The Posture of Exploration

I recently attended a conference that began with Story Musgrave (astronaut, farmer, and mechanic on the Hubble telescope) showing us a picture from his childhood in the 1930’s. In it, he was a small boy, crouched down, looking at something in the grass. He called this pose “The Posture of Exploration” and said that creativity stems from a childhood spent crouched in this position.

Later that afternoon, Dayna Baumeister (biologist and biomimicry expert) began her speech. She had a slideshow, too, and was astonished to find that she had a similar slide in her deck as well. In it, her children are crouched near rocks in a creek, looking down at whatever treasure they’d discovered. She said she’d put that slide in to illustrate the point that we should all take time to observe and study nature for inspiration.

As soon as her slide appeared on the screen, duplicating Story’s earlier slide, I immediately wondered whether I had similar slides of my children. I went home that night and pulled out the old photo albums and stacks of snapshots shoved to the back of old drawers. Sure enough, I had pictures of my own children in this same Posture of Exploration pose. Which lead me to believe two things.

First, that this pose is universal among children.  I suppose it’s only natural that children explore the ground beneath them. They often observe things that adults don’t notice, perhaps because they are closer to their subjects, or maybe because they have a more appreciative manner while they’re young. I remember when spying a caterpillar, or ant hill, or shiny quartz rock excited me. The wonder of children captures that old cliché that it’s the little things in life that matter. And as Story and Dayna both pointed out, that curiosity and appreciation of nature can lead to greater results in life.

The second realization I had as I held those two photos of my children in my hands, is that taking pictures of our children in the Posture of Exploration pose is something of a universal truth, too. Why is it that parents grab their cameras and snap a picture of their children crouched in wonder? It’s not because the pictures turn out well. In fact, you can’t tell what the children are looking at in any of the pictures I mention or show here. What we’re capturing instead is the beauty of seeing our children observe the world around them. For a moment, we are as mesmerized with the natural world as our children are, because we are seeing it anew through their eyes.