There were hungry mouths to feed when Clemson ornithologist Drew Lanham visited Paint Rock.

Don’t mind me, the Carolina wren hissed, as she dodged Drew and students to appease the gaping beaks of young’uns, tucked in a hole on a mossy bank a few feet from where all assembled.  

It was an accidental convergence, this nest of wrens and this assembly of students from many backgrounds and many ambitions, wanting to understand where one of the world’s best ornithological researchers and storytellers was coming from, and in the process, better understand where they might be going. 

The students — all working on the forest dynamics census teams with Alabama A&M — explained to Drew how this forest was transforming them. Two or three noted that they weren’t even particularly interested in plants and trees until they came to see the forests of Paint Rock. Until, one said, he looked up into the canopy of a massive tree he was measuring, and it all changed. You could see the green light of the trees flickering across his face as he told the story, and you could see the light in Drew’s eyes as he recognized what was happening here.

We have all been fed in these past few weeks at Paint Rock, as we all have come to recognize that Paint Rock is beginning to fulfill our wildest ambitions. Drew schemed research programs for understanding bird activity in the forest that could be correlated with the work the students were doing on the tree census. He drew compelling parallels between struggles for social justice and the threats facing natural systems. And he made sure the students understood that what they were doing here in this forest was as important as what any doctor, any engineer, any researcher on earth was doing. And on that day, it was clear that the interaction with nature and with diversity is already changing lives.

Drew is now fully embedded in the mission of Paint Rock, in its research program, in its goal of training a new generation of scientists to see diversity through the eyes of diversity.

And in the end, the wren and her young seemed to consider it all normal, going about their business in a forest that seems made for such convergences.

To find Drew’s books: The Home Place, Sparrow Envy.

Also see his interview in Library of America

Here’s how science should progress: Bring together the minds and minds-in-training of two great institutions, have them plop down on the cool wet ground of Paint Rock forest, and discuss the future of biology and conservation and how to build a life around it.

Alabama A&M’s new forest dynamics crew — many trying to understand how to further their careers in science — spent much of the morning with University of Georgia researchers as part of a visiting scholars program generously funded by Chattanooga’s Riverview Foundation. We all had high hopes, but I’m not sure any of us realized how successful this program would be. 

Famed evolutionary biologist Stephen Hubbell — one of the founders of modern forest dynamics research — led the team of Georgia faculty to the research center and plot he helped create. UGa professors Dr. Shu-Mei Cheng and Dr. Megan Peterson kept us all wide-eyed with the unexpected twists and turns of plant sex and population dynamics, illuminating some of the many perplexing problems of species dynamics in Paint Rock forest. And the new field crew  peppered them with questions during and for hours after their talks. This is going to be a great group. Be patient, I expect you’ll be hearing more interesting things from students and faculty soon.

Shu-Mei and Megan and UGa grad student Riley Thoen got proper introductions to Paint Rock. Not only did we get to marvel over beautiful landscapes and mysterious flowers, we also got to meet some of Paint Rock’s most arresting personalities. But as it always seems to do, Crotalus horridus allayed our fears by sitting quietly and passively as we danced around its majestic woods.

Alan Cressler is as legendary as the Nature Conservancy’s Sharp Bingham Preserve in Paint Rock. As a caver he knows the caves, underground rivers, aquatic life better than anyone. He is also a brilliant biologist, legendary explorer and incredible photographer. We spent a splendid day with Alan and Noah Yawn from Auburn. You can see some of his amazing photographs in the gallery below. We are so glad to have Alan on the Advisory Council for the Research Center.