“As a rule, we take nothing and we leave nothing.”
Mrs. Evert in John McPhee’s The Pine Barrens

Turning down a sandy road,
our 1972 Country Squire
station wagon
bumped and bounced.

Keds on our feet,
wax paper-wrapped sandwiches
in backpacks,
my cousins and I trooped out
behind our grandmother,
Dot Evert.

Botanist Dot
took her calling seriously.

She reminded us,
tending our environment:

Means
knowing names —
Utricularia resupinata,
Calopogon pulchellus.

Means
watching our step,
taking only pictures.

Means
speaking up
to protect
the Pine Barrens’s
43 endangered species.

Dot made no distinction
between her grandchildren
and a Pulitzer-winning author —
we are ALL responsible
she intoned.

I can still hear her say
“Come over here
you’ve got to see this!”