Within the realm of Science, there is a schism that the outside world does not see. It has to do with the distinction between experimental science and observational science. In the former, a water molecule may be isolated, fixed, and studied through a microscopic lens in the controlled setting of a sterile lab. Experiments are conducted, closely monitoring all variables, with blind tests and controls to check and recheck the findings.

In the observational science, the stream is its own experiment, the creatures that inhabit it a self-sustaining laboratory, their interconnectedness a lens that offers global understanding. What I wanted as a child—but had no words to express, no curriculum to pursue—was to be a naturalist.

For there are aspects of our world—our universe—that must simply be observed in their natural state to be fully understood. Darwin knew this. Galileo and Newton, too. Mendel, as well. Today we look back and refer to these men as early scientists, and yet their science consisted mostly of observation and documentation. They charted the weather, the heavens, the movement of objects; they dissected plants and animals and drew pictures of the underlying structures, mating them and grouping the progeny by dominant characteristics. What these early scientists inferred from their observations have become the "laws" of the universe that we now accept implicitly.

Some would argue that everything observable has already been charted, labeled, and named, that we have seen whatever there is to see, and therefore the observational branch of science has been rendered mostly obsolete. But that argument is false. Men once fervently believed that it was possible to fall off the edge of the world, that the sun rotated around the earth, and that our bodies were ruled by four flowing humors, and many of our current firmly held truths will be proven similarly false as scientific knowledge progresses. Haven't we recently lost a planet? (Alas, poor Pluto, I knew him well.)

In the field of marine biology alone, amazing, groundbreaking discoveries have been documented in just the past five years. In an age where we can communicate around the globe in an instant, we are still making discoveries that change our understanding of the ocean and its creatures. An octopus, caught on videotape, moves in a never-before-seen way, bunching up its mantle and "walking" along the ocean floor on two smoothly rolling tentacles that make him appear to a predator as nothing more than so much flotsam. A Colossal Squid—long suspected of growing to great proportions (previous evidence consisted only of huge sucker-scars found on the skins of sperm whales that bespoke of epic, deep-ocean battles)—was landed recently off the coast of New Zealand. As a specimen, it measured 33 feet in length and weighed 1,091 pounds.

During that first spring in the hollow, a mated pair of House Wrens built their nest in a birdfeeder on the exterior wall of the woodshed. Wrens are sociable birds; they like humans and often choose to nest in surprising places: mailboxes, old hats, the pocket of a scarecrow's vest. I sat nearby and watched this pair settle in. The male industriously piled a rough mound of sticks, the female followed, forming a tidy eggcup in the center and generally polishing the whole thing up. When their brood hatched, I became self-appointed second mother, dropping tiny drips of water into their gaping mouths on hot days when the real mother was away catching food. They changed from a bunch of sightless, hairless, beaks-on-sticks to a clutch of fuzzy chicks before my eyes. They knew me, I was sure of it, and I adored them. When they were inexplicably gone one morning, well before they could have fledged-fallen prey, no doubt, to one of the many black snakes who frequented my attic bedroom—I was as devastated and lost as the parents.

We left the House of Nature shortly after I turned 13, and began an era of seminomadic living as my mother and stepfather moved us away, then back again, then all around the county. There was the house being used to store hay and farm implements, located in the middle of an active tenant farm. There was the house located on the ninth fairway of the county golf course where stray golfers often "played through" my flowerbeds. There was the house with the neighbors who collected vast numbers of plastic yard animals, birds, and gnomes, and the house beside the Locust Grove Volunteer Fire Dept that turned out (when we tried to resell it) to have neither septic tank nor field. Where did all that wastewater go?

I graduated high school from the house with no septic tank and, examining my options for college, chose the more expensive state school with the better reputation and the strong marine science program—the path that I felt my love of all things nature compelled me to follow.

As it turned out, there are decisions that we make and decisions that are made for us, and it soon became evident that my fascination with nature did not translate into an aptitude for taking notes and tests in a lecture hall of 150 competitive biology majors. I struggled through Bio 101, then Zoology, and even Anatomy, but Botany proved to be my eight-o'clock-class downfall. Despite my love of the natural world, I knew I could not be a biology major with such abysmal grades. So I returned to my creative interests. I graduated as an art major (putting science aside) and worked as a functional potter for ten years. During this time, I married and had three children. My husband, an Army diver, encouraged me to get certified as a diver, which I did, and the limits of my natural world expanded yet again.

Taking your first underwater breath is a difficult joy to describe. But it is intense, and akin, I imagine, to being able to fly—there is a marvelous feeling of being not so far removed from the creatures who live in another element, who soar the heavens or swim the ocean's depths. It is another form of belonging.

When my husband left the Army, he took employment in the Caribbean at a marine biology study abroad program. There, my latent naturalist leanings returned; I sat in on marine biology lectures and joined dive trips whenever I could. I became fast friends with the marine-invertebrates instructor.

A few years later, the runaway train that is divorce hit my life. I returned to the place I had always called home (when it's a one-stoplight town, you really can go home again), children in-tow. I heard from my friend the marine-invertebrates professor who said he was starting his own study-abroad program in marine ecology. I was in need of a project and offered to help with the administrative aspects. Soon (not soon, exactly, but soon enough), we had birthed our very own institution for the study of tropical coral reefs. Within a year, we had a site and our very first class of three students.

So the girl who fed chipmunks in a hole beneath a dead mulberry tree, who made bird feeders out of every conceivable container, who caught newts by the dozen and set up her own temporary aquarium to study them, had become co-founder of an enterprise that would instruct others in understanding the natural world and its creatures—specifically, marine ones. It seemed fitting.

A fair amount of my life has been spent observing the workings of the natural world, deriving principles, then applying those principles to everything around me. Is it a contradiction in terms to say I have become a nature geek? The word "geek" usually conjures an image of pointed-eared Trekkies in Starship Enterprise uniforms holding up their split-fingered Vulcan greetings, or perhaps Bill Gates, his awkward body folded before a keyboard and screen, not someone peering into creeks and coral reefs. Could something as unpretentious—as unscientific—as a love for nature grant me admittance to the great Kingdom of Geek?

If today's scientist is a specialist (and he is), then a naturalist would be classified as a generalist. But make no mistake, the world needs generalists. Generalists link the many and varied facts of the specialists. They tie the world together by finding and highlighting the interconnections. Leonardo Da Vinci was a famous generalist; his fascinations extended to many kinds of creative thought: invention, art, science, innovation. He did not do only one thing, he did them all. My life has taken a repeating circular path: art, writing, science, art, writing, science. Today, I write fiction with themes of nature and the environment. I also manage enrollment for the marine ecology school, and I sculpt in clay when time allows.

The day we moved our bodies and our belongings to that long ago, back-to-nature existence, I became totally immersed in another world, a world that brought my soul into the equation, that felt more real to me than the world of school and peers and parents and grades. And just such an escape—to a glorious new world with its own language and rules, its own sights and sounds—is the foremost requirement for admission to a life lived in the Kingdom of Geek.

If you, too, have an obsessive love, perhaps of trivia, of music, of Star Trek, of computers, or even of nature, welcome. May you always find acceptance there. And may we all live long and prosper.

Contributor's Note
Mary Akers' work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bellevue Literary Review, Xavier Review, Brevity, The Fiddlehead, and other journals. She is a graduate of the Queens University of Charlotte MFA program in creative writing and a three-time returning Bread Loaf work-study scholar. She co-authored the non-fiction book Radical Gratitude and other life lessons learned in Siberia published by Allen & Unwin (Australia) and forthcoming from Simon & Schuster (UK) and DTK (Germany).