotional or intellectual intrusions cannot be permitted to infect one’s thoughts or otherwise divert one’s exclusive focus. Even thoughts actively meant to eliminate those intrusions cannot be allowed, nor can serenity be the objective—serenity is the byproduct, not the target. Yet serenity may indeed be the purpose of meditation, for example. Focus. Intense focus. Pure concentration on…something…is the key. But, perhaps, not always. Maybe the routes to serenity are multi-fold. Serenity may be an amorphous idea that takes its shape from its context. In that case, everything I have claimed could be wrong…or incompletely right. My original point was that laser-like focus on a matter or subject of intense personal interest and pleasure may lead to serenity. Studying butterflies or turtles or woody plants, for example. Serenity, though, is unique to the individual. Those few who have achieved serenity, however brief, probably would confirm that fact.
+++
Relax. That’s worth a try.
It’s true. The close study of something — especially in nature — tends to bring a form of serenity. That’s partly why I photograph moths late at night and then do all of the identification and data storage the next day. As for all the stuff going on in the world, unless I go looking for it – which I admit to doing at times – I don’t really have to see what is going on. That said, most biologists that I know are extremely concerned about the environment, the effects of climate change, the impact on the organisms they study — so many are also activists and pay a lot of attention to anything pertaining to all of that. Many of us don’t collect specimens anymore — just very careful photos and measurements, geolocations, field notes, and sometimes do collect a small bit of tissue for identification using DNA – let’s say the leg off an insect, or a very tiny snippet of a frog’s toe or something like that. In fact, a lot of the DNA collection is now done with samples of water where a fish swam, etc.. The science of using DNA for identification instead of taking voucher specimens is pretty advanced now — and good thing as many populations of flora and fauna are under enough pressure as it is.
I hear you on the storm damage. Lots of that happening everywhere these days. We are just heading into hurricane season here on the east coast. Hopefully it won’t be a bad year but we have so many trees down across the province due to the past 2 summers of extreme weather events.