THE KEYS TO UNDERSTANDING
Rex Burress
As I rummaged in my pocket to find the magic key to open the Feather River Nature Center, it occurred to me that the sliver of flat steel, when turned in the lock, opened the door to a vast amount of nature information.
The door's locking apparatus and the key to open it, was/is the key to a successful program of understanding nature through samples of the environment and the printed word. Without the lock and key, the “Old Bathhouse” restoration project and nature program would be at peril. City of Oroville specialist Jim Gollihar made a heavy plate lock for the front door access after a break-in.
Keys and entrance control is the key factor in nearly all human activities. Who doesn't have a pocketful of keys dangled on a key ring or key chain? At least that is the adult way, but in those carefree days of boyhood, and in a farm community where doors were seldom locked, a pocket was more for carrying a pocket knife, rocks, marbles, pennies, or any odd discovery.
Wild animals don't have to contend with keys and padlocks as they possess little that needs to be locked up. Perhaps acorn woodpeckers would like to put a lock on their acorn horde that they stash in self-made holes in decaying wood, but the bird colony deploys defensive forces sufficient to put squirrels on the run. Most animals and plants have clever ways of repelling intruders and protecting their claims.
The padlock and key is in a way a symbol of distrust, and certainly suggests that there are thieves on earth. Keys have a long history dating back to Babylon and Egypt 6000 years-ago. Some of the first keys were made of wood, and even John Muir as a boy on the farm in Wisconsin whittled keys, locks, and clocks from wood.
When metal was developed, the first type of steel key was one with a round shaft, one blade called “skeleton key,”which was used for 17 centuries until the fall of Rome, and continued on to houses built before 1940. No, it has nothing to do with grave robbers or body snatchers! The first modern flat key was invented by Linus Yale in the 1850's. Now the key to unlock your secured place takes many forms including magnetic hand-print pads which requires no key at all.
In one of the display cases inside the nature center museum, secured by a lock and key no less, is a shiny skeleton key, verified to be the key that thief Black Bart used for entrance into a San Francisco apartment he used in-between stage couch robberies.
The word 'key' can also apply to nature field guide books for a detailed, step-by-step process to aid in identification of species. The key in field guides is especially crucial to botanists, insect students, and other nature enthusiasts where thousands of species exist; in fact, hundreds of thousands on a planet with near two million species!
The key in Peterson's Guide to Pacific States Wildflowers goes like this: “Follow these four steps in identification. 1. Learn the plant-parts. 2. Look at the flower and note its shape, color, arrangement, etc. How many petals? Are they arranged regularly or irregularly? Is the ovary in superior or inferior position? What shape is each flower part? 3. The key consists of numbered pairs of contrasting statements. Choose one. 4. Note the 'see' reference which guides you to the next pair of statements. Continue until a plant family is named. Most keys follow this formula. Good luck!
“Build for yourself a strong box,/Fasten each part with care;/Fit it with hasp and padlock,/Put all your troubles there./Hide therein all your failures,/And each bitter cup your quaff,/ Lock your heartaches within it, then/Sit on the lid and laugh.” --Otis Whiting