I am a scientist, in love with the natural world. As I walk around Lake Ginninderra on late Sunday afternoons here in Canberra, I love watching the pugnacious antics of magpies, the animated scurrying of fairywrens. My heart expands and I can't stop smiling.
I have long felt such a kindred connection. On days like these, I feel wonder and joy at being here to witness the symphony of the living world. As a musician, I think only through music can I really express that wonder and joy. As a scientist, I express my love through looking closely, observing details, endeavoring to connect one dot to the next. The evolution of life, the process of evolving, is magnificent and, in my humble opinion, the most amazing natural phenomenon. To some it might eclipse the omnipotence of a higher power, to others it could be proof of such. What can happen over deep time is marvelous, too much to fully comprehend, and yet it is amazing to me that it is also traceable in the runes of our genomes -- the wending and tumultuous river of life.
I seek to trace that history by becoming a scribe of the symphony of life -- reading the notes that come alive. That evolve over time, one nucleotide at a time. The diversity of life is staggeringly beautiful. I want to know how it came about. I observe the signs in the genomes of organisms that provide clues about the process of life unfolding, evolving, diverging, adapting.
My research is made possible by natural history collections. One might ask, if I really love nature how could I even contemplate humanely collecting specimens, even in the name of science?
But, I do see it differently -- it can be done in an ethical way that gratefully acknowledges and honors the existence of the organisms we are studying. I have been preparing museum specimens since my undergraduate days, and one of the things I particularly feel called to do is to always be looking for birds that have died, having been hit by cars, flown into windows, or the like. I've broken through ice on a pond in Ithaca, NY to retrieve a Canada Goose that had died in the middle of it. I've slammed on the brakes to pick up a dead Barred Owl that I saw on the side of route 89 on Christmas Eve. The cars whizzing past no doubt wondered what I was doing, running in the snow along the highway with a grocery bag. In summer I've been walking along Harwood Avenue in Littleton and looked down to see a perfect Hermit Thrush lying dead. I carried it, ever so gently, back to our house, and brought it to the Museum of Comparative Zoology to prepare it the next day.
The other day, I came upon a female Spotted Pardalote, who had likely struck a window on the University of Canberra campus. Each and every individual matters for science. As humans, we can't see far into the future (how could we, when our individual futures span but a century or less?) but it is our job to try to imagine or at least make space for the things we can't predict or comprehend in our lifetime. To look beyond. Natural history collections make that possible. And it is possible to have natural history collections that responsibly, reverently catalogue the diversity of life and preserve precious samples that will be used far into the future. I believe the human endeavor to reveal the inner workings of the natural world will indeed continue for as long as we inhabit this earth.
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