If you enjoy natural history and haven’t yet seen Etsy’s visit to RISD’s Nature Lab, I highly recommend a peek; apparently we weren’t the only ones to think it special!

Alis and I met there as freshmen and spent (well, I can say that I spent) more than half my time in the lab after dark, poring over specimens. I sketched at the same long tables you see in the video in a quiet trance until close. It was like a church of curiosity, a place whose doors were (almost) always open to focus and quiet the mind.

The Nature Lab was built in Dan Beard’s day and it was conceived as a place within RISD for students to gain a close appreciation of the natural world without leaving campus (I mean, when does a student have the time?!). It is not a museum per se, but it is, especially when one considers that it was built within an art school. But unlike major scientific collections, RISD has maintained a basic catalogue that groups all of the thousands of specimens merely by order of the five kingdoms under which each item belongs. They figure that if the student desires further investigation of the specimens, she can study independently over the hill at Brown and, if that doesn’t suffice, transfer to a university where she can pursue a degree in biology (which is what I did).

A nature lab, this nature lab, is that inspiring.

So if you take in to account all the effort that goes into ‘Stocking a Marine Aquarium,’ or ‘Keeping Aquatic Plants in the House or Flower-Garden’ (both projects in The American Boy’s Handy Book) then you may be surprised by an effect equal in measure in the long run: a more intimate, educated understanding of the natural world in which we live, and quite possibly a lifelong desire to become an expert in the field. It can teach us to see better. It can ignite a passion in us that inspires others to be more curious about natural history, too.

Not to mention it’s just way fun to hoard stuff! That’s what collecting is all about.

Be it a nature table (which is how we roll) and its seasonal decorations or a full-on specimen archive or a nature journal in which you’ve drawn all the interesting things you’ve encountered in your time out of doors, there is a satisfaction in having this tactile database of organisms (living or nonliving, organic or inorganic). Here is a sampling of nature collections that we and our friends have made:

Precious or not, a collection is meant to be handled and explored; this is why the nature table is such a favorite for young children, being a small seasonal tabletop collection of stuff that finds its way into little fists and pockets:

Older children interested in collecting will painstakingly tuck treasures into small divided boxes for hours on end. And then some, like my children, will keep a basket loaded with treasures of all types on the floor in the living room as they do with Legos, ready to stage a scenic event and use them as props and characters.

I think humans have an affinity for the organic, and you can see from Da Vinci to Thoreau (to the child on the floor creating a labyrinth out of broken seashells for his Lego Indiana Jones) that nature has a tremendous capacity to illuminate the mind.

Do you have crazy wild testosterone maniacs living under your roof?  Do you spend your days “battling for justice”, modifying “alien ships”, and keeping an eye out for dead stuff to poke with a stick?  Sometimes our boys look thoughtful and innocent  like in the photo to the left below.  However, more often than not they look like the photos of spidey there on the right…I rest my case.

As much as we try to fully embrace our little boys they sometimes drive us crazy.  This is why Stephanie and I get together and go on “fairy benders”.  We self medicate with uninterrupted girly time where we use our finite muscles to make stuff.  We made this batch of harvest fairies with left over corn husks and oak caps that we found under some of our favorite trees.  Ok!  And a few bits of silk flower bling from the craft store.  We sold them at our school harvest fair and made $155!  Not bad for a few boy crazy moms who just needed a little balance in their lives.

We live in an older house that has lots of cracks for critters to get in and out.  However, this spider is not the brightest and found himself  trapped on our carpeted stairs for the last two weeks.  I say trapped because every time I walk up and down the stairs he scurries to get out of the way, never comfortable with his situation.  The other day Seth noticed him and said, “Mom I’m going to get a glass and paper and move this spider outside.”  I perform this act all the time, yet I’ve never prompted Seth to try it.  I guess he simply watched enough times, learned how to do it, and when the time was right, did it himself.  Developmental leaps like this are always exciting, no matter how inconsequential they may seem in the scheme of things.  After all, for this spider release from carpeted stair hell may have meant the world.  Way to go Seth, taking initiative in the compassionate insect conservatorship department.