Stories about ravens and chickadees and wolves result in more responses in my inbox than others. The past few weeks — after one story about winter butterflies and another about raven talk — have been predictable in that way, but unpredictable in another.<\/p>\n
Two writers have sent me poems about those creatures. I read the poems without distraction. They made me think about how both poets and scientists are deep observers who interpret the world in different ways.<\/p>\n
“Genus Nymphalis,” by Eric Heyne, UAF English professor:<\/strong><\/p>\n “Don’t step on it!” my daughter warned<\/p>\n as we lugged in the grocery bags<\/p>\n from the garage. It looked like a leaf,<\/p>\n orange and brown, ragged-edge wings.<\/p>\n She brought it in for her “collection,”<\/p>\n until it moved, morphed into a pet.<\/p>\n Ignorant of the secret life of butterflies,<\/p>\n I had no idea they survived the cold<\/p>\n in Fairbanks; this winter-wakened<\/p>\n Compton Tortoiseshell (we googled it)<\/p>\n was as big a surprise as a yeti would have been.<\/p>\n It lapped up orange juice from my daughter’s<\/p>\n hand, flew around her room and returned<\/p>\n to that outstretched palm, emerging by day<\/p>\n and going back into the butterfly house<\/p>\n by night. A domesticated insect!<\/p>\n Even knowing the end was near did not<\/p>\n prevent the tears a few days later — not hers<\/p>\n but mine, ashamed to weep for a bug.<\/p>\n (from “Fish the Dead Water Hard,” published by Cirque Press)<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n “Voices of Ravens,” by Frank Keim, retired Alaska Bush schoolteacher<\/strong><\/p>\n Marshall, Alaska, December 1990<\/p>\n “Did you know that Ravens coo?<\/p>\n Well, they do, and they cackle too,”<\/p>\n I heard myself whisper, smiling,<\/p>\n as I straddled the trail with my skis,<\/p>\n arms akimbo on metal poles,<\/p>\n searching up through the broken nebula<\/p>\n of naked branches and blue dusk<\/p>\n for their confraternity of cackling voices,<\/p>\n muffled by wind soughing<\/p>\n in tall cottonwoods<\/p>\n and hard snow pelting wrinkled bark<\/p>\n and<\/p>\n my own furrowed face every now and then.<\/p>\n I was returning from the village spring<\/p>\n where I filled my bottles with sweetwater<\/p>\n and took a few moments<\/p>\n to just listen to these rowdy nighttime friends<\/p>\n and their raucous togetherness,<\/p>\n sounding now like<\/p>\n a jeering mob, or<\/p>\n the panic of a henhouse,<\/p>\n then<\/p>\n as the purr of kittens<\/p>\n or cooing of doves,<\/p>\n and<\/p>\n suddenly,<\/p>\n like solemn black staring silence itself.<\/p>\n • Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell ned.rozell@alaska.edu is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Both poets and scientists are deep observers who interpret the world in different ways. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":95487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":11,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4],"tags":[149,568,123],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-95486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home2","category-news","tag-outdoors","tag-column","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95486"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=95486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}