Enjoyed a beautiful day today on a woodsy farm East of Columbus, after over two straight weeks of being tethered to the BioBus. I am in a really good mood these days because the tour has been an incredible success. Beyond the fact that we’re getting the royal treatment with Farber’s extreme over, we’ve also received another story in the press, this time from a reporter who visited us at Coventry High School in Akron on Thursday. So, it was nice to celebrate a bit by getting some R&R.
Most of the morning I spent in a meadow on the farm, the lows of cattle occasionally rising above the sound of a gentle breeze and patter of light rain. There was little time for daydreaming however – I spent my time under the tutelage of Donovan Farber, learning how to shoot a composite hunting bow. Donovan’s friend owns the farm, and it abuts an area of old forest, habitat to a number of animals, including deer, turkeys, and wild boar. I really enjoyed target practice with the bow – I haven’t practiced archery since I was 8 at summer camp. I didn’t do too badly, though I had to stop after a short while because my muscles gave up! Bows have gotten bigger since I was a kid.
The strongest feeling I had all day was drawing out an arrow embedded 8 inches into our foam practice target. For a split second, as I grasped the arrow shaft and it slid slowly from the styrofoam block, I envisioned kneeling above a freshly killed animal, bloodied, dying. The image itself, while disturbing, also fascinates me. Where would this come from? I have never hunted in my life, I certainly have never pulled an arrow from anything living (or dead - when I was 8 we used wood targets and the arrows never penetrated more than a half inch). Where would such a strong vision come from? Is it possible some evolutionary memory is embedded inside me from my hunter ancestors? Rationally, I guess it’s more likely I’ve just watched Lord of the Rings one too many times. But that flash, with a feeling somewhere between triumph and repulsion, is still with me hours later.
Donovan and I then forded a small stream and the trail up a hill, carrying a climbing stick and deer stand with us, as well as a number of containers and tubes for sample collection. We spent the afternoon erecting the climbing stick (a type of ladder for climbing trees) and attaching Donovan’s deer stand (a seat a hunter uses to sit in a tree). Donovan will return next weekend and spend 6 or more hours a day perched 15 or 20 feet up in the tree, silently waiting for deer to wander by on the nearby path. If he kills one, he will butcher it and use the meat for food over the winter months. While he hadn’t managed a kill last year, he says it is worth it just to sit in the woods for for long periods at a time, watching and listening.
After the stand was up, Donovan took a practice shot, and I collected some soil samples from the forest leaf litter. I am trying to figure out how to collect the slime mold Dictyostelium from the wild, after growing it from mail order with my intern Ryan all summer. It was getting late, so we headed back down the hill, collecting a few water samples and driving back to Columbus while the sun set orange and blue under late breaking rain clouds. On Monday, when I get back to the Farber shop and the BioBus, I’ll get to see what I found.
Speaking of the BioBus – you wouldn’t believe what it looks like right now! Friday morning, we removed almost everything from the interior, and by Friday afternoon the improvements were already visible. Check out the photos below, and keep checking this blog (http://blogs.biobus.org/) for our progress.
Thanks for reading, and please keep leaving your comments and sending me mail – I love hearing from you!
Ben
