"Green I Love You Green"

Poetry and the endless, elegant cycle of nature

by Nalini Nadkarni

My work in this world is to understand forests through the approach of science. “Science” comes from the Latin scio: “to know as thoroughly as possible.” When I visit my forest field sites in Costa Rica, I don mountain-climbing gear to ascend tall trees to study the rarely seen plants and animals that live high in the forest canopy. I then design experiments, gather data, and report quantitative findings to my scientific peers.

However, with the increasing environmental threats of human activities on forests—such as harvesting, fragmentation, and climate change—the definition of science must also include dissemination of information and extending a sense of mindfulness about trees to non-scientists. This communication must particularly include those who are unaware or only dimly aware of the importance of trees and nature, i.e., people who rarely visit a botanical garden or watch a nature documentary. To many of those people, the language and style of scientific communication are rarely compelling. What other vocabularies might scientists use to engage the public with the importance of nature and the enterprise of science?

“Poetry is prayer and good medicine,” wrote a colleague of mine, Craig Carlson, when I asked for input on a book I was writing about the relationships between trees and humans. He was right....

 Continue reading this essay in the July/August 2010 issue of Poetry.