This past May, a couple of months before I discovered iNaturalist, my partner, Ryan, and I went hiking with my family in the hills west of San Jose, where clumps of trees and chaparral mottle pillows of golden grass. As we walked, Ryan and I tried to identify what we saw: over there, a cabbage white butterfly; this was definitely some kind of oak; a Western scrub jay — or was that a Steller’s? Bemused, perhaps slightly annoyed, my father interjected: “Why is it so important to know the names?”
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