Finding the
Path to 2075

By Bill Finch, Executive Director By two or three o’clock, October sunlight slashes through the trees, blinding the way west, enveloping the east in a low glow, twilight incandescence after noon. Perched with the desperate squirrels in the shortleaf pine, we can see the end of it all. Shortleaf scatter from here to the horizon, not in thickets, but long-shadowed, proud and independent. The meadow below is a sienna rainbow, the green wild grasses that waved in the wind hardening to hickory brown, mahogany red, pale pumpkin. Mid-day moths probe the evening primrose. Two tired butterflies tease the few cerulean drops of aster. Barehanded, we catch the crawl of grasshoppers. Layers of leaves wait, decomposition slows. The day is snoring with the crickets, but we’re as frantic as the squirrels. This is seed gathering time at the Research Center, and…