Sudbury Valley TrusteesConservation, Collaboration, and Community since 1953

            Determined to have a close look at his first northern bog, a naturalist from Georgia waded into the beaver-flooded moat surrounding a buoyant mass of vegetation in search of a moth found only on pitcher plants. His name was Henning von Schmeling, and he had come to take part in Walden Biodiversity Day.

            This singular happening had begun the evening before, at Minuteman National Historical Park. We amateur naturalists watched fireflies flicker near the Old North Bridge as our leader, a professional, challenged us to rigorous observation. Instead of merely letting the silent yellow blips sooth us with recollected summer evenings, we timed intervals between flashes, referred to charts comparing the rhythms of various species, and watched as captured individuals were gently inspected, identified, and released.

            The next morning was our sun-brightened Fourth of July. In the daylight, birders and botanists had their turns—although general-in-chief Peter Alden remarked that plants were merely things one stepped on while trying to see birds. He was kidding.  He wanted his little army of biologists to find over two thousand different forms of visible life, and he needed every kind of organism larger than one millimeter to be counted, whether leafed or feathered. 

            To identify so many creatures, Peter and the Walden Woods Project had invited experts from far and wide, people who have made it their life's work to identify and study bugs, lichens, mushrooms, ferns, flowering plants—the spectrum of life. The purpose was to underscore the value of biodiversity and to salute the 80^th birthday of distinguished biologist Dr. Edward O. Wilson, the ant specialist whose writings on our human need for nature have made him a beloved force for conservation.

            Teams of naturalists spread out to habitats apt to contain healthy varieties of species. Mammal-trackers checked "track beds" they had prepared to capture footprints of the animals that had crossed them. Because wasps prefer places where it is easy to dig nests, wasp experts went where it was sandy. Others sought limestone outcroppings that support unusual plants. Henning von Schmeling headed for his bog.

            In his enthusiastic quest for pitcher plant moths, Mr. Von Schmeling exemplified the spirit of the event. He understood the geological and chemical foundations of the bog's habitat. His attention darted from one life-form to another. He carried a pack full of equipment plus a large object resembling a kite that turned out to be a caterpillar-catcher, to be held under foliage while you whacked to dislodge the caterpillars. 

            Once out on the floating sphagnum mat of the bog, the energetic scientist located pitcher plants, determined that pitcher plant moths were not present (no evidence of feeding activity), and lay down on his stomach on the moist, unstable carpet to photograph other carnivorous plants—two species of sundew—and orchids.

            At day's end, everyone gathered to compare notes. Although the species count will not be announced for several weeks, the real point of the event was expressed by Dr. Wilson, who said, "What matters in our souls is to see, in its fullness of life, a place that is uniquely yours." 

            This would apply to everyone anywhere in the world, but Dr. Wilson went on to emphasize the particular significance of eastern Massachusetts, not because it boasts better natural life than other places, but because we live among the locales that inspired the conservation movement, through the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. "I am made to love the pond and the meadow, as the wind is made to ripple the water," wrote Thoreau, for himself and for everyone whose spirit feeds on the sights and sounds of nature. By tabulating the diversity of life here in our back yards, Walden Biodiversity Day celebrated the wonderful array of life on Earth, and reminded us all of this precious, inexhaustible source of pleasure and meaning.