Ecology scares me

This entry is part of my journal from Semester in the West. For all SITW journal entries, click here. For all SITW posts, including blog posts I wrote while on the program, click here. To learn more about the program, click here.

camp: Baker National Forest, Baker County, Oregon

Ecology scares me. It’s like seeing who’s pulling the strings, except when you peel back the curtain, you discover an intricate device, a perpetual motion machine and part of it’s been smashed by some careless old white man and now a bunch of people are trying to rebuild it to work but they don’t know what it’s supposed to look like except of one grainy photo from the 1930s that only shows half the machine and is a bit out of focus.

Sometimes, I forget why I care about ecosystems. When fixing them seems impossible, I convince myself they’re pretty, but we’ll be ok without them working perfectly like they did before. Sometimes I wonder if I could be right, but I know I’m not. Sometimes I wish I was.

I wish every position in the Forest Service was elected by salmon, wolves, beavers, cows, ranchers, aspen, hippies, mice, cougars, grasshoppers and bears. I wish the Secretary of the Interior was subject to review by a panel with more than one species on it.

I like science and cross sections. It’s nice to do real work and be outside instead of just complaining about the very real fact that the world’s going to hell.