To be a majestic bundle of life and energy like a seed! Swimming through the water, soaring through the air, traveling across the lands ... Wait, what? Motionless is a common way to describe plants.

Haldre Rogers’s entry into ecology came via the sort of man-made calamity that scientists euphemistically call an “accidental experiment.” She’d taken a job in 2002 on the Pacific island of Guam and ...