Science of Seeing
Essays on Nature from Zygote Quarterly
Welcome to the first in a series of books that showcases writings from Zygote Quarterly magazine. Science of Seeing collects firsthand reports from the field by ZQ columnist Adelheid Fischer. Whether tromping across the slopes of the Mount St. Helens volcano, bending into a listening crouch in the night-time desert, or peering into an ephemeral pool, Fischer compounds our awe for the natural world and deepens our admiration for the men and women who study it.
Science of Seeing
Essays on Nature from Zygote Quarterly
“Adelheid Fischer dives into wildernesses large and small to show us the twinned lives of organisms and the researchers patient enough to study them in the field. Hers is a reverential, yet practical reportage that offers solace for the modern heart and a rare hope: If these organisms can live so competently in their places, perhaps we can too. Once you meet the stars of these essays—outrageously tactile moles, volcano-healing spiders, old-growth forests that hide in plain sight, and deserts that sparkle at dawn—you’ll never watch nor see the natural world in the same way again.
Adelheid’s singular voice will make you feel you have stumbled upon a memento box filled with thank you notes for all the natural world has given her. Welcome to the poetry of gratitude.“
by Adelheid Fischer
—Janine Benyus, from the foreword to Science of Seeing
An Excerpt from Science of Seeing
The Utility of Awe
Early one morning this past summer I woke to the eastern horizon banked high with blue-gray clouds. They doused everything with a dull ashen light, draining colors and flattening textures so that the desert mountain behind my house took on the pewter tones of a landscape photograph from the 19th century. I pulled a camp chair down into a low point in the garden where I usually sip my first cup of coffee among totems of saguaro cactus and the wild-flung stems of creosote bush. The day opened soft and cool, more like Seattle than blistering Phoenix.
Just as I leaned back to savor the unexpected reprieve from the heat, the sun slowly began to clear the cloud wall behind me. As if on a dimmer switch, the light brightened by degrees, a glow spreading to the crowns of the cactus and then widening until it spotlighted the ridges a quarter-mile distant. Many plants in the desert reflect sunlight as a way of dodging the intensity of its focus. They bristle with translucent spines. Some encapsulate seeds in miniature balls of plush white hairs. Others buff their surfaces with a layer of wax or resin. The strike of light on each needle, each leaf, each pod can sometimes cause the place to spangle, as if the plants were hung with chips of polished glass. I was stunned. I had expected an ordinary day, a routine cup of morning coffee. Instead, I suddenly found myself far from a familiar shore, swimming in a spilled cargo of winking stars.