My partner coined the phrase “Finding the foreign in the familiar.” As naturalists, we seek to see. And too often on our daily beat, we speed past trees, animals, processes, and events. We take the familiar for granted. But in a new place, where the foreign reigns, we find everything new, engaging.
Evolutionarily this would have helped us survive. Within one’s home territory, if something were amiss, we would spot it and be alerted to an intruder, predator, or source of food. The challenge is to continue to see, observe, notice, the land around us even as it remains familiar.
But we are leaving our home territory. The place where the marcescent oak leaves still cling to twigs, their rocking indicating a slight breeze. We’re leaving the startling red of winterberry holly berries that never fail to catch my attention, though they linger all winter. We’re leaving the lake, newly frozen and holding its first dusting of snow.
So now the challenge shifts. In a place where everything is new, where the landscape, trees, birds and language will all be foreign, I’ll seek out the familiar. My brain will strive, unconsciously for the most part, to link my experiences to that which I already know.
As I embarked on a study of Spanish, I found strong connections with the French I studied for years. As I paged through the Birds of Ecuador field guide, I was accosted by the unfamiliar shapes and color; overwhelmed by wonder. But a closer look revealed familiarities; flycatchers, thrushes, warblers, and tanagers are all cousins of birds I can name from sight and sound. The general size of them, the shape of their beaks, and the way they alight on a branch are familiar to me.
So much as we travel will be foreign, but I anticipate with delight finding the small connections that knit this planet into its single, cohesive sphere.
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