Frequently, whenever I point out something interesting I have seen in nature, the response I receive is, “How did you even notice that?”. The answer is that I learned how to look and how to listen. Unfortunately, another common response is, “I could never be able to do that.” Such a statement isn’t just false, it indicates a misunderstanding of what is necessary to do what I do. I didn’t realize this myself, until I was recently introduced to the concept of talent vs. skill.
On the surface, those two words look like synonyms. However, the way it was explained to me was that talent refers to the innate natural ability to perform a task, while skill involves the abilities acquired through practice and learning. Every single human endeavor requires a combination of those two things. The proportion of each will depend greatly on exactly what task you happen to be pursuing, and extra in one part can mitigate some of the lack of the other. However, there are few things that only truly require one or the other.
From my personal observations of human society, we tend to overemphasize the ‘talent’ side of the scale. We pay lip service to ‘skill’ (mostly with trite clichés that everyone has heard a thousand times), but we usually think of it as being important in addition to talent. It is much harder to imagine skill being something that can be useful in spite of talent (or the lack thereof).
“I’m not any good at that,” is an easy answer (believe me, I should know). It’s easy to fall back on a lack of talent (or a perceived lack of it) to justify not doing or trying something that seems difficult. This is the first obstacle: fear that you don’t have enough talent. If you can get past that, the next thought is, “That takes too much work.” This is the second obstacle: fear that it will be too difficult to acquire the necessary skills or take too much time.
For some things, these thoughts in our head are true, but for most things, they are only stories we tell ourselves. For what I do, observing the natural world, I believe the latter is the case. Furthermore, it is not a skill that requires hours upon hours of intense practice, such as playing a musical instrument or a sport. Nor do you need tons of formal instruction. A lot of what I have learned has come from self-study and intuition.
If you want to broaden how you perceive the natural world, there are two main avenues that you should pursue: visual and auditory. For now, I’m going to focus on the former, on seeing nature. I’ll talk about listening next time.
“Watching is not seeing.”
I used the word seeing deliberately. This is not simply about sitting in one place and watching something. Seeing involves picking up on small differences and tiny cues to be able to pick out things that others might miss. To start off with, I’m going to throw you into the deep end, so to speak. I want you to take a look at the picture below and think about what you see in it. I don’t mean anything specific, either. Try and see as much as you can.
How did that go? What were you able to see?
At this point, you might be expecting me to mention what I expected you to see, but that would defeat the purpose of this exercise. The point wasn’t for you to see exactly what I saw when I took this picture, but rather to start to develop your own visual habits. Feel free to come back to this picture in a week or two and go over it again without any preconceived notions and notice if you see anything new or different.
In the meantime, I’m going to give you some advice on how to look and see things in nature. As you develop these skills, you will find yourself slowly begin to notice small things that hadn’t registered before. Also, to clarify, these strategies aren’t presented in any particular order in which you have to practice them.
1. Look for contrasts
Most things in nature tend to blend in with their surrounding environment. This is due to evolution through natural selection over millions of years. For most species, blending in protects them from potential predators or hides them from prey. There are, of course, exceptions to that rule. Bright colors can be meant for mating displays or to indicate something is poisonous and not good to eat.
That said, no camouflage is perfect. The are small imperfections that one can begin to notice and be able to point out the outline of something. The trick is not to look directly for something, but to look for the small contrasts between it and its surrounding environment.
2. Look for motion
Generally speaking, you will often not consciously register a full image of something at first. Instead, all you will notice is a sense of movement. You receive this sensation all of the time, to the point where it becomes easy to ignore. Resist the urge to do this! Whenever you sense that motion, move your head and eyes in the direction you sensed it from. I cannot count the number of times that this trick has brought my attention to some interesting natural phenomenon.
3. Use your peripheral vision
Remember above how I contrasted ‘watching’ and ‘seeing’? This method is really what is behind that distinction and is the key to helping you develop the first two visualizing skills I mentioned. The edges of your vision are usually somewhat blurry, but they can be incredibly useful if you know how to work them. This does not involve focusing your vision to the side. Instead, maintain your visual focus to the front and slowly try and bring the edges into your awareness.
Your peripheral vision is excellent for sensing motion and contrast. This means that the most interesting things you notice will often not be right in front of you. This particular skill is the source of many of the “How did you even see that?” comments I have received. It can be quite a shock to those not expecting it when you notice something hidden or that you were not looking at directly. This can be an excellent opportunity to share your newfound perceptiveness about nature with others and spread the knowledge even further.
As you go forward into your week, I want you to try and practice these techniques. One of the benefits of these is that you can do so while performing other tasks. In fact, it is better for you to do so. Practicing with a great deal of intention and focus is actually counterproductive to learning these skills in the first place.
Once you start to develop your own visual skills, you can start working on auditory skills, which I’ll talk about more next time.
P.S. Some of you may be wondering, “If I practice these skills, won’t people who see me think I’m some sort of daydreaming weirdo?” To be honest, yes. If you begin to focus on subtle cues around yourself, you can start to lose focus on more overt things. Your attention can be drawn to an errant motion or sound in the middle of a conversation. Personally, I am proud to consider myself a ‘daydreaming weirdo’. Without these skills, I think my life would be rather dull. Each of you has to make your own decision how far you would like to take these. Fortunately, I believe that these skills can be beneficial even at smaller levels of development.