Oxymoron

So I had my first official day as a Naturalist. No more training. I still had a crutch because Shari, the best naturalist in the world, was there and I could quickly go to her for questions that I didn’t know the answers to. After the tour was finished I felt okay about it, felt even a bit confident during it, a bit. And as people were unloading and I was saying my “goodbye,” the majority of the people looked happy, many of them thanked me and said I did a good job. I even got a few hugs. It felt like affirmation, and really, that’s what I’m looking for at this point.

But then as I was cleaning the upstairs windows, I noticed a comment sheet that hadn’t been collected. The crew isn’t supposed to read the comment sheets, except for the captain, but it was hard not to peek, of course, at what it said. In the section that asked what could be improved or what they wanted to hear more about it or something like that, they wrote, “more information on whales/whale history.” You’d think on a whale watching tour, this would’ve been covered – you’d think. The truth of the matter is I probably know less about whales than the passengers, or about the same. The facts and numbers, the biology – it’s never really interested me, and that’s a problem – perhaps the biggest problem – for a naturalist. What’s mattered to me, what means something to me, I’ve written about before – it’s the feeling that seeing these creatures gives me, it’s the awe factor, the fact that I share the same earth as them and get to see them in their natural habitat. While a real naturalist might share that sentiment with me, that’s likely where our similarities end. Really, if you think about it, me being a naturalist is almost a bit shameful.

What I am good at is helping to take photos of a couple or a mother and daughter – two people who are on holiday together who don’t ordinarily get to be in photos together because one of the two is taking the photo. I’m good at chatting about where they’re from and how their trip is going. I’m good at explaining why I moved to Alaska and how I fell in love with the state and a man. I’m good at just talking to strangers and making them feel like I care, because I actually do. For some strange reason I care about these cruise ship passengers and I care about the few hours they’re spending in Juneau and I care about them having a good time. I’m good at being an example of someone who moved far away from home and found a new one, which happens to be a location that these tourists find a bit foreign.

The more I thought about that comment and about other things that I could’ve said about the area, about what we were seeing, the more I just started to feel tired and a bit lousy, and more than anything, like a fake. A fake naturalist – is that not the best oxymoron in the world.