I. Functional Fixedness meets Heuristics
It all begins with a box of tacks.
Enter the room of Honors students, the room of A+ ink, of duly met due dates, and hands ready to raise, all in a circle under their teacher's calm gaze.
"Leap, and the net will appear," says the teacher to the group who has learned to look before leaping.
Doctor Susan Tomlinson tells us about an experiment called "The Candle Problem." A group of people was given a box of tacks, a book of matches, and a candle. They were asked to mount the candle to the wall without allowing wax to drip on the table beneath it.
Box of tacks, box of tacks, box of tacks...
Nearly all of the participants tried to attach the candle directly to the wall with the tacks or by melting wax to use as an adhesive. Very few considered using the box as a candle holder, which would most efficiently solve the problem.
This is called "functional fixedness," a "cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used." The people saw a box of tacks, not a candle holder. It did not occur to them that the box could be used for any other purpose.
As Honors students, we were very used to functional fixedness. We were used to completing assignments exactly as directed. We're the ones who beg for specifics. We know that's the trick to getting an A--performing exactly the way the teacher wants us to perform.
This can lead to more focus on details like page length and format and less focus on creativity and critical thinking. Thus Dr. T gave us an assignment.
"Draw me a map of your day. Three maps, three days."
What kind of map? Do you want the whole day, or just a part of it? Do we draw what happened or where we went? How big should it be?
Nothing makes an Honors student nervous like an open-ended assignment. We asked question after question, and Dr. T calmly told us to be creative.
She introduced us to the word "heuristic," the idea of "enabling a person to discover or learn something for him/herself."
We were in for a ride.II. Tell me What You See
On the first day of class, after discussing the syllabus and introducing ourselves, we scattered across campus to the Honors College. We arrived by bike or by foot and waited outside the door to Dr. T's office to receive a pair of binoculars.
Most of us marveled at the distance and clarity of vision as we looked through the eye-pieces, never having used a pair of professional binoculars before. We gathered outside to be briefed on the workings, care, and focusing of these new tools. Choose a spot to focus on, such as one of the bricks of the Honors College building, focus one eye, then both together.
Off to Tech Terrace!
The first day of class was also our first day of birding. To our surprise, we learned that Tech Terrace was one of the best places for birding in Lubbock. The neighborhoods provide lots of trees and bushes, few predators, and relatively low levels of noise and activity.
So on we went through the alleys, traipsing cheerily with our binoculars around our necks. After a while, Dr. T told us some basic bird etiquette: because of the close placement of our eyes, birds see us as predators. When we raise our binoculars, the birds see a pair of huge predator eyes. They are very aware of our presence; tromping about as we were, there was no secret about our passage. But the birds would allow us to get relatively close to them as long as we did not make ourselves appear threatening. This meant soft voices and gradual movements. No dramatic gesticulations or shouts.
Strange, to think of myself as a predator.
"There's one," a student would say, pointing to a bird. We all gathered and Dr. T taught us to identify the location of birds with a clock system. There, see that big tree? If the center is 12 o' clock, the bird is in the branch at 3.
"Tell me what you see," said Dr. T. She could easily walk us along, point out a bird and say "That's a House Finch," but what would we learn? A House Finch? Oh, that's nice. What's that one? Then, later, when we're on our own, we might look at a bird, and hold our fieldguides uselessly at our sides, searching for someone to ask.
"Tell me what you see," said Dr. T "What color is it? What shape is its beak? Does it have spots on its feathers? Those are called field marks, and those are the clues that will help you identify a bird. Tell me what you see."
So we walked on, calling out birds, colors, speckles, and stripes. We saw House Finches, House Sparrows, little brown birds, our dear Grackles, a Blue Jay, Canada Geese, European Starlings gathering to roost for the night, and several doves: White-winged Doves, Inca Doves, and Mourning Doves.
To our surprise, we saw a gull. In Lubbock? Yes. Some gulls travel far inland. We left with the task of identifying the gull at home. We were to look in our fieldguides for a gull that was likely to be in this area.
And so we began learning to see.III. Becoming Mappists
We read a short story by Barry Lopez called "The Mappist." The story followed a man's search for an old map artist whose maps were more than tools for divining location. The maps were art, were deep, detailed representations of landscapes that approached the personality of the place.
We discussed the idea of maps. We went around the room describing the image that came to mind for each of us when we heard the word "map." For some it was a road atlas, for others a globe or a map of states.
What is a map?
"Maps are a language," said Dr. T "They tell a story."
A map could show us locations, could aid us in direction. A map could also show the progression of time in a place, the gradual erosion of land or layers of soil. A map could also be a song. A map could be the dancing of bees.
Dr. T passed around a book titled You Are Here by Katherine Harmon. This book features "Personal geographies and other maps of the imagination." Inside were maps of land and maps of all sorts of other things, such as stars or the human body.
These were the maps we were to emulate as we mapped our days. She was looking for creativity in our map assignment, for new ways of thinking of a map. As I've looked around at my life and the world, one of my favorite maps I've discovered is the map of rain. Rain shows me the slopes of the land, even the smallest ones, shows me curves that I never noticed when the ground was dry. I love the markings of the puddles.
This is a map I made for the assignment of a few dances performed by the Celtic Ensemble:
IV. Perfect Circles
Required materials for the course included an art kit. The art kit contained sketching pencils, an eraser, and a water color set. One sunny Wednesday, Dr. T took us outside to learn to use them.
We gathered in a circle in the grass of the English courtyard. Dr. T asked us to take out our art kits and began to tell us about each item they contained. She described the pencils, the hardness and softness of the graphite on the "HB" scale. She told us the water container would not leak, and could be used with the same water for a very long time. Then she gave us an assignment.
"Draw me a perfect circle."
A few students traced the lid of their water containers. "No, free hand. That doesn't count. I want a perfect circle, however long it takes."
So we set about the task, drawing, erasing, and redrawing again. Dr. T walked around the circle examining our work. When we thought we had it, we were to raise our hands and show it to her. As we drew, she taught us to turn the paper; this let us see how it was larger on one side than the other. It broadened our vision.
At last, we all had one. Now that we had all done that, she told us she knew we could draw. There was no reason to think we couldn't.
Next, we drew Bird, Dr. T's Styrofoam model of a bird. She placed him in the center of the circle and suggested we all situate ourselves so that we had a good side view of him, as that would be the easiest view to draw first.
After we all finished that, we began to do gesture drawings. Dr. T placed Bird in the center at different angles with his head tilted different ways and gave us a time limit for drawing him.
"When you draw a real bird, he isn't going to sit still for you," she told us.
The time limits grew shorter until Dr. T asked us to draw from memory. In order to do that, we had to look very closely at Bird before we began.
We then moved on to drawing the pigeons perched around the courtyard. We looked at them through our binoculars and struggled to etch them into paper. Pigeons are very fidgety creatures, constantly searching for predators. As I tried to draw them, I saw them more and more clearly. I noticed details I previously overlooked.
And so we continued learning to see.
V. Once Upon the Prairie...
To stand in a sea of grasses,
To breathe within a sigh as the wind passes,
To be within a sigh,
To see the eagle fly,
Feel the vastness of the sky,
Passing,
Passing in stillness.
To breathe within a sigh as the wind passes,
To be within a sigh,
To see the eagle fly,
Feel the vastness of the sky,
Passing,
Passing in stillness.
Dr. T took us to Lubbock Lake Landmark to hear the story of the prairie.
When the Europeans came to the prairie lands, they were at a loss for how to describe them. The word "prairie" comes from a French word that means "meadow." A vast meadow was the only thing they could think to compare it to.
The Comanche called the prairie "The Horizontal Yellow."
Lubbock is situated in a semi-arid climate and lies just west of the 100th meridian. The 100th meridian marks the place where the climate changes; west of the line, rainfall averages less than 20 inches per year. Trees and shrubs require more water to thrive, but grasses grow very well here. As you go from east to west, trees transition to grasses.
Lubbock's average rainfall is 18 inches per year. It is considered a mixed grass or short grass prairie.
There are some native trees west of the 100th meridian: cottonwood, hackberry, black walnut, desert willow, mesquite, and soapberry among them. However, most of the trees we see in and around Lubbock are non-native: elm, pecan trees, maple, red buds, poplars, and many more.
There was also once a permanent water source in Lubbock called The Yellowhouse Draw. It was the site of the longest human society in North America and the start of the Brazos River. The river's original name is "El Rio de los Brazos de Dios," the Arms of God River.
The prairie grew up with fire. In grasses, the apical meristem (the part of the plant where new growth occurs) is below the surface. Because of this, fire is good for grasslands; the grasses evolved with it. Some trees need fire for their life cycle, and some adapted as the grasses did.
The government wanted to settle prairie lands. In the 1800s, the Homestead Act was passed to allow people to cheaply claim large amounts of land provided that they 'improved' it. This meant building fences and houses, plowing fields, and working the land. A great number of native trees were cut down for firewood. Most of the settlers failed because they tried to cultivate farms that required more water than the region could provide. The few that were successful were usually ranches because the ecosystem could support grazing.
Non-native trees planted in abundance harmed the prairie because they blocked sunlight and competed for water. Because Lubbock doesn't have a lot of mountains to block wind, a lot of the original top soil was blown away when people plowed fields.
Now 89-99% of the tall grass prairie is gone, and only 1-39% of the short grass prairie remains.
There are people who strive to restore the prairie. The Conservation Reservation Program has planted grasses to stop wind erosion. Prescribed fire is also used to get rid of nonnative plants and restore the native ones that are adapted to fire.
After hearing all this, a class discussion ensued.
Dr. T asked how many of us were concerned about the prairie before we learned all of this. Few hands were raised. And now? All hands but one.
Why?
There is often the idea that people may not care about certain issues simply because they don't know about them. Yet we were all educated, and one of us still remained disinterested in the issue. Why?
It is easier for people to care about things like the rain forest because they are beautiful. National parks preserve land and are almost always beautiful.
"We learn to hate where we live sometimes," said Obed. This can certainly be seen in Lubbock; very few people have good things to say about Lubbock.
"Why would it concern someone that something was gone if they'd never seen it?" asked Dr. T. "How do we mourn things that are already gone?"
Lubbock is rarely thought of as beautiful, but it has a distinct personality with its great skies and dusty sunsets. The sunsets in Lubbock are particularly beautiful because of all the dust in the air.
Dr. T told us "When I think about the moment I die, in my mind's eye... I'm on the prairie. I love it, and I think it's ugly."
She is a llanera, a woman of the llano estacado.VI. Red Shirt Female
Burrowing owls live with prairie dogs in their burrows and are dependent on them.
Prairie dogs live in "towns," large areas pocked with holes. They are very sophisticated; they have various holes designated for certain uses. They can see colors, and when they identify predators, they have communication methods that allow them to describe the predator to other prairie dogs. When they see a human, they can identify whether it is male or female and what color shirt it is wearing.
Farmers don't like them because they create bumpy ground. Many prairie dogs have been exterminated because of this, and because they carry plague. However, humans are very unlikely to catch the disease. It is transmuted by flea bites. Deer also carry plague.
Now only 1% of the prairie dog population remains.VII. Lubbock Water
"If you live somewhere, you should know where your water comes from," Dr. T told us.
In a water treatment plant, water is treated mechanically (removal of solids), and then chemically (with chlorine).
Another reason prairie dogs were considered pests is because they were believed to have caused the soil in Lubbock farms to be too high in nitrites. This was actually because of sewage water.
"The water of the world is finite," Dr. T told us.
Lubbock employs water mining to sustain the population, drawing water from elsewhere. Without this, the city would be impossible to support.
Lubbock's water comes from Lake Meredith, whose water comes from the Canadian River, whose water comes from runoff from the Rocky Mountains.
There is only one natural lake in Texas--Caddo Lake. All the others are impoundments.
Lubbock produces 2 million gallons of sewage per day. Water use almost doubles in the summer because of the maintenance of lawns.
We live in the great state of You Are Not the Boss of Me. During a water crisis, they didn't want to tell people what to do, so they had a day of prayer. Watering lawns was actually banned a few years ago.
When citizens of Lubbock became water-wise, the city lost revenue, so the mayor said there was no crisis and they could water as much as they wanted.
Dr. T told us the concept of the American lawn actually came from the British estate.
The best thing to do in a semi-arid environment is to have a lawn that is well-suited to that environment.VIII. Bird in Peace
In a city, where is the best place to go birding?
A cemetery. Cemeteries are quiet and usually have plentiful trees. Birds love them.
So that is where we went. We met at the Lubbock Cemetery one cool Wednesday afternoon. We gathered on the grass before the mausoleum as Dr. T talked about death. As college students, we may not think of it often, but it always exists. This gave us some food for thought as we walked past rows and rows of graves, down "Warbler Alley," a line of mulberry trees, and eventually to Buddy Holly's grave.
Near the end of the class, Dr. T began pointing out the engravings on some of the tombstones. "When I die, I'm leaving a story," she said. We began to see the stones as little glimpses into people's lives. It was overwhelming to think about all of the lives, all of the love and laughter, fear and anger, all of the words and experiences lying underground all around us.
My strongest memory of the trip was the blue birds.
Blue birds have no blue pigment in their feathers. The blue comes from the way the light is reflected.
It amazes me how much of an impact light has.IX. Tumbleweed Shadows
The class took a day trip one Saturday morning to the Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge in hopes of catching the sandhill cranes before they left for the season.
We walked along "The Woods," a line of trees nearby, and learned to hear the difference between Western and Eastern Meadowlarks. The western meadowlark sounds more "flute-like." That clue didn't help me until I heard it. Now I can hear the song in my mind.
Dr. T told us birds have regional dialects. So when she played us a recorded example of each bird's song, she told us that in the field the song may not sound exactly the same.
We saw red cardinals and learned the females have red "lips." If they don't have those red lips, the bird may be a pyhrrhuloxta (I dare you to say that five times fast), which are not found in town.
We learned that a bird call is one note, and a bird song is multiple notes.
As we walked on, we encountered the occasional bench on the path--sometimes people sit for long periods of time so that the birds get used to them and come closer.
After a while, Dr. T sent us out in pairs to explore on our own. "Soak it in. Get a sense of where you are."
And so I walked with Laura and sat with her at a prairie crossroad. I lay on my back on the ground with my eyes closed, listening. Not even the wind here breathes as loudly as I do, I wrote in my journal.
Walking again, I met my very first tumbleweed. I've learned from adventures at Lubbock Lake Landmark that tumbleweeds are non-native Russian thistle and are a pest, but I was still excited. It was a beautiful tumbleweed, full and elegantly curved like a rain drop. I reached down and picked it up, holding it up in the sun.
"Laura, look!" I said. The tumbleweed made a gorgeous shadow, a delicate, twisting network of so many twigs and branches. I wished I had a camera, but did not, and so the image remains behind my eyes.
Near the end of our trip, we passed under a tree alive with the sound of bees, and beyond it saw a great horned owl.
That owl and that tumbleweed. I wish you could see them.X. The Great Sky Mountains
My family came from West Virginia, a place full of mountains. My mother likes to say "The mountains down here are the clouds in the sky."
Dr. T taught us that weather is not random. It has patterns.
We spent a day at Lubbock Lake Landmark learning to identify a cold front. We learned the names of the clouds, cumulus, cumulonimbus, and cirrus. We learned how bodies of air interact with each other, how temperatures and barometric pressure affect the wind, and when precipitation occurs.
"Go outside and tell me the weather story," Dr. T said.
And now every time I look up at the great sky mountains, I see a story flowing through the air around me.XI. Dig!
We met once again at Lubbock Lake Landmark, this time to plant trees. We sweated in the sun, driving shovels and pick axes into the ground, and after placing the tree, patting it back down. We left bits of ourselves in the hard Lubbock ground.
This is a poem I got from a friend. Since I have made a post about this previously, I'd like to share it now:
Digging
by Seamus Heaney
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
The Wednesday before we would attend the Lesser Prairie Chicken Festival found us at the Museum of Texas Tech University Natural Science Research Laboratory. We saw flesh-eating beetles, walked among long rows of cabinets full of skeletons and stuffed birds, passed mounted stuffed mammals with glass eyes.
We learned how the specimens are preserved. If a specimen is preserved correctly and kept correctly, it can last forever.
What I left the museum with was an unease, a sense that this was something to be thought about. My "place in the family of things," as Mary Oliver writes in her poem "Wild Geese."
Life, this unifying force... what differs in the energy that animates me and the energy that animated the bats floating in jars of alcohol?XIII. May I Have This Dance?
There is nothing like a prairie chicken's dance.
"It's humbling to think that while I'm out there living my life, these chickens are here, doing this. The world doesn't revolve around me," Dr. T said at breakfast afterward.
In the Darkness of the Lek
May I have this dance,
this ruffle and tussle,
this chuckle of life?
With every feather's rustle,
in all this frantic morning bustle,
how sincere and subtle my tilted head,
I'll show you what I am.
The orange of my cheeks,
the clucks from my beak,
with my every movement seek,
to step this dance of life.
I am made of wind and golden grass,
of eagle's eyes and times passed,
Tell me lady, now I ask,
will you have this dance with me?
XIV. An Afternoon Thunderstorm
When we went to Lubbock Lake Landmark to identify wildflowers, after we got the hang of it, we were sent off in little groups.
One of us spotted some interesting patch of color, and off we went, crunching off the path. We clustered together around the flowers, flipping through our guides, gently turning petals with our fingers. We tossed guesses back and forth, "It's definitely a mustard," "Do you think it could be a snapdragon?" "Oh, this looks like a morning glory," "I think it's this one," "What page?" "No, it says the leaves should be smooth, it can't be that." I was amazed at how quickly we sometimes identified them, all of us working together.
We walked on down the path. At the beginning of class, a massive string of cumulus clouds crowded the horizon. By this time, they hung heavy above us, leviathans lazing across the sky.
"Did you feel that?" Eileen asked, her palm raised.
"Yeah," I said, smiling.
We walked through the gentlest kiss of rain drifting from the clouds in the warm air. I stretched out my arms, relishing the sensation of the sky falling around me.
The thunder turned to lightning and we had to end class early. But I loved the time I had under that sky. I felt a stretching inside me, felt long lost wildflowers rising within me, springing from all the rain I've felt in the last year.XV. Cardboard Crane
It all began with a box of tacks.
In this class, I have learned a lot of very specific things. I've written down so many facts about Lubbock, but more importantly, I've gained a loose understanding of the land I walk. I've learned to draw maps, but more importantly, I've learned an awareness of place. I've learned to sketch and identify birds, but more than that, I've learned to see. The facts will fade, but the awareness will not.
I've learned that the world is a vast history of change.
I've learned to look at a box of tacks and see several other things. A candle holder, a book shelf, a book cover...
A paper crane to be folded and unfolded. A thing to be seen over and over again.
I see the world around me differently. When I'm with other people, I tell them about the birds we see or about the secret of the changes in the weather. I find myself telling people about the prairie.
It sneaked into me. I love this place. I love the dusty sunsets and the massive sprawls of sky. I love the wind. I love the stretches of prairie grass, and I love the dark spots of all the grackles.
I am a llanera.
I know my life will take me to other places. I don't expect to spend more than a few more years in Lubbock. Yet this place will never leave me. Just as I was born in mountain rain, raised in East Texas sun, I will always carry the prairie within me.
When I can, I will defend it, and I will remember it always.
Most excellent.
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