- [Announcer] Generous support for the following program provided by the Bible Family Fund of the Denver Foundation and the O'Bannon Foundation, a fund of the Indianapolis Foundation.

(lighthearted strings music) - [Judy] As an 88-year resident of planet Earth, I'm constantly amazed by the infinite variety of activity I see going on around me, the complexity of it all, the way it all works together.

Every animal, every vegetable, every mineral; every solid, liquid, and gas, each its own unique contribution, just like us, to the bigger picture, the vast, infinite, interdependent, interconnected web of all creation.

I admit, it's a lot for me to process, more than I can handle on my own, which is why I reached out to these people.

- I exist because you exist.

- [Judy] Some of my most thoughtful and most thought-provoking fellow Hoosiers to help me sort it all out.

- I see this connectedness in my community where pieces fit together.

- You know, if we kind of allow science to inform our social understanding and whatnot, it's that we really are connected.

- [Judy] If there really is a true back and forth connection between everything and everyone, what does it mean?

How does it affect, or maybe how should it affect the way we live our lives, how we think and feel and believe and behave?

Good questions in search of good answers, which I hope we can get a little closer to as we explore the connections that exist between you and me, everyone, and everything everywhere.

(cultural bongo music) (uptempo percussive music) - So, I actually started wanting to be a park ranger when I was about nine.

- [Judy] We begin today with Bob Sawtelle, lifelong naturalist and retired property manager at O'Bannon Woods State Park in Harrison County, Indiana.

"Ranger Bob," as he's affectionately known, has dedicated his life to deepening the understanding and appreciation between us, you and me, and the natural world around us.

In order to feel connected, you need to sort of communicate, pass information.

Recently, I've read about even like fungi has this big network that's communicating.

Trees talk to each other.

What do you know about that?

- Well, I'm still trying to learn all I can, and yeah, life communicates, whether it's lichen on a tree that needs to have that relationship with algae, one provides food for the other and an ecosystem that they can co-exist.

Tree roots are intermixed, whole ecosystems.

One of the biggest ecosystems in the United States are cottonwood trees.

They're connected from all the way out west, right through our major river systems.

So, those cottonwood trees in Dakota are connected to the cottonwood trees along the Missouri, Mississippi River.

- How are they connected?

- It's all the interaction of roots and life and ecosystems.

- Nature's very complicated.

We'll probably never fully understand all the interconnectedness.

- [Judy] But that doesn't stop this man from trying.

Meet Larry Clemens, State Director of the Indiana Chapter of The Nature Conservancy.

- We look out this window here and we see the plants and the flowers and the trees, and we might see an occasional bird or butterfly, but that's the ecosystem that we're seeing.

What we're not seeing is what's going on below the surface of the ground with all the insects, the fungi, the bacteria, and things that are in the soil.

That's a whole 'nother world and ecosystem that we have there.

And so, it's sometimes hard to even fathom the complexity of nature.

We see what we see, and that's fine.

That's what I think gives us the satisfaction and sort of that spiritual connection.

It's a far more complex system that's occurring there beyond what we're just seeing with our eyes.

The farmers and how they handle their cropping systems here in Indiana have impacts downstream into the Mississippi, the Gulf of Mexico, because the nutrients that we apply here often run off and end up in the Gulf of Mexico, creating a dead zone there that impacts the shrimp farmers and the shrimp fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico.

So, it's really a connected world.

- Now, hellbender are one of the things you've been very active in the project, saving the hellbenders.

They're a gishy-looking little lizardy thing down in Blue River, and they don't exist very many places.

Tell me why we care if the hellbender exists.

- They absorb the oxygen and nutrients and everything through their skin.

They still feed on crayfish and minnows, but their skin is so absorbent of their world around them.

They are that canary in the mine.

If the hellbenders are doing well, then the river's doing well.

If the hellbenders aren't doing well, then the whole community is not doing well.

- [Judy] Meanwhile, up north, two hours from Blue River, where the hellbenders are, Larry Clemens was kind enough to give us a tour of The Nature Conservancy's Indiana headquarters.

- Blocks from downtown is the Efroymson Conservation Center, and I'm standing here on our green roof.

This building is unique in the fact that about 12 years ago, our lease was expiring on a small office building that we were in, and we realized that we needed, as an organization, to make a bit of a statement about sustainability and this notion of people and nature thriving together.

- Let's face it, Nature Conservancy needed to talk the talk and walk the walk, and they did.

- [Judy] This man ought to know.

Drew White is a partner with StudioAxis, the Indianapolis architectural firm that designed this bricks and mortar representation of what the conservancy's all about, the preservation and protection of our natural world.

- It felt like, for me, what was important about it was to study all of the components, but to deliver a project that meets the budget of any other corporate headquarters.

Those were the other challenges.

So for instance, the entire roof is all green roof.

- This roof stays green year round.

It absorbs oxygen, it absorbs heat, and it filters the water that lands on our roof that will ultimately go through pipes down into our basement and fill a water tank.

It's a 2,500 gallon tank where we have a reservoir essentially there of the water that lands on our roof, traveled through those pipes, and then is held down here that we can then use that water to flush toilets.

- We use it for sprinklering, and that water is stored in the lower level.

We have 3,300 feet geothermal wells that sit under the site, that provide the source of heating and cooling for the building.

We have daylight control systems.

The building, its orientation is very important.

It's a thin building, so natural light can come in from the north and the south.

That helps us with our energy consumption, because many times the lights aren't even on.

- These are our gardens here at the Efroymson Conservation Center.

These are all native plants, native trees that we have in our gardens, and it's just spectacular and a beautiful place here.

You see the various flowers that are here.

There are bees pollinating the flowers right now.

The habitat that we have created in downtown Indianapolis attracts rabbits.

We have raptors or hawks that come in here.

It's turned into a wonderful habitat.

People purposely come over here to walk through these gardens just to experience a little bit of nature in downtown Indianapolis.

And so we, again, wanted to demonstrate that people and nature thriving together.

And this is a fantastic and sustainable building here.

I think too often we have been taught that people in nature are separate, that we have our homes, nature has its home.

When in fact, we share a home together.

I was really fortunate in growing up and being so involved in nature.

It was right out my back door.

A lot of people don't have that, or quite honestly, they don't believe they have it, and yet they do.

Here we are sitting in downtown Indianapolis, our offices here, we have some of the most beautiful gardens.

Nature is right outside our door here.

- So again, it comes down to getting people to touch, feel, breathe, see, and experience their world around them.

And that can be as easily true in a city park, county park, state parks, national park, you know?

Get connected, which basically means get outside.

- [Judy] Back to O'Bannon Woods State Park for a few minutes.

This is Stanley Baelz.

Stanley succeeded Ranger Bob as the park's property manager.

Tell me when you feel most connected to life as you might see it through outdoor activity.

- So, for me, when I feel the most, most connected, there's a couple times that what I consider solitude.

And that's what I love about O'Bannon Woods State Park, is it reminds me of a western park like no other state park because you can get out there and be by yourself if you want to be.

In 10, 15 minutes, I can be, you know, where I may not see another person, if I wanted to, for a day or two, or now I can go into Wyandotte Cave.

There's one place in Wyandotte Cave where I can go and sit, turn out all the lights, there's some water running, and, for me, it just rejuvenates me, and it gives me that extra boost that I need.

A little bit of solitude, but then coming back and, you know, just be refreshed.

You become part of the woods.

- And I can only hope people take the time and take that walk in the woods or in their park or even in their neighborhood.

It's all right there, you know?

(festive strings music) - [Judy] Our visit to O'Bannon Woods State Park coincided with one of the park's monthly homestead days.

And lucky for us, we bumped into this woman, Debbie Striegel, a longtime park volunteer.

Why do you do this?

Why do you volunteer with this?

- It started because we liked the people.

And we had been coming here since we first got married, been married over 40 years, and we were campers, hikers, outdoor lovers.

But we loved the staff here, and we just connected with the staff.

And I loved that what they're doing is, it's not reenacting, it's more like living history is what we call it.

And that just really appealed to me.

I'm not playing a role, I'm literally living a role, and it's different.

- [Judy] Yes.

- It's more alive, and that just appealed to me.

- Well, why is that important that people experience that?

- I don't want 'em to lose the past.

To me personally, I don't wanna lose the past.

- What's the past do to today and tomorrow?

- I think everything in our history affects our future, and I don't wanna lose that connection.

That's my personal thought about it.

- Now, you're a weaver.

- I'm a weaver.

- This is one of your looms.

- This is one of the looms that- in fact, I started weaving because of the park.

They had a big antique loom here, and no one was weaving.

And I'm a fiber artist, I've been sewing for years and Indian crocheting.

So, I said, "I would like to weave," and they said, "We'd love to have a weaver on staff, a volunteer."

And so, I started weaving.

This just happens to be a portable loom that I use, and it's more unique because people haven't seen it before.

Historically, it's been around for centuries.

It's called an inkle loom, I-N-K-L-E, and it's just a different type of weaving.

In our country, it was used for holding their socks up or for straps on guns and different things like that, for belts, for their hat bands.

So historically, it's still in our history as well as other countries, but it's more unusual and I let people do it, you know?

I let them sit down and actually weave, and that's an experience people don't get.

- What does he give them when they do that?

- Oh, I can't tell you the expressions.

I've had 3-year-olds sit down and do that, and I've had 90-year-olds do it.

And they all give you this same, "Wow, I'm weaving.

This is so cool," because it's almost a lost art.

- How does it connect them with, like, the 3-year-old with people that they never even knew about?

- You know, what's cool about getting young kids to do it?

The parents are involved then.

You know, if I just get one adult to do it, "Oh, that adult's doing it, no big deal."

But when I get a young person to do it, everybody all of a sudden is like, "Wow, if they can do it, this is pretty cool," and everyone's really paying attention then.

So, I like to get the younger ones involved more so than the older ones, actually.

- Now how does weaving literally, and I can- show that how it takes a whole lot of things working together to create something?

How is that really shown by a loom and weaving?

- So, when you weave, you're literally moving these fibers back and forth.

You know, everything has motion to it.

Everything in the world has motion to it if you think about it.

So, this is one more example of motion to make that pattern come out, which is just a bunch of strings on a loom.

Doesn't look like anything special, but soon as I add that motion and run that shuttle through there, all of a sudden I've got a pattern just like in everything else in our lives, you know?

Everything can create something from that motion that's going on.

And that's what happens with weaving.

- Talk to me more about a pattern, how making a pattern out of strings relates to how having a pattern of how nature is, how veins on a leaf would be, then how society's working together, providing resources to their citizens.

Those patterns.

- Well, if you think about it, our whole life is patterns, you know?

For me, I like that they change, you know, I like the flexibility in patterns, you know.

Yes, a leaf is that leaf, but from one year to the next, that leaf will even change depending on its water source and, you know, it's environment.

Even that one leaf that might look the same to you, if you actually laid 'em side by side, they're not always exactly the same.

So, it's a pattern and yet it's a shifting pattern.

And society, aren't we a shifting pattern as well?

You know, I feel like that's all part of the same in pattern making and pattern creation, or, you know, the same as this.

I could change one thread color, if I just changed the white in that pattern, I've already got the same design but a whole new pattern because I've changed one thing in that pattern.

- What kind of a lesson, if you wanna speak of it as a lesson or directional guide, hearing that, a kid, a 13-year-old kid, what would they gain out of that that showed them something about their life?

- Hmm.

I think change is good.

Change is productive.

How I can change that one pattern that might have been historically very unique to that time period.

I put a hot pink in there, and I've already updated that entire pattern to a modern design, haven't I?

And now it appeals to that child that's born in this century, in this period in time.

- What is there about working with your hands, that feeling it as opposed to pushing a button?

- Exactly.

- What does that do to you?

- For me personally, hands on anytime is always gonna be better.

I'm a touchy-feely person anyway.

If I see a new fiber or a new anything, if I go to find new fibers to weave, I always have to touch them because it does tell me what that's gonna feel like when I weave with it.

Just 'cause it feels good here doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna weave well.

So for me, for weaving, I have to know what that feels like to know what kind of project I'm gonna get at the end of it.

- Does that give you a sense of connection to touch it?

- Oh sure, for sure.

And I encourage everyone to touch.

You know, so many things in our lives are, "Don't touch, don't touch, don't touch," and I encourage everyone, no matter what I'm doing.

- Here when you volunteer, and you work in this homestead here, is that a lot about touching and connecting?

- Definitely.

I think for everybody, you know, when they come visit here, and they see all that we're doing here, our old-time clothes, you know, we all are pretty diligent about trying to keep our clothing period and time correct, so they can really walk around and get a feel.

I have people say, "Oh, I would like to do this, but I don't have a skill."

I'm like, "You know what?

Dress up, walk around and talk to people.

Talk about the time period."

You don't have to necessarily have that skill to do some major craft, to feel a part of it, and to share that experience with people when they come in.

That's what they really want.

They want that experience.

- [Judy] Finally today, we spend a little time at IU Health in Indianapolis with Dr. Kristen Suhrie.

Talking to her left me with one of those rare, wonderful questions that actually answers itself.

And that question is, considering the genetic foundation that all living beings share, how could we be anything but connected?

- I am a neonatologist, which means I'm a pediatrician who specializes in caring for newborns.

What drew me to Indianapolis was my interest in genetic problems in babies was an area that IU and Riley wanted to focus on.

They wanted to figure out a better way to care for those babies with genetic problems.

- Now, tell me about your research.

- Yeah, so what we're working on is trying to understand when babies are born ill, and they're requiring ICU care in the NICU, how can we sort out who's there because they have a genetic problem, and how can we find out what that problem is?

Every being, be it an animal, plant, whatever, we all have something in us called DNA.

And so, what that is is a compound that is composed of specific amino acids.

There's only four different ones.

And those four different ones, their order through this long chain, it's called a double helix, is what this makes.

And those four different letters are what makes us all unique.

It's in every part of our body, and it really tells our bodies how they should be formed, how they should function, and they make each of us who we are.

So, we all have the same basic materials make up who we are, but it's how that DNA is structured that makes us unique.

- [Judy] You as a pediatric geneticist, how does that affect you when you think, as an individual, about questions that are spiritual or artistic or political?

Economic?

- Yeah, I think everything is just connected together.

So, you don't have to have one without the other.

And so, your beliefs and your experience in life and your DNA, it's all connected, right?

So, our experience in life is largely dependent on who we are.

You know, my experience of being, you know, who I am and where I'm from was part of my DNA, right?

So, my parents are from a certain place.

It was their DNA that made me, and how that interacts with my environment manifests as how your spirituality comes out, how your beliefs about different economics and things like that.

It's all connected.

Well, you know, I think if we all just kind of realize that, you know, what's in all of us is the same.

So, you know, and tying these things back to DNA and genetics, you know, that's in all of us, and like we talked about, that it's just those four little changes in DNA that make all the difference.

But if we go back and say, "But we all have DNA," so we all have something in common, right?

We all have that substance in us.

It's just slight variations of that that make this great diversity that we have.

And so if we, you know, see some difference, if we can also realize that that's really the basis of our commonality as well, is that that DNA, it's in all of us.

It's just slight differences that make these differences that we see in one another, but it's all the same, really.

It's all DNA.

And I think the reality is is that we're really all related, you know?

We all kind of have descended from, you know, this common point.

And I think that that's really kind of the unique thing that genetics and DNA has taught us.

You know, if we kind of allow science to inform our social understanding and whatnot, it's that we really are connected.

You know, these connections through DNA, they're passed down from generation to generation.

Just knowing how interconnected everything is, I think it kind of calls for us to be more thoughtful about the decisions we make, you know, to know that the decisions that I make not only impact me or other people, but they impact other organisms and our environment.

And so, trying to think about taking this big picture approach to life in general, I think science really helps to do that.

And understanding, you know, how our DNA and our genetics, that same basis is in everything in our environment.

(ethnic music) - Whether in the woods with Bob Sawtelle or Stanley Baelz, or in the urban natural think tank of Larry Clemens, or even in the midst of those who apply their passions in architecture like Drew White, textile arts and history like Debbie Striegel, or even a medical researcher such as Dr. Kristen Suhrie, I feel the web of comfort around me.

I'm not adrift in a vast unknown.

Look about you.

Where are your security blankets and your inspiration in all this we call life?

I'm Judy O'Bannon, thanks for watching.

(ethnic music continues) - [Announcer] Generous support provided by the Bible Family Fund of the Denver Foundation and the O'Bannon Foundation, a fund of the Indianapolis Foundation.