I love the moment in nature when some event defies my expectations. A crack of lightning sparks manic energy. The unmistakable snap, delayed drop and deep vibration of an old growth tree falling rattles me out of sleep to scramble for cover and I love it. Living on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula has offered this Jersey boy many moments that were proof positive I had but a speck of control over my environment, and that nature’s madness was the one thing I could ever expect.

The Olympic Peninsula, a knuckle of land representing the United States last jut into the icy north Pacific, is home to Olympic National Park’s million acres. I moved here in 1996 to work as an environmental educator. A modern nomad, I worked and lived seasonally with other young and vibrant companeros. We ate together, shared living quarters, and were bonded by the passion for teaching about the freedom and lessons in reality nature can bestow. We sacrificed our privacy and time to prove our mettle. It was not unusual for us to plan curriculum late into the night, or fight over portable stream study equipment and tons of other heavy props and crap we would carry for eight hours of teaching, just in case our students were not engaged for a split second.

Many of my students exhibited negative behaviors, and I would often take that to mean I neither knew enough nor was a very good teacher, so I would work harder.  Adult behavior never insulted me as personally as the odd precocious child who could care less about nature’s bounty. The National park was my territory, and my students were going to appreciate it if they were in it with me, dammit. One young man’s melancholy resistance incited a response from me that included “dragon skin lichen is really fucking amazing.” Oops….! The young guy was on to me, and replied coolly, “Ross, you don’t need to curse for me to think you’re cool”. Ouch!

It took a few years for me to realize that none of my student’s behavior was personal. That realization coincided with the understanding that I had everything and nothing to do with the experiences of my students. In fact, I was not there for them so much as I was there for myself. This was a freeing realization.

Spending the afternoon exploring with my students was routine. Structured activities never worked after lunch, so we would scavenge and explore. The students found deer bones that had been in the same spot for several seasons, branches chewed by beavers, otter tracks, and scads of otter scat. The whitish, dried out, partially digested crayfish shell piles were accumulated on the beach in certain spots. We had seen all the signs of wildlife and followed their paths, but it would take a real encounter to excite the X-box bred crowd of munchkins at my side.

It was the last hour of our day when the otter finally appeared. This was a dream, the supreme teachable moment. The otter was long and smooth, turning summersaults in the water. We watched the sleek creature dive and swim, listening for the crunch, crunch of crayfish stepping up the food chain and one step closer to becoming a pile of scat on the beach. I was ecstatic for the students to return to their metropolitan homes with this experience.

The otter was not alone, and the escape routes were blocked. It was swimming without any other otters, but on the far side of the cove the other half of our sixth grade class was in canoes. My half of the class was positioned on a beach the otter would have logically used as an exit point.

The otter became disturbed by the encroaching canoes and made a mad dash for the beach a little ahead of us. Once it had gotten out of sight, we packed up our things and started down the trail for home. I led the pack through the thick undergrowth. One boy panted up beside me. “Hey Ross Moss, are otters territorial?”  As I started to expostulate on the ability of an otter to mark an area with its musky scent, excreted by glands near its poop chute, blah, blah, blah…our heavy rumped otter scuttled quickly out of the bushes not one foot in front of my buddy and I. Somehow it clambered up two feet with its short legs onto a log next to the trail, stopped, rubbed its rear on the log while looking directly at us and scolding us with a snort. It then scurried the length of the log in the opposite direction.

A rich, dank, earthy scent filled the air. The student and I were dumbstruck. The question was asked and answered in mere moments by the otter itself. The other kids crowded by the log and nostrils flared all around to smell the scent of an otter marking its territory. It was unpleasant, even gross. At the same time it was fascinating.

In our daily lives we encounter obstacles and boundaries all the time. Quite often they are personal. “He’s a little rough around the edges”, “She’s a real close talker, bring your goggles”, “You want me to write this grant at home on the weekend, no dice it’s my kid’s birthday”, “DO NOT ENTER UNLESS YOU ARE AN INVITED GUEST”.

In the few years since I left the park and environmental education field, my life’s lessons have mirrored over an over again how in control I can be of my responses to the markings of territory. The lessons of nature follow me everywhere. My lover leaves laundry around, I get irritable. Do I fight and push the clothes to her side of the room, or am I angry because I own the house and she is in it at all? My edginess makes her uncomfortable, but I remain seen as a separate entity from her. Territory is marked, for better or for worse.

At work, I disagree with my employer’s views and expectations for our workplace and my contributions. Am I a bad employee, or is it his territory and I simply do not fit? I leave the workplace, responding to the signs that it is not my territory and staking any claim will create a smelly battle. I have learned well that the creature most adapted to a stable environment will stake claim and defend it as their expectations are challenged.

Someone suggested recently that we owe it to the world to have an internal transformation that pushes us closer to being our true selves. She said that being and expressing who we are even if it alienates other people is good. It creates a natural boundary that repels some and magnetizes others. Give and take, push and shove, stink and no stink, everywhere we go our expectations are defied. Mother nature is human nature, sometimes benevolent and comfortable, other times unexpected and challenging.

My goal is to educate myself by embracing the unexpected in human nature, as well as I adore the unexpected in the natural world.  If we meet, and I rub you the wrong way, it is nothing personal, it is just a little roll of thunder. Run for cover or dance in the rain. It is your choice.