Just after sundown on a recent July evening, I squinted into the blue silhouettes of maple and ash trees at the Urban Ecology Center’s Washington Park branch, where our Research and Community Science Department’s monitoring equipment told us hoary bats (Lasiurus cinereus) and eastern red bats (Lasiurus borealis) were swooping for insects. Officially, I was there to help conduct one of our bat monitoring surveys, but soon I found myself gazing not into the inscrutable night sky but at the lampposts that lined our path below the canopy.

Mother Nature and Father Time. We’ve known they were our family for at least 3,000 years when they first entered into Ancient Greek lore. I prefer to call them our parents and leave out the gender, but let’s focus on their relationship.

It’s prudent to consider time in our daily lives – learn from the past, live in the present, prepare for the future. Nature excels at all three of these things.

Are we going to catch a butterfly or dragonfly?” Miranda asked doubtfully as I again missed a green darner high up in the tree branches.

Miranda, a camper in our Nature Explorers group, was fascinated by all things that fly. She was singularly focused on catching butterflies and dragonflies for observation.