"Isn't it the most fascinating thing you've ever seen?"
"Mom…it's a mushroom."
"Isn't it amazing!" she marveled as she adjusted her Cannon to capture the chanterelle's startling color. She had just swerved to the side of the road, ignoring the zipping cars, after spotting this relatively common fungus on a hillside at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.But that is my mom. She's always respected and admired nature, from towering Redwood trees to timid yellow mushrooms. My mom taught my younger brother and me the natural world is priceless, which has made me into the responsible traveler I am today.
Throughout my childhood, my mother dragged my brother and me on trip after trip to this wilderness or that ecological area. We traveled all over, from the Washington Quinault Rain Forest to the Florida Everglades. Since Mom is a botanist enamored with the natural world, every vacation was at a national park or nature preserve instead of in bustling New York City or tantalizing Disney, where most kids went. However, once we arrived at the parks, Mickey Mouse was soon forgotten as we stood in wonder amid the encompassing beauty.
During these lovely adventures, Mom drilled into us the importance of all life threatened by environmental problems. Momentarily wandering off our path, I would hear, "Get back on the trail right now!" She would then take me aside and give the familiar lecture on how delicate wildflowers like Lady Slippers can't grow if everyone visiting tramples about wherever they please.
Sometimes when we arrived at some breathtaking location, she suddenly produced large plastic garbage bags and we picked up others' trash to help the place recover from people's abuse. She helped tend some local parks in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, where she still teaches, and would include my brother and me in the projects. We rolled our eyes then, but her desire to protect nature became my desire over the years, and now I catch myself picking up litter also.
My mom remains the voice in my head encouraging me not be lazy and throw everything away, but to reuse. Now in college, I'm also coming to understand that responsible travel includes having consideration for other cultures, as well as their environments, so they too benefit from people visiting their homeland. I realize it's easy to become indifferent to nature and diversity with everyone's hectic schedules, but my mom ensured I would come to care about the Earth so that I would want to preserve it.
Her influence showed this past summer as I studied in England and sought out natural areas, such as the moors of Penistone Hill Park in Haworth, Yorkshire, with their wild expanses of carpeted purple heather. My mom and brother visited me and we ended up at an aviary at Leeds Castle. It was a familiar glimpse of childhood as we marveled at the Australian kookaburra bird and my mom whispered to me her awe of the wise cedar of Lebanon trees while snapping a picture.
Eliza Tychonievich is a senior at Georgetown College in Georgetown, Kentucky. She is studying English and history and wants to go into journalism when she "grows up."
