They're Back!

Downy Woodpecker
Junco
Mockingbird
Black-Capped Chickadee
Carolina Wren
Oregon Pink-Sided Junco (? possibly)
Red-Breasted Nuthatch
Purple Finch
Dove
Cardinal
Tufted Titmouse

...and most of these came in multiples! Now that the semester's over, I could guiltlessly watch the birds in my backyard this morning instead of rush to revise essays the moment I got out of bed. It was fabulous. I only wish the doves had been turtle-doves because there were two of them. :-)

Updates on the backyards and blue jays: They both had a wonderful summer. I wondered why I didn't blog about them during the summer, and I concluded that they're so obviously beautiful when all is green and verdant and lively that it seems like overkill to call attention to what's already so apparent on its own. But this time of year, when the snow and ice are coating the backyard, and blue skies (like this morning) are rare, when the birds depend on our birdfeeders and the heated birdbath, I like to mention the brave birds who stick around even during the cold, dark Pennsylvania winter.

Some notes:
The mockingbird disappeared all summer, much to my great disappointment. A few months ago (Oct 5, actually), the mockingbird came back, perched on top of the black walnut tree, and sang for about a half-hour to announce his return. (Okay, I don't know it's the same one, but I like to think so.) I think I even heard a seagull in his new repertoire. Where were you all summer, dear bird?

About a month ago, I was outside at 1:00 a.m. trying to see the Leonids, but it was too cloudy. As I was stepping back into the nice, warm house, I heard an owl! It wasn't in my yard, but a few yards down, in a thicket of pine trees I believe. Judging by its hoot, I think it was a Great Horned Owl. I've been listening for it in the meantime, but I'm afraid he was just passing through. Sad. We've certainly got enough chipmunks around to last him the winter.

Ugh.

I know. "Ugh"? On my nature blog? From the one who says she likes bats?

That's right: Ugh. Look what I found in my yard.


Have you ever seen anything more hideous in the environs of your home? One of these monsters lives just outside my kitchen, the other visible from my bedroom window. I've seen a grasshopper stuck cross-wise in the web of one of these monsters, and then seen it disappear as the spider eats it.

I don't do well with spiders.

Normal looking brown and black spiders of a respectable size, sure. I have removed my share of arachnids from college dorm rooms and apartments in my day, but even I have my limits.

Still, strangely enough, as I take a ramble through my backyard, I always stop by these two webs to check in on the strangers in my garden. Today I finally decided to see what kinds they were, if they were native to my area, and if they had the poison potential to eat my cat.

As it turns out, they're apparently quite common and known as the Yellow Garden Spider. (Read more here at insectidentification.org.) Their webs are beautiful (and both in my yard have the characteristic zig-zag), and their colors are indeed striking. I just wonder that I'd never seen one before. If I had, there's the slight possibility my stomach wouldn't flip every time I see one anew.

I'm also hoping they prefer the winter's cold to my house's warmth. Finding one of these in my backyard is one thing. Seeing one waltzing across my bedspread would be quite another.

At any rate, based on its colors, I'm guessing it likes Western PA the best. After all, where else do black and gold spell "local" than in Steelers Country?

Magazines!!!

A few months ago, I made the mistake of ordering a really cute trench coat online. The coat itself was not the mistake; it's where I ordered it from. In the four months since placing this order, the catalogs sent to my name have gone from one or two a year to at least 20 in the past few months.

!!!

Anyone have any suggestions for cutting down on the incoming junk mail so I don't have to haul 80 catalogs a month to the recycling center? I used to send the order form back requesting to be taken off the list, but none of the magazines on my desk have order forms. Is there a central "no-send" database like the "no-call" list for telemarketing?

...unfortunately for my wallet, some of the things in these catalogs are rather tempting too....

Sustainable Storage Choices

In my short researches this afternoon, I've found that glass containers are acknowledged as the best, with porcelain, ceramic, and stainless steel following up as good choices. My plans now are to raid the old kitchen things my mom and grandma have given me over the years as they've modernized their kitchens, to find the glass and ceramic containers I know I have somewhere. Next, I'll raid Goodwill and Salvation Army shops (where, bonus!, I usually also find great old vinyl records).

If you'd like to support some green, sustainable product manufacturers, I did come across a few awesome websites that you could check out for brand-new good stuff.

http://worldcentric.org/
http://www.to-goware.com/
http://www.grinningplanet.com/

Other options are glass products from such well-known names as Pyrex, Corningware, and Anchor Hocking.

It's easy to reduce plastics in your kitchen! And I'm even taking one website's suggestion and storing my smaller sewing items in some of the old plastic containers I've removed from the kitchen cabinets. Next on the agenda: get rid of all paper napkins and paper towels. I'm already halfway there.

funky cloth napkins rolled up and ready for dinner

Cabinet Clutter

If you have a kitchen, you have problems with clutter. I don't care who you are or where you live; if you don't have clutter problems, especially in your storage-containers cabinet, you are probably not human.

Today, my mom left the clean reusable I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and Cool Whip containers on the counter after unloading them from the dishwasher, and I set to work putting them away.

"We have too many," I said after several futile stacking attempts, and she agreed.

I pushed around a few more containers and found six Cool Whip containers in the back.

"Do we ever use these? We could get rid of them, you know."

Mom considered, and then said, "Well, I like them for when I make soup in the fall and winter."

Images of plastic containers in the freezer popped into my head. Then, in CSI-like quality, I could see the plastic poisons leaking into my mom's frozen soups, like cartoon neon-green poison fumes in old episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

"Mom, I want to buy you new containers."

At first, she wondered why I would want new containers when we already have containers. I'm a chronic reuser, after all. But when I explained my fears of plastics, especially old ones, she saw what I meant.

"I mean, if you don't want to ..." I said.

"Well, I don't want cancer, either!" she said. So I set to work.


Most of the containers are recyclable #2, #4, and #5, which is great (they won't go to landfills yayy!). And some of the unlabeled lids will fit nicely under flowerpots in the potting shed. But what are we going to store Mom's soups in this winter if we get rid of all of these?

...which is what I'm researching this week. Mom remembers her mother and neighbors exchanging foods in glass canning jars, so I'll start there and see what other options I have. Stainless steel? Protected aluminum? Wood? We'll see. Stay tuned.

ah, Ha ha ... ha ... so ...

I'm finishing up my book list for one of my classes this fall, and I just noticed that all of the authors are women, and at least three of the books are concerned with seeking home. Clearly there is a theme, but it's an unintentional theme. My plan going into this book list was to seek diversity. Hence the title of this post.

Before I carve these authors and titles in stone, I ask you, my faithful readers, to provide me with one title of a literary nonfiction book with a male author or regarding some topic other than home or place ... or preferably both. Just one from each of you and I will be delighted.

Many thanks to all. And if you don't give me a suggestion, I'm blocking you from my blog for the rest of time. Just kidding. I'll probably just add another woman writer's book about home to the list and risk being accused of having a one-track mind.

Seven Apparently Recyclable Unrecyclables

Time for a confession from your local conservationist (me): I only just began to recycle.

This sounds worse than it really is. While I lived in Baltimore and had curbside recycling, I joyfully separated my trash and sent it on its way to reincarnation. While I lived in Germany, I became a pro at understanding the differences among Biomüll, die gelbe Sack, Restmüll, and various forms of glass and paper recycling. However, since returning to this beautiful land of mountains and countryside, I have unfortunately also returned to a township that does not offer curbside recycling.

This summer, I finally set up boxes in my garage for separated plastics, junk mail, magazines, and metals. Every couple weeks, as the boxes fill up, I'll drive them a mile away to a collection point. The collection point is even across the road from my favorite pizza shop, so it works well for everyone.

Something I have only just learned, however, is that I can't recycle everything here the same way I would have in Germany. My mom found this article through the Weather Channel about seven things you can't recycle. How illuminating! Caps, yogurt, glass....

I recommend a read-through. Some things are more obvious than others, but in all points, they provide a good explanation instead of simply saying "don't."

I'm Uninformed ... and know it!

My brother the engineer says that if he didn't know me already and read my previous post about solar- and wind-powered cars, he would think I was an idiot and a crazy person who didn't know what I was talking about. Raving lunatic, I think were his words. Environmental wacko that gives conservationists a bad name.

My apologies.

Those of you who know me, know I was being ridiculous, but it's probably good to establish for the other readers out there that yes, I do realize I know nothing about this technology, and that I'm also absolutely assured that people who do know things are working to get this stuff off the ground. That's one reason I posted in the first place: I think the people who develop things like that new wind turbine are absolutely amazing. They are that vital link between the uninformed ideas and actual, solid inventions.

So, satire aside, thank you technowhizzes who are making the world a better place! I'll try not to make my brother and his coworkers mad next time I post on things I don't understand. (Ha!)

Wind Powered Cars

Woohoo!!

My classmate Pam just posted this article on her blog at Sustainable Living. How exciting!

You must understand that I've been saying for years that we need wind and solar powered cars. I have also done exactly zero research into this possibility. I'm no scientist, but the way I see it, if we make the car roof a solar panel big enough to generate at least enough power to start the engine, it will get the car moving.

Then, to keep the car moving, we integrate small windmills into the design of the car. I'm not talking about driving around with Don Quixote on your rearview mirrors. I mean to form slits or gills on the sides of the car that the wind passes through as you drive. Put a bunch of small windmills in these gills, and it's sure to generate enough power to keep the car moving.

It always looked a little silly to me, though, in my imagination, and I was pretty sure there would be no tiny windmills powerful enough to keep a car zipping along at 70. And what about people who park their cars in garages or have convertible tops? These wouldn't be able to use that solar technology.

Well, this new wind invention gives me hope for my plans yet. Surely it's got to be easier to integrate these into the design of a car than it would be to fit windmills.

And if not, at least Haitians will get power. And that's good enough for me.

Long-Awaited Photographs

I've been out of town a lot lately, so I haven't had the chance to watch my yard gradually transition into its current state. Not that springtime generally suggests "gradual transition" anyway; each hour, something new and different has popped up in my yard or changed color or unfurled into a huge leafy fern. Still, leaving for a few days and returning has reminded me anew that the yard of sticks and starkness of wintertime becomes a Pennsylvanian jungle come spring.

Last week, one of my friends and readers mentioned to me that to those of you who haven't been to my backyard might like to see more pictures of the setting. I must say, I would have hoped to describe it well enough to not require pictures (nudge nudge, wink wink). However, being perfectly honest, now that I have a new--that is, functional--camera, I can get over my actual hangup and capture some of images of my very photogenic backyard.

To begin, a view of the vegetable garden, shaded by the ash tree. Behind is the housing development that used to be a small woods.

The strawberries refuse to grow within the garden fence, but here they are, preparing to switch from white blossoms to sweet red berries.

Next, what we call the Fairy Garden, perfect for relaxing with a glass of wine on a summer evening.

Then, of course, the famous view from the garden swing.

In my opinion, the existence of phlox is proof that God loves Pennsylvania. Whether in cascading millions along the driveway border...

...or as a single blossom, this native wildflower is one of Pennsylvania's greatest treasures.

The forget-me-nots, too, are as spectacular en masse as they are alone.

Our shade garden, however, is one of the most Pennsylvanian squares in the yard. After we moved in twenty years ago, my mom spent hours and years transforming it from a solid mass of packed clay to a display area for wildflowers lovingly transplanted from her uncle's woods.

Buttercups...

Mayapples ... and a bleeding heart peeking through the leaves...

...all make for a lovely bouquet.

Lovely enough even for the wookiee to enjoy.

Something Tells Me It's All Happening At the Zoo

I do believe it's true. A friend of mine sent me this article from MSN all about zoos and their current movement to be more natural and environmentally friendly.

The only zoos I've ever been to and enjoyed were the National Zoo in DC and Busch Gardens in Florida. They had natural habitats for the animals, not concrete slabs, and they had huge ditches to separate humans from dangerous beasts, not bars and cages.

I'm glad to see that more zoos are taking that initiative, and that there are programs that encourage this sort of zoo setup over the other, less humane versions. It's also exciting to see that the Philadelphia Zoo is offsetting its carbon use. As much as it helps for individuals and families to think ecologically, it's the huge institutions that will really make a difference just by setting an example.

Encourage the good zoos around you. Appreciate their conservation intentions, and consider how they can improve still more.

Dirty Feet

My feet are dirty and I couldn't be happier.

Yesterday, I returned home from a weekend in Philadelphia, staying with a couple of dear friends in their 7th-floor apartment across from the Art Museum. My feet kept going numb all weekend. Something about walking on pavement, I think.

Today I wore sandals and rolled up my jeans before taking a walk around my remarkably green backyard. The thicket of bushes that Mom and I once christened The Fairy Garden looked hopelessly dead all winter -- so dead that you may have noticed I never mentioned it -- and the mockingbird that camped there all winter had poor camo for hiding in a transparent cluster of empty sticks. Between Friday morning, when I left for Philadelphia, and yesterday, when I got home, the Artist spilled his green paint on the Fairy Garden and even added some blossoming crabapples for good measure.

When I came in, I had to wash my feet.

This afternoon, I wore sandals again to aerate my compost bin and add some grass clippings from last week's first mowing. I encountered the wookiee birdwatching behind the garden shed, but for all his wookiee-like aggression, he's more of a gentle giant. He chases squirrels from bird feeders and leaves the birds alone.

When I came in, I had to wash my feet again.

And then this evening, I went completely shoeless while scrubbing up and hosing down the window screens. Hose water + the backyard = muddy feet. It also = clean screens, which is glorious for the sudden spring weather. I washed my bedroom windows and put in all the screens. I was 1/3 through washing the living room windows when it began to rain.

I should probably have stuck my feet out the window for a natural wash, but I didn't. They're still dirty.

One Sunday morning when I was living in Baltimore, my friends and I were walking from the car in the parking lot to the front door of the church. Between the parking lot and the foyer, however, was an open yard of grass. I kicked off my dress shoes and walked barefoot across the grass. It was maybe ten steps all together, but those ten steps held me through another week of pavement and downtown.

I got claustrophobic in my friends' apartment this past weekend, and it's not a small apartment by any means. But for all its square footage and windows, I felt like I was in a shoebox in the middle of a crate stacked in a storeroom in the bowels of a strip mall.

This past Sunday, while they were driving along a woodsy country road, my grandma looked out the window at the trees and said to my mom, "You know, sometimes I think we get too far away from nature."

And you know? My dirty feet and I think my grandma was absolutely right.

Dog-Sitting

My neighbors went on vacation this week and asked whether I'd like to watch their dog.

The answer, initially, was no way, but I didn't tell them that. I'm not much of a dog person, and this particular dog has a bad reputation. But I did agree to at least meet the canine and let his owner walk me through the basics of vacation care.

The dog loves me.

I don't know why, but he has taken to me like a mockingbird takes to a new birdcall. And their yard, just three doors up the hill from mine, is like a different environment altogether. As the dog sniffs around his yard and does his thing, I get to watch a different set of birdfeeders, observe a different view of the horizon, and listen, listen, listen.

Yesterday, there was a rufus-sided towhee whistling in the trees. Today, I could see elk on the next hill over. Even the wind sounds a little different from that part of the hill.

Tomorrow is my last day of watching the dog, mainly because I myself am going out of town for a few days (if you're lucky, you might get an update about it on my travel blog). But I think that I might still venture up to my neighbor's yard occasionally this summer when I am in town. It's funny how a slight change of angle can give you a whole new perspective on a familiar place.

You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello

To my classmates,

It's been a pleasure. I hope you keep up your blogs long after today so I can continue to learn about your regions and read your perspectives. I can hardly wait to transfer our digital discussions to classrooms and coffee shops in August!

Continue to find nature in your own backyards, and contemplate the errant dandelion.

Becca

A Final Reflection

For those of you without a syllabus to refer to, next Saturday I will email my final assignments to my course instructors and pray for good grades to complete my first semester of grad school. Our final blog prompt for the semester asks us to reflect on our experiences and what we’ve learned, but it’s such a fitting close that I imagine I might have taken a stab at it without the assignment. (That is, if I would have let myself take the time away from other assignments to do so.)

My three courses have intertwined themselves like the English ivy on the walnut trees, so that I’m not sure what one class has taught me outside of the others. I do know that, of all times in my life to be forced by school to go outside and simply be, this season in my life was the when I needed it the most.

Nature is cruel. Nature keeps winter from disappearing from my region when I just want sunlight. Nature left a pile of feathers behind the garden shed after a hawk caught her dinner. Nature tears shingles from rooftops, floods creekbeds, and brings on cancer and heart attacks and grief.

But nature is kind, too. It’s connected; we’re all in this boat together. I’m not the only person to lose her father suddenly and unexpectedly and on the eve of the most family-oriented holiday of the year, and that knowledge, while not making the loss any less sad, still helps me keep some perspective. Nature is cyclical. Seasons change. Transitions happen. Sometimes, like a democracy, the change in season happens peacefully, without you even noticing. Other times, the passing season refuses to let go its hold. But it still can’t stop the change. Even when there are remnants of cold, the warmth shows itself in little ways.

My life is a series of settings. I track myself based on where I am, not necessarily on who I am or who I’m with or what I’m doing there. What I’ve read this semester and observed in my backyard has reminded me that setting, so strong a character in my life, should be as strong in my writing. As the seasons change, I’ll learn the trick of establishing place.

This backyard won’t be in my family forever, but my family will be in it. It has my dad and my mom and my brother and me stamped in every inch of its soil. Our pets have been buried here, fresh veggies have been harvested, firewood has been stacked and wine has been sipped in the flickering light of mosquito candles and the shining summer moon.

I’ve always loved my yard. I took photos of the yard with me to Germany, and I bragged about my yard when I missed having space to breathe in Baltimore. But after a semester of simultaneous stress and grief and healing, I love this yard like I would love a doctor who cured me of a disease. Still, a big part of healing is getting past the healing and back to a normal life.

This morning, I watched a pair of hawks soaring on the wind.

Dancing With the Daffodils

Outside my window, it's snowing again, but the flakes are swirling around electric yellow daffodils. A few weeks ago, two kids, passing my house on their way home from the bus stop, delivered the daffodils I ordered last month for Daffodil Days. Shortly after those hothouse blossoms drooped in their vase on my desk, the bulbs scattered all over my yard took it upon themselves to shine like droplets of summer. I confess I'm surprised that they're still open; it's been snowing for the past 15 hours or so, and if I were a daffodil, I think I would have closed up by now and retreated to the warmer earth.

But I guess daffodils aren't like that. They seem determined to hearten us this first week of April, every year, no matter where we are. My mom reread her gardening journal last week and laughed to realize that the daffodils have sprouted in our yard the same week every year for the past decade.

And my classmate Johnny sees daffodils in his garden, too, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. These intrepid little flowers know no boundaries. Even across an ocean, they're rising at the same time. And in England, they may even bloom again in June.

One of my favorite memories from my travels four years ago occurred in Poland during the first week of April. I was in a bus headed for Krakow somewhere between winter and springtime when I learned of the Pope's passing. By the time I arrived in his home city, it was already clothed in mourning. My last day there, his funeral aired on giant screens in and around the city, and thousands watched in respect.

The event cast a pall on the vacation my friends and I had expected to have that week. None of us was Catholic, but all of us respected the devotion the entire city was showing to a man we all thought well of. We wanted to have fun, but we also wanted to respect this moment in history and the memory of a great man.

It was the daffodils that reminded us to hope. With the sound of the funeral mass still ringing in our ears, we came upon a field of daffodils.


There will be grief. There will be sorrow. There will be winter. But all over the world, there will also be transition into summer, and the daffodils won't let go, even in a shower of snow.

The Winter That Never Ended

Yesterday, I put on my shoes and a jacket and mumbled, "Gotta go outside so I can write about it later." I sat on the garden swing for a half-hour, and a couple of goldfinches fought over the remaining seeds in the feeder on the pussywillow tree.

"What am I going to write about?" I asked them. It seems I've reached that point of the semester when assignments are burdens, books are dead weights with print that bounces off the surface of my memory. Ideas are fleeting.

When we moved in here, the house was on a corner of two roads. About ten years ago, a new (third) road was put in between my house and my neighbors', setting my family's property on a peninsula of grass and giving access to the backhoes that dug up the woods and planted suburban fake-estates in its place.

Behind me, beyond the fence along the new road, the sound of cars blended with the sound of the wind. The gray oily clouds gnashed and whirrled in the sky. Last week, I could hear the grass growing as spring rainwater trickled into the cracks in our clay soil. Yesterday, I just sat there getting cold.

"What am I going to write about?"

I kicked at the mulch under the garden swing and noticed the trees on the hill across the hollow. They're just as stick-y and dark as they've been all winter, but it looked like someone had spilled a little white and a little red on their branches. A little cloud of color. A smudge on my glasses.

The color of spring is yellow. Yellow crocuses, yellow daffodils, yellow buds on the bush by the garden shed that I can't identify. Yellow pollen on the pussywillow, yellow goldfinches.

A few months ago, I dreaded the spring. I couldn't conceive of a bright and cheery season when I was so sad. But I'm sick of being sad. I'm sick of cold winds and heavy skies. I want the weather to pick me up and carry me away from grief.

I left the swing, checked out the baby daffodils behind the garden shed, peeked in on the redbud tree my mom and I planted a couple weeks ago, and returned to the house.

An hour later, it started to snow.


:30°F:
:dark and cloudy sky:

Storm Petrels in Portugal

Look what I get to do in June!


These little birds -- Storm Petrels or "Stormies" -- have fascinating migratory routes, and like many sea birds, seldom come to land. A Rocha Portugal, an environmental conservation organization, is tracking these Stormies to learn more about climate change and its impact on marine life.

Now, I should add that I know next to nothing about how to catch, ring, and release wild birds, but I do know how to be quiet and observe what's happening around me. And that's just what I intend to do this June when I spend a week with A Rocha, so that I can write about my experiences when I get home!

Excited? Of course! As much as I love my backyard, it's been four years since I've been to Europe, and ages since I've done much of anything truly exciting. Like the Stormies, it's time for me to follow my migratory route eastward and over the ocean.

Life to Its Fullest

In my opinion, the biggest problem with our society today is that no one stops long enough to notice or appreciate anything. We are in such a hurry to live life to the fullest that we miss out on a lot of things in the process.
- my classmate Amanda, in her post yesterday, which, itself, was in response to Pam's post

Living life to its fullest: what does that really mean? I love that Amanda used this phrase in contrast with the idea of not missing out on things. Typically, the two ideas are synonymous these days, but I agree that maybe they shouldn't be.

For the past week in class, we've discussed Native perspectives on nature, the idea that "wilderness" was a European fantasy and that in Native reality, wilderness was simply here, the same as everywhere else. What we are often tempted to call Childlike Wonder, should simply be the way we see, shouldn't it?

Why, do you think, we call it Acting Like an Adult when we stop noticing the everyday miracles?

I think it's because we're trying to justify actions--ignorance--that we know are wrong. My goals for my life each day include finding time to see, time to simply be here, whether it's among trees or inside my house or on a city street. To work hard and enjoy my work. To notice the everyday miracles.

In depleting our lives of the constant (pointless) demands we somehow think are important, we can free up our lives, slow down the pace, and make the time to fill our lives with the wonder of what we have sadly stopped seeing all around.

Grasping Vapor

When I was a little girl, I used to lie in the grass and stare at the sky, finding faces and animals and entire stories up there in the vaporous clouds. It’s a common childhood pastime, nothing unique, but I still love doing it all the same.

When I was in high school, I took a course on Astronomy, this time focusing on another kind of vaporous body in another kind of sky: the stars at night. Learning constellations and star names based on ancient civilizations’ own words for the shapes and faces and stories of the sky, was almost as exciting as coming up with my own.

What is it about the sky that draws me toward it? Its endless space? Its provision? Its possibilities? True, the mysteries of our own ocean floors outnumber the mysteries of outer space, but to this landlocked Pennsylvanian, the sky is an immediate reminder of all we still don’t know.

The sky, made of gasses and vapors; the clouds, water and dust; the stars, vaporous fire; and the planets and moons, reflections of light.

Although there are solids out there—the terra firma of certain planets, meteors, moons—most of outer space is just that: space. From the vapors of Earth’s atmosphere to the gasses of the Sun, most of what we see in the sky is made up of uncertainties. “How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?” sing Maria’s sisters in The Sound of Music. How do you hold a piece of the sky?

I wonder, if the sky and its clouds and stars and planets, were a character, what would the character be like? I once read a Snohomish story about humans and animals working together to push up the sky. In it, the sky wasn’t a character as much as a problem to be solved. Legends about the night sky call it a place, not a person. But what kind of person would it be?

I think the sky is unknowable, and despite our telescopes and rockets and space stations, the sky will always be a mysterious place, a place outside of us that is as inscrutable as the part of us that’s within. We can label the gaseous elements and trace the planets’ paths, but in the end, even naming something doesn’t mean we’ve figured it out.