Vanessa's Journal

April 7, 2009

A Panda Says Goodbye

I am writing this entry from a city hotel room with the sounds of beeping car horns in the background and the smell of concrete permeating the air. I already feel a world away from the nature reserve and our field station, and I have only been gone but a few hours. With my soon-to-expire visa in hand, I am returning back to my “other life” in the United States. I will soon trade muddy boots, wildlife encounters in the woods and spicy Sichuan food for a life of ballet class, Big 10 football and sushi restaurants. Such is the dichotomy that is my existence.

It was more difficult than usual to leave this year, even though this has been my longest trip to China, at five months. It was with a sense of regret that we closed the panda traps for the season. We are worn out from the daily grind of trapping and we simply cannot interfere with the fast-approaching mating season in our trapping area. The sound of failure was almost deafening as we hiked down the mountain mostly in silence. I will not pretend that it is not difficult to relive this overwhelming feeling of empty-handedness for the second year in a row. And yet here I am.

As much as it has been a field season to look back on with many regrets and missed opportunities, it has also been my favorite field season and the one that I have learned the most from. My experiences in China can be told as a coming of age story and this year feels like a culmination of the journey in many ways.

I stepped foot on the soil of panda country in May of 2004 fresh out of undergraduate school, with lots of bright ideas about science but with so much yet to learn about life. My teachers have been my local friends, my colleagues and of course the animals themselves. They have kept me going in moments of self-doubt and given me a chance to see the world through a different lens. It is in the small moments I see quiet beauty and realize the precious gem that is every life, such as two birds singing next to me to their hearts’ content, a red panda staring through me from the tree tops, a farmer friend excitedly running to greet me through rows of plowed fields, his jacket flapping in the wind, or the rows of warm faces staring back at me from around a dinner table full of good food and laughter.

On a snowy day in late March, after months of weary panda trapping day-in and day-out, I chose to celebrate this. I decided to erect a snow panda named Wuyi, after our field station Wuyipeng, to commemorate four-plus months of joy, friendship and life. It melted away within a few hours, but the memories have forever become a part of the fabric that is my life.

This year I showed up to a place that was not the same one that I left. The earthquake destroyed so much that will never be replaced. The loss continues to be a heavy load for people to carry. And yet here we are with a new season, a new springtime. As we drove out of the reserve for the last time this season, I couldn’t help but notice that grass was springing up in the most unlikely places beneath piles of boulders. And as we hiked down the mountain for the last time, we noticed that farmers had already begun to plant their fields. Some fields had large, unmovable boulders from fallen landslides scattered throughout their otherwise perfectly plowed lines. I was humbled by the fact that even though rocks invaded their fields, they didn’t stop their way of life. They picked themselves up, kept farming anyway and just learned to work around the barriers as best as they could. If they can do that against the backdrop of all of the challenges that lie ahead for them, we too have got to keep going as we stumble across comparatively small challenges over the course of our long-term project.

And so the panda trapping will continue next fall. It may be in a different form. There may be different people and new traps. But we will come with the same goal as we have for the last two seasons. This season was certainly different than last in the sense that with all of our close calls, we learned so much about what the pandas are doing and how they are responding to our traps. We will take all of this information to heart and try to do better the next time around. Despite it all, we still remain amazingly optimistic that one day will be “the day.” And whenever it is that that day comes, we had better be ready for it.

Thanks again for anyone out there following along and sending us their supportive energy. I will leave you with a story from our very last day of trapping.

We had not seen a single giant panda sign for over two weeks. Not a footprint, not a sound. It seemed that not a single soul was around in our trapping area. We were groping for the end. On that last day, it was a dismal time to be out hiking as the snow fell continuously and mixed with mud, the sun nowhere to be found. The reality of failure hit us all like a ton of bricks that day as I sat back at the field station, partly holding out for a miracle as I waited for the rest of the team to return. Our team had closed eight out of 10 of the traps for the season and were making their way around to the final two. They were descending a long hill when up ahead of them they saw the distinct figure of a giant panda up ahead set against the backdrop of falling snow. Oddly enough, the panda never noticed them. It was facing the other direction and slowly walking away. It never looked back or gave them a passing glance as they just stared, open-mouthed. It just kept on walking into the bamboo.

This was our goodbye message from the pandas. A quiet, unassuming individual gave us a parting glimpse into a world we will never fully understand. Maybe this was a tease after months of trying to capture this elusive animal, but I prefer to see it as a precious gift. After sharing the same space for months, we say goodbye to them as well. We will meet again as we continue on our path and they continue on theirs. We can only hope that our paths will cross again soon.