Ieasa Custer- Paideia Keynote Speaker. 1 (outside ‘reading’)

 On April 14th at 3pm, Dr. Nigel Rothfels presented the keynote address at Christopher Newport's 23rd annual Paideia. His lecture was entitled “Elephant Trails: A Personal Journey” and was a beautiful narrative. He began the address by showing a picture of a wooded area and stating that it would tie into a later part of his speech. In this talk Dr. Rothfels presented the life stories of a few elephants that he had encountered along his studies. The first one he actually met after its death. While examining some bones he had found this elephant bone that was labeled as having ‘no history’, believing it was impossible to have none at all so he began investigating. I found more of the same bones and traced them all back to one elephant and from there was able to write the life story backwards. He did this type of work several more times and each time he was able to create a unique and personal story for the elephant. AT the end of the lecture he explained that the picture that illustrated a wooded area with several knocked down trees was indeed an elephant trail. All thought that this lecture and metaphor related well to how we should view nature. Each animal, person, and even plan we encounter has a story behind it that could go on forever. We may not always examine it as closely as these elephant trails but they are important. His next project is to do the same thing with butterflies.