Memoirs of a Chiropterologist

Abstract

I caught lizards with my professor all morning, until the bright Aegean sun became too hot for them to be active. As my professor took measurements and recorded data of the lizards we had caught, I took a nap on the forest floor. My own level of activity that day was in synch with that of the lizards, just as it had been with that of the bats all summer long in Crete. This was a new, more specific type of connection with nature that I had never before realized until that moment, that summer. I was no longer working for the credits I would get the next fall for my internship, which had nothing to do with lizards. I had not even graduated, yet my environment major had already provided me with the means to go where I want, and do what I want in the world. As I lay there in the bed of pine needles on the forest floor of the island of Piperi, I for once in my life felt free of the need to hope or fear anything, confident that I had found my place in the world of science.