There are many patterns in the natural world that have parallels in our human behavior. This blog will highlight some of them and aim to elucidate how we humans might benefit from observing these patterns and consciously replicating them. The patterns in the natural world have, after all, evolved over many millions of years — and there’s often a lot of wisdom in discovering what one can learn from one’s elders.
As an example, see if you recognize a pattern I saw one day while walking at Mountain View’s Shoreline Park.
Shoreline is a large open space park designed on the site of a former garbage dump located adjacent to the wetlands of south San Francisco Bay. The waters that once lapped against the Bay shore have now been converted into a semi-natural lake for windsurfers and paddle boats, while across the grass-covered mounds of garbage the Bay itself has been tamed into diked salt ponds. The landscape architects who sculpted this place have done a good enough job so that the area not only attracts daily joggers, rollerbladers and parents pushing strollers, but it also supports a fairly large population of shore birds — particularly Canadian geese.
These geese are big — at least 3 feet tall — and so fat and plump that it’s a clear testament to the affluence of our community here in Silicon Valley that they are not shot and brought home for dinner. Maybe the geese know that they would become people food in another place and so choose to stay — and multiply! — here in sunny California? Whatever their reasoning, the flock seems to be growing every year, and every spring I’ve come to enjoy watching the downy chicks paddling in a line after their mothers in the cement lined creeks that feed into the lake at Shoreline. The little fluff balls get bigger as the spring goes on, but it’s still easy to differentiate between the proud and strutting parents and the somewhat scruffy juveniles.
So one day in late spring as I was walking on a path between the lake and the grassy knolls, a large flock of adults — maybe 50 or 60 of them — were spread out all over the lawn area, sunning themselves on the grass. And them I looked to the right, near some trees and slightly behind a hillock. Totally separated from the others by about 50 yards, four or five large adults were standing watch over a bunched mass of maybe 30 or 40 juveniles. It was Goose Day Care!
The goslings were pecking at each other and the grass, while their “teachers” strutted around them. All of a sudden, about a third of the young ones separated out, herded by a few honks from one of the adults. She (of course, I assumed it was a “she”) nudged and cajoled them and waddled behind the batch of youngsters as they headed off towards the water. “Ah, a field trip!” I thought.
I looked back over at the lawn full of adults, sitting there unperturbed. Did the caretaker adults have that role permanently — or did they rotate this role, too, as geese supposedly do when trading the lead while flying in V-formation?
How ever the geese adopt these roles, it was clearly a familiar — and delightful — pattern.
— Debbie Mytels, January 9, 2015
An Eco-System of Ideas 