Essay
Sarah Wright.
It’s Phenology Friday, and my classroom is abuzz with kids mimicking bird calls or describing a first bloom they documented in their yard. Phenology is literally “the science of appearance,” and includes all sorts of observations that people have used for centuries to track seasonal changes. My only requirement of my fifth graders is that they record the date, location and species of anything they have observed. Some of them do just that, but many get so into it that they add elaborate drawings of flowers or borrow my field guides to learn more about the habitat of a particular bird. The goal is simple: slow down. Pay attention. And hopefully, feel connected to nature. Nina would have loved these kids.
I first got to know Nina Leopold Bradley through an extraordinary stroke of good luck, at a time when I really needed it. I was bumbling my way through graduate school, there partly because I wasn’t sure what else to do with my life. My advisor, a plant ecologist who was heavily involved in environmental advocacy, was editing a book about ecological change in Wisconsin. He wanted to include a chapter about the Leopold family’s phenology data. Nina was enthusiastic, but not up to writing the chapter by herself as she recovered from health challenges. My advisor asked if I would like to work with Nina on the chapter. Would I ever!
Nina shared her vast treasure troves of data with me, including thousands of data points on the first bloom of plants and return of migrating birds, spanning seven decades. She strolled with me to show me the places where she made her observations and logged her data. Nina explained that when her family first began recording phenological data, it was mostly for fun. When she returned to Baraboo in the 1970s, just down the road from the famous “Shack” where her father wrote A Sand County Almanac, she started keeping records again and gradually noticed something: many of the events were happening much earlier than in the 1940s. And so her data proved useful not only for verifying climate change but also for predicting its impact on life cycles. Would species that need each other stay in sync as some respond to warmer temperatures and others don’t? Most of the Leopold family’s data reflect first events of the spring, although there are some data on fall species. The last of something, Nina explained, is hard to document. You won’t know for days or weeks if what you saw was truly the last bloom or last bird to hang around before fall migration.
Our initial visits centered around the phenology data and the book chapter, but soon I was driving up to Baraboo just to see Nina. Whenever I visited, it seemed that I was just one of many people who relished Nina’s company. Visitors would pop in and out with regularity. I usually arrived late morning and left after lunch, as Nina retired for her afternoon nap. But one day she insisted that I stay and take a swim in the pond while she rested, assuring me, “You don’t need a suit here!”
Years later, my future husband began to tag along on my visits to Nina. When Nina declared, “I’m glad you’re a part of our gang!” it affirmed for me what I knew in my gut: This was a good guy. When we reminisce about our visits with her, he often says how he aspires to be as good a listener as Nina. She made everyone feel valued; when she asked your opinion, she meant it. Nina paid careful attention to people just as she did to the rhythms of nature.
Aaron and I visited Nina in April 2011 for lunch, as we often did. We had pruned the grapevines on a previous visit, and Aaron checked to see how they were doing. As usual, Nina took her nap after lunch, and we went for a walk around the prairie, expecting to see her as we returned. But her daughter, Trish, told us that she was still sleeping and hadn’t been feeling well.
At the time, I was student-teaching at East High School with a supervising teacher who had previously worked at Aldo Leopold Nature Center. I’ll never forget the dreary day in May when she gasped as she opened her email after class. She had received a message that Nina had passed away. My heart sank. I somehow managed to prepare for the next day’s lessons, and gathered my things to walk home. The day’s weather matched my desolation. I was grateful for the steady rain that blended with the tears streaming down my face.
Nina’s memorial was held on her birthday, Aug. 4, back in 2011, with the prairie in its full glory. I feel blessed to have been aware of just how precious my time with Nina was while I was living it, how lucky I was that my life cycle overlapped with hers. I still wonder, though, if it’s better not to know when it's the last chirp of crickets, the last squawk of cranes before they leave for winter, or the last time with a treasured friend? Would we enjoy it less? I’m not sure. What I am sure of is this: Nina may be gone, but I see her in the first trout lily each spring and hear her laughter in the noisy exultation of a flock of cedar waxwings tucking into a crabapple tree. And I feel her legacy in how my students are learning to pay attention to each other and their ecosystem. I truly believe, as Nina did, that this is the first step toward making the world a better place.
Sarah Wright teaches science and does phenology with her family in Fitchburg.
