My Bible

I was reviewing notes from my stay on the island, and came upon a great quote from Doug McCauly, an EAP alum who came to the island with us as the fish expert.

“Nature is our living Bible—it holds the story of where we come from.”

I love this quote. It really sums up a lot of how I love and value nature. It is not only beautiful to behold, it also holds many secrets and knowledge about life. I have often tried to express this sentiment about my affinity for diving. To be in the ocean is to be in the womb of life on Earth. The amazing thing about the ocean and nature in general, is that it is so vast and still so largely mysterious. We’re probing the depths of space, but we are largely unaware of much our own world.

Monteverde is a vast and mysterious place, with so much unknown. I am in a hotspot of diversity and miracles of evolution and nature. There are questions in everything, and we are challenged to approach everything we do inquisitively. Some things we see every day here are hardly studied. At first I wondered how they could expect so many students coming through to study something unique—how could there possibly be so much unknown? But now I realize that biologists are barely scratching the surface, and will never be able to keep up with what nature has to offer. For every problem, nature has “designed” a solution or strategy from which we can learn.

Truly, nature is my Bible—I look to it to understand where I come from, and for guidance and meaning for where I am headed.