A post office, two gas stations, seven churches, and one school.

Add in a feed store, a factory, and Missy’s Grill, and you’ll have much of Efland. Our tiny hamlet is not well known, except as an exit off the highway. (In fact, when giving directions, I ask people if they know “Elf-land” and we go from there.) And yet, it is my world. Tiny Efland holds deep those nearest to my heart. They are sheltered beneath its trees, nurtured by its streams, fed by its fields. Its gentle, not-really-wilderness of buzzing insects, poison ivy, and rotting-log-kingdoms affords a level of biodiversity not as easily found in the manicured neighborhoods of nearby towns.

My love letter to my adopted home was inspired by Rob Dunn’s guest blog for Scientific American. In the article, he traces out the possible connections between trees, people, and insects, both plain and exotic. We know so little, still, about our world; there are so many places we haven’t thought to look.

For my students, so many places remain hidden, often obscured by curtains of poverty, culture, or language. Many have never left our county. Some have never left Efland. As I think about the year, I want to help them connect to the scientists with whom I have been fortunate enough to work, scientists from around the wide world who even speak the same language. I want to help my students connect to their own passions through 4-H. And I want to help them see, Matrix-style, the marvelous, mostly unknown, microbial world they inhabit and to which they are fundamentally connected.

I want to peel back the curtains for them, to bring forth for them the world, so that they may better love our small corner of it.