• Libraries, when you’re searching for one book but browse the books on adjacent shelves
  • Watching people, with wonder and curiosity and love, as you sit on a bench in a park or an airport
  • Gravel bars at the mouths of rivers
  • The OED, not just for the definitions of words, but also for the stories of words
  • Floating over a patch reef, mask down, barely moving, as the juvenile damselfish guard their little farms, as a reef squid’s chromatophores pulse nearby
  • Secondhand bookstores, especially when they are only loosely organized
  • Flea markets in small towns
  • Gently flipping logs in the Appalachian mountains
  • Newspaper stands in Madrid in the late 1980s, with news in so many languages, and I only have a few coins so I have to choose one paper
  • Printed encyclopedias on my childhood home’s shelves
  • Flânerie, at home or abroad
  • Scripture
  • Museums, curated by those who know they don’t yet know how wonderful it all is
  • Coffee shops and local eateries frequented by people who might not otherwise gather together
  • Anyone with a sketchbook in hand
  • Footnotes written by someone who knows so much more, and who wants to at least gesture towards more sources you might like
  • Wiktionary, with animated brush strokes for the Chinese characters
  • Epic poems that have survived many generations
  • Tide pools
  • My father’s workshop (with oscilloscope), and my grandfather’s workbench (with tools that slowly reveal their workings as I turn them over in my hands)
  • The underside of a leaf, where the insects hide their eggs, where the frog’s feet adhere, where the butterfly sleeps
  • Family Bibles with bookmarks and mementos and notes from centuries ago
  • Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia
  • Novels that will never be called “important” by modern reviewers
  • Following the gaze of an infant who is unashamed to admit that this whole world is new and wild and fascinating.

A wooden bookshelf filled with various books is situated indoors in front of large windows revealing lush green foliage outside. I took this photo in Puntarenas, Costa Rica. The shelves are full of discoveries of others; the forest beyond is full of potential for those who would discover more for themselves.A spacious, well-lit library features wooden beams, multiple bookshelves, comfortable seating areas, and study tables arranged in an organized and inviting manner. St John’s College Meem Library in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This was the site of many of my serendipitous discoveries as a graduate student, and it continues to be the place I most want to return to on each return visit to my alma mater.A small squid with a mottled brown and green body is resting on the ocean floor amidst sandy and rocky terrain. This Caribbean reef squid floated beside me while I was teaching ecology on one of the barrier islands in Belize a few years ago. We both held nearly motionless, eyeing one another. I was struck with wonder at what its changing colors might mean. Was it communicating with me? Warning other squid about me? Camouflaging itself? Do the chromatophores act as sensory organs, allowing it to use its skin to better perceive the world? &10;&10;I also wonder what it thought of me.