Forty-One Fronds Ago
Otto woke with the urgency normally reserved for forest fires, unidentified tracks, and finding an unfamiliar leaf at the bottom of his backpack. He sat straight up in his sleeping bag, beanie askew, eyes wide with revelation.
"Echo. Echo. I had the most incredible dream."
Echo remained perched on the bedpost, motionless in the blue dawn light.
"Mm."
This is all the encouragement Otto has ever needed.
A Journey Into Deep Time
In the dream, the two of them had traveled forty million years into the past. The forest outside the cabin had been replaced by a humid prehistoric wetland — tree ferns, horsetails, cycads, dawn redwoods, mist hanging in the canopy like it had nowhere better to be.
Otto had changed too. In place of his usual compact river-otter frame, he had become two meters of chestnut fur and heavy muscle: a broad ancient skull, powerful jaws, webbed paws, claws, and bone-crushing molars. His footsteps would have registered on seismographs, had seismographs been invented, which they had not.
He was, by his own narration, the apex predator of the entire wetland.
He also looked absolutely delighted to be there.
His beanie had become a rust-orange cap woven from plant fiber. His hoodie was now a drape of hide and leaves. A woven satchel hung across one shoulder, and under one enormous arm he carried a flat stone slab.
You can probably guess what the slab was for.
The Roar of a Fearsome Naturalist
At one point Paleo-Otto rose onto his hind legs, lifted a clawed paw toward the canopy, and unleashed a tremendous prehistoric roar.
Birds scattered. Fronds trembled. Several small wetland creatures reconsidered important life decisions.
It was a convincing display of raw power, undercut only slightly by Otto's eyes, which stayed cheerful throughout — less a territorial challenge than someone enthusiastically demonstrating a roar he had been practicing all afternoon.
That was the strange beauty of Paleo-Otto. He had the jaws of a bone-crushing predator and the heart of a naturalist who would apologize to moss for stepping on it.
Echo Gets Teeth
Echo's transformation was equally dramatic and considerably less appreciated by Echo.
In place of the familiar raven, Paleo-Echo had become a small feathered theropod: glossy black plumage with a blue-green sheen, a long counterbalancing tail, clawed wing-fingers, scaled legs, and one raised sickle claw. He also had teeth. Small, sharp ones, lining a hooked beak.
Otto found this terrifying.
Echo found it approximately as interesting as everything else. Transformed into a toothed prehistoric hunter, he maintained the exact half-lidded expression he uses when Otto opens a sentence with "I've developed a system."
The bandana stayed perfectly tied. Some things transcend geological time.
A Prehistoric Field Journal
Given an enormous body, powerful claws, and an entire wetland of possible prey, you might expect Paleo-Otto to spend the dream hunting, defending territory, or engaged in some dramatic struggle for survival.
He found a fern instead.
It was, to be fair, an excellent fern. He crouched over his stone slab, spread a layer of wet clay across the surface, and pressed the fresh fronds into it with his huge clawed paws — no pencil, no tools, nothing but claws and plants and total concentration. His tail thumped against the ground the entire time.
Paleo-Echo stood beside him, teeth bared, sickle claw raised, staring into the middle distance.
"—and this fern has forty-one fronds, which is a personal record—"
The silence that followed was so complete it survived forty million years and came back with them.
Completely Different
When Otto finished the telling, he clasped his paws under his chin.
"Isn't that amazing? We were completely different."
Echo had not moved a feather.
"You spent the whole dream counting fronds."
Otto glanced down at the FIELD NOTES journal open on the blanket beside him. The pencil was already in his paw.
"…Forty-one is a lot, though."
The Naturalist Always Finds a Way
There is something reassuring buried in that dream. We tend to assume that becoming stronger, larger, braver, or more capable would make us into different creatures entirely — that with the right body we would finally do the dramatic thing. Roar from the top of the food chain. Have adventures.
But interests are stubborn. They follow you across bodies and epochs.
Give a gardener a prehistoric wetland and they will inspect the soil. Give a birder a feathered dinosaur and they will start comparing field marks. Give Otto two hundred kilos of muscle and a set of bone-crushing molars, and he will kneel down in the mud to count fern fronds.
Curiosity doesn't require modern equipment. It doesn't need a proper notebook, a sharpened pencil, or even pockets. Sometimes all it needs is a flat rock, some wet clay, and forty-one genuinely impressive fronds.
Field Note: However much the world changes, a dedicated plant enthusiast will eventually stop to examine the foliage. Usually while everyone else is waiting.