Last week, we went on our first night hike at the OTS
Las Cruces Biological Station. I had been dreading the excursion ever since the
idea had been raised. This fear was founded on a singular childhood incident of
nighttime forest wandering. At sixth grade camp, going on a night hike was a
“fun” tradition. We wandered around the campground with no flashlights to
“appreciate the deficiency of our vision in low light.” I’m pretty sure this
outing was secretly intended to instill a fear of darkness into our
impressionable minds so that we wouldn’t wander off during our stay. It
certainly worked in my case, as I became very afraid of going outside after
dusk without a flashlight and a parent, even in my own suburban backyard.
Last week’s hike
was an entirely different experience. Firstly, we were actually encouraged to
use flashlights, instead of prohibited. This helped calm my nerves from the get
go, not least because I could see well enough to not catastrophize and assume
every root and vine was a deadly snake. More important, though, was the fact
that everyone on the hike was possessed by the same singular motivation: to see
some really unique animals that are only accessible in the night. If daytime
visitors to the garden think that it is teeming with fauna, they would be
forced to re-evaluate their definition of “teeming” after seeing the
biodiversity only to be discovered after dusk.
Most of the animals we saw were frogs of various
species – in trees, on leaves, on pipes, in ponds. Surprisingly, some of the
wild frogs were as easy to hold as the “domesticated” ones that I had owned back
in elementary school. Seemingly unbothered by our interruption, they sat calmly
on our palms as we posed for selfies and examined their eyes and glands, and
nonchalantly returned to immobility when they were replaced on their leaves or
stones. Handling the frogs immediately elicited a desire to touch our eyes and
mouths, solely because we knew we couldn’t (facial contact is a bad idea because of the irritants secreted by some tropical creatures).
Near the very end
of our journey, we made our most anticipated find: a scorpion. Personally, I’ve
always found scorpions to be pretty freaky. It seems wrong that something as
small as an arachnid should be allowed to evolve venom that can kill animals
with more intelligent and complex emotional lives. However, I completely forgot
my reservations the moment our flashlights were turned off and we saw that the
scorpions glow under a black light! For a few long moments, we paused, looking
at the faintly illuminated glow-in-the-dark creature, surrounded by the ambient
pulsing of the darkened but not-so-sleeping forest. Maybe nighttime isn’t so
bad after all.
Emily Sanford
Macalaster College
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