Synthesis and Curiosity

These are my words of the year for 2025.

I have a lot of current upheaval in my personal life, and I really rely on time spent in nature to keep me grounded and balanced. This is not a unique experience, but I am trying to make it a unique experience for me.

I am a science guy. I like peer-reviewed studies. I like proving myself wrong. I like seeing a problem and figuring out a solution. I like learning from science-led experts. Again, nothing groundbreaking here, but stay with me.

I have a real tendency to do a solid deep dive on a subject without retaining more than the basic details. Part of me doesn't mind, because even some basic details are better than what I would get some playing video games with my time, but I also realize that I need to do better.

And to do better, I am focusing on being curious. Curious about my environment, my own knowledge and where it came from, about the best ways to learn, and the best ways to do something with that knowledge.

And what would I like to do with it? Synthesize it. Synthesize sounds like a bad 90s buzzword, and I think it just might be one, but it's also an important concept. Synthesizing is what you do when you take multiple things and combine them into something else.

In my case, I'm starting with what my grandmother taught me, what I have read in books, what I have experienced on my own, the lessons from folks much smarter than me, my observations of the world, and formal education, and then I am taking all that information and putting it into practice:

• Documenting and witnessing my local biodiversity and changes to it.

• Teaching others about the living world around them.

• Enjoying foraging wild foods and using or preserving them.

• Developing relationships with mentors and teachers.

• Participating in citizen science projects.

• Finding more ways to combat invasive species spread.

I have no idea if I will ever share this website with people. I have no idea if I am going to say anything important. I have no idea where I will be in 6 months, because life is short and takes twists and turns when we least suspect it, but I do know that I will be picking berries this summer, removing invasive species from my own property, and guarding my secret Oyster tree.

The last bit is only half true. If you want to know where my secret Oyster tree is, just ask!