When I first started writing Tobago Peeps articles, some people asked me what will happen when I run out of topics.I don't think it is possible to run out of subject matter for these articles.Everything, everywhere and everyone, no matter how seemingly insignificant, is of value and interest and worth writing about. When we shift perspective and look beyond what is obvious, often overlooked aspects become evident, revealing multiple layers of our densely-packed existence.
In the everyday experience of life, something, someone or somewhere will 'pop out of the blue' and inspire me.Thinking about this process recently, I was reminded of a biology field trip back in secondary school days. On this excursion, we, the students, sampled the biodiversity of a particular environment by examining the presence of organisms (flora and fauna) within areas defined by randomly-tossed quadrats.
A quadrat is a tool (ours were wire frames, about one foot square) used for sampling plants and slow moving insects and small animals, like snails. Based on the findings in these unbiased quadrat samplings, which are smaller representations of the wider environment, we learned how we could roughly determine general biodiversity.