Surrounded by Names: A Naturalist's Journey
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- čas přidán 7. 09. 2024
- As a naturalist, I have spent my entire life studying and thinking about the names we use for plants and animals. It's been a long journey full of many unexpected struggles and triumphs. Here are a few of my insights.
Many of these ideas informed the writing of my book Language Making Nature (www.languagemakingnature.com), especially the idea of calling upon our experiences to create our own names in place of names we use without thinking.
I wonder if you think about plant and animal names as much as I do. What are your thoughts on this question?
If you enjoy these videos, please consider making a donation to help support this full-time effort, paypal.me/LukasGuides. There's no pressure and your feedback in the comment section below is equally welcome, more than anything else I appreciate this community of shared voices.
Last year, I started learning g the names of the plants around me, with the help of the community on iNaturalist. I've just started noticing patterns of plants around me- when they bloom, when they grow. I am surprised by how little I noticed the first year I lived here. Thank you for the reminder to not stop with the names.
I've only begun my apprenticeship, as you called it, but I hope to reach a point where I can know them so deeply, become less conscious of what I know.
Learning the names is a fabulous and richly rewarding journey. Do you do any nature journaling? It's an amazing tool for honing your focus and following your curiosity. Check out The Nature Journal Club group on Facebook for inspiration, ideas, and support. There are many incredible resources around nature journaling. Check out CZcams videos and books by John Muir Laws.
@@DavidLukas Beyond adding information to iNaturalist, I don't! Thank you for the tip on the facebook group. Great to have a place to start.
John Muir Laws is new to me as well. I'll look for his CZcams videos.
@@WhereintheworldisLeahJane You're opening Pandora's Box now. You'll have so much fun with these resources :)))
I love knowing the names of plants and animals because when I travel alone there are always friends there to greet me. Especially the plants. Wild and garden. When I see a new plant I try very hard to learn the name, then instead of a lovely object it becomes a lovely friend. Once in Switzerland on a mountain top I came across a bolder field covered in purple pansies only 2 inches tall. I was feeling lonely and missing home until then. I sat amongst them smiling from ear to ear and feeling quite at home. Thanks for reminding me David.
And thank you for reminding me too! I knew this was a big topic when I started making the video, but I completely forgot this perspective. What you describe has been my biggest joy in learning names over the years. I love the feeling of friendship and connectedness when I'm in a new or strange place and I run into a familiar plant or animal!
Increasingly enjoy your thoughtful, peaceful and beautiful footage you present. Thank you for this channel and sharing your experience.
I really appreciate your feedback. I'm still looking for ways to combine beautiful footage and stories. Comments like this remind me that I'm on the right path.
Even though my grandmother had not had the chance to go to school much, she had a personal way of being educated, and a lifelong thirst for learning. She often said that the word is creative. Perhaps by naming, we give life, in a way.Sometimes, naming perpetuates the memory, the awareness, beyond the moment when our eyes stop looking, and therefore, perhaps phylosophically, beyond the moment when reality stops ... But it is also true that we need to control. To name what we fear, what constitutes a threat, a danger. Naming can bring us closer, bind us, or divide us. Perhaps our need to know, to learn and to master, can sometimes be accompanied by a humble feeling of pure affection, communion, and there, at times, only love and beauty are sufficient. I feel that you love all these life forms enormously, not only with your brain but also with your heart. Thank you for sharing all that beauty , and your deep thoughts.
I'm so glad that you're thinking about and sharing similar experiences on your channel too. It's interesting to think about names on this level. What's most important I think, is that we spend time considering all the facets of naming that you describe. Both the pros and cons of how names help us love and fear and understand the world around us. It's a fascinating inquiry.
I’ve experienced that strange moment of bliss of just “being”. In a moment. Thank you for putting it into words and sharing your experience.
I love this perspective. I’ll approach my next outing a bit differently now.
You're already such a pro at this :)
I LOVED this! It's a topic I think of often. I was really interested to hear about the advanced state of connection you've achieved where the names can just drop away - it reminded me of descriptions I hear of monks who've meditated for 30 years! I really like how you presented this. There is no right and wrong, and our own personal experience of this changes over time as well. Lately I've enjoyed making up my own names for things (even when I actually know the name someone else has given it). I enjoyed reading everyone else's comments as well!
Thank you for your warm feedback on this video. This is a fascinating topic and it generated a lot of comments and conversation on The Nature Journal Club group on Facebook, which is a group you might enjoy. Making up your own names is a great exercise, and as I mentioned in the description this is the idea that motivated me to write my book Language Making Nature. And you're correct to point out that there's no right or wrong, we're all experimenting and helping each other understand the world.
Thank you so much David. I wonder if its too much trouble to put a name on screen for the birds and animals you have in your film clips. Coming from another country your bird/plant and wildlife is totally different to your and I for one would be interested in knowing what they are. Eg like the snake you showed in a recent clip..what was it, is it poisonous etc...as a naturalist that would be one way of imparting some of your vast knowledge to us. It doesnt have to be a school lesson but a brief dialogue would be great now and then...you could be the next David Attenborough..you have an awsome narrators voice, I could listen to you for hours. 🤗
I appreciate your kind words. And your suggestion is a good one that's come up before. I have spent my life interpreting and teaching about nature but it goes against the aesthetic of what I'm trying to create in these videos so this is a balance I have to figure out. At some point I may add bits of nature interpretation into the voiceover on these videos but I haven't gotten to that point yet. Adding the names onscreen might work, or maybe I could list them in the description?
@@DavidLukas just a name onscreen now and then would be appreciated. I mean if you are laying amongstvthe larkspur and already talking about them then nothing else is needed, but you showed a beautiful bird singing it had a bronze chest sorry cant remember which video it was David I usually watch several at a sitting, but it would have been good to be able to look it up..like when you showed Annas hummingbird (?) I found it fascinating to read more about it..except before I did that I kept trying to think if you had mentioned someone called Anna in the video and who she was🤭🤭🤭🤭 happy wandering....
@@jennyc5132 It's fun that you're engaging with the plants and animals and wanting to look them up. That's helpful feedback.
@@DavidLukas you're welcome David. BTW you really dont have to reply to every one of my comments. You must have so many and must spend hours replying to everyone. Just knowing you read them is enough....and I just cant help myself if I watch a video I have to comment or give feedback. Take care on your rambles..🦘🦘🦘🦘🦘
I used to intentionally not learn the names of plants and stars. I wanted to see them for themselves. Now that I have been getting into wild foraging, I want to be able to know what I have found. To my surprise, what I called elephant ear plant is actually called burdock. They will forever be elephant ear to me though 🌞
This process of learning names was for many, many years a source of struggle for me. Like you, I wanted to keep experiencing the plant or animal without a name getting in the way, and I also didn't necessarily want this constant voice in my head reciting names as I walked in nature. However, after decades of endlessly learning, practicing, and reciting these names this voice largely shut off and I can now walk for hours without the naming voice running in my head while still feeling connected and deeply familiar with every plant and animal I see.
“What’s in a name- that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet-So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, And for that name which is no part of thee Take all myself.” The giving and taking, reciprocity and finding, loss and reclamation. A name… what do we call the human need that is to be known by a name? As a person of transgender masculine experience I feel so at odds with the name given to me by my mother at birth- such a name for a “girl”. It conjures such a specific femininity that this body cannot find restitution with. Yet I cannot cast it aside for the mother that birthed me gave it as a gift and she carried me, just as her mothers did. There are Days where I long to shed it entirely and to be called being eternal, so that within that naming people may think on what the eternal is for them, that my name sits among the things they consider undying. But where name and cultural practice intersect, often dominance collides over desire and I am swept into “Ollie”. Learning the indigenous names of the plants that crept under my feet and plucked at my clothes was a pleasure unlike any other, a descriptive ongoing of ancestral discovery on California soil that I call my home. Yet the familiarity of an unnamed, purple flower carries with it a childlike captivation and belonging to the child mind’s world of being yet “unknown”.
Wow, you've put your finger on so many layers here. Names are such an awkward vessel and it's hard to know what to put in them.
You've got it down. Naming, the 'skin'; not naming, the 'essence'.
That is exactly right Nirvan. The name is a starting point so I guess it's a question of whether you stop at the skin or search for the essence.
🌹 p̷r̷o̷m̷o̷s̷m̷