Cross-Pollinations: The Marriage of Science and Poetry

In this book, Nabhan describes the circumstances of several of important—even breakthrough—discoveries that came about through the cross-pollination of science and the arts. His stories mix the personal and scientific in an engaging way. When he found out in high school that he is color blind, an amazing teacher chided him to use his so-called problem to explore varieties of perception. Years later, Nabhan organized teams of color-blind and color-normal scientists to survey a plant thought to be endangered. The color-blind scientists' results changed the views of that ecosystem. Nabhan tells about ancient songs of the O'odham people that contain an understanding of plant ecology that science has only recently caught up to. In perhaps the most stirring chapter, he describes how one of the native women he knows pleaded with him to put his knowledge to use to help find the reason for persistent diabetes among native peoples. Nabhan describes how the structure of an Amy Clampitt poem gave him the inspiration for a research model that led to an understanding of native plants and the metabolism of sugar. The last chapter is a rousing account of the creation of the Ironwood Forest National Monument in the Sonoran Desert.