Future NS naturalists

To a naturalist, Halloween, a.k.a. Samhain in the ancient tradition, is a very special day and night in which the spirit world opens up a crack and lets you briefly inside. But today was special for another spiritual reason: I spent the morning with middle schoolers introducing them to the "spirit" of the natural world. I've been able to do this an increasing number of times, and it's always balm for a very weary soul, particularly in these pre-election times during which the air is poisoned by outright environmental lies, most of them repeated ad nauseum by the Taliban wing of the Republican Party and their oligarchical overlords. I'll stop there, save to say that moving to Canada is looking increasingly good. Today, however, was an antidote to all that. The kids were ingesting the many fascinating things we saw—this trio was looking at a Red-tailed Hawk in a distant tree—and dutifully entering their discoveries in natural history notebooks, which will, if they keep them current with observations, become grist for future discoveries. It's impossible to know, of course, what side they'll wind up on, but I'm trying to believe, even in these ultra-cynical days, that this exposure to wonder will stick and that the environmental future will be in at least an additional few good, sensitive, and caring hands.