“more and more one finds one likes

any other species better than one’s own

which has gone amok, making one self-estranged,

when one has lived a long time alone.”

Galway Kinnell “When One has Lived a Long Time Alone“

It was dark by the time the storm cleared and my flight home climbed above Dallas, Texas. From 30,000 feet the lights on the ground seemed to stretch out to the far reaches of the earth, or at least to Houston, where the last 5 Attwater’s prairie chicken hens may or may not still be clucking around. It had been less than 12 days since leaving Indiana and there, climbing out DFW, I knew it would be difficult to look at my home the same way.

The first night in Belize we visited the zoo to observe nocturnal behaviors. Crocodile eyes appeared and disappeared. Gibnust rustled through the cohune palm litter. An oceolot appeared from the darkness to take a treat from the keeper with incredible speed and chattered his approval. It was a fascinating experience, but when I think of that night, I think mostly of the drive back to the TEC. Just a few short miles, at most, but there was not a single light. Not even an orange glow of distant lights.

The next morning, and every morning after, I drank coffee on the deck overlooking the shallow pond. My classmates spotted a crocodile and a boat billed heron. More birds than I could count or name occupied the space with me. I tried to name at least one each day but there were so many I never knew for sure if I was getting it right. I thought of an article I read about the disappearance of birds in North America and tried to burn their image into my mind.

By midweek, we were bound for Dangriga where we would catch a boat to Tobacco Caye. If the birds of the TEC were a dizzying display of biodiversity, the life of the reef was even more so. The last night there storms left the sea with swells and whitecaps. We needed one last count of rays and being a forty something Midwesterner, it took a certain amount of self-encouragement to put my fins on. I’m so thankful for that moment. The rays, the tarpon, the million fish I couldn’t name- it was a defining moment of the trip for me.

However, being an early riser and woodsman, my mind most often returns Runaway Creek. The transitions from habitat to habitat, the jaguar tracks in the presence of a 1200 year old petroglyph of jaguar, the crocodile cave, and again the birds, all made Runaway Creek an overwhelming experience in biodiversity. That it was so incredibly foreign yet so familiar is a sensation that I had never experienced and to this day I don’t know what to attribute it to.

Forty eight hours later I would be drinking coffee with my father on his deck, looking out over a landscape that did not have a single inch untouched by human interference. I thought about how there were parrots in Indiana not that long ago, how I hadn’t seen a badger or flying squirrel in three decades. The fishing shack off of Swallow Caye in the shadow of the cranes building the new cruise ship port, the bulldozers and backhoes preparing to pave the costal road, and the look in Peter’s eyes when he pointed to the sugar cane field where his favorite tree had once stood all came rushing back to me. Belize may be a century behind Indiana in development, but I thought about the Cahokia civilization collapsing possibly from the same drought that did in the Maya. A century is nothing in terms of civilization, to say nothing of geological time. The anguish I felt looking down on the lights of Texas took root for some time.

Then classes started again. I got to see the amazing ambitions of my classmates’ IAP projects. I met new classmates through Conservation Science and Community who were doing remarkable things through AIP and sharing the stories of their communities. I’ve come back from Belize knowing that our work is not only urgent and justified, but righteous. I’m thankful to be a small part of it.