A Little Volunteer’s Big Green Diary——From a SEEDO volunteer “Seed”
I named myself “Seed” the day I signed up for Xishuangbanna, because I wanted to grow somewhere new. The idea started with a cartoon I saw at nine: a tiny girl watering an elephant that sprouted flowers. I asked Mum, “Can real elephants bloom?” She laughed, “No, but they can disappear.” That night my art teacher in RoSSo showed me the SEEDO brochure and said, “This is your chance to paint the flowers back.” I circled the date in glitter pen.
When the plane door opened, hot air hugged me like Grandma’s blanket. Mr. Yan, the ranger waiting outside, wore a hat pinned with tiny sunflowers. He knelt so we were the same height and said, “Welcome, little botanist.” I decided rangers are knights without horses.
The next morning we hiked into the forest. Mr. Yan taught us the gossip of plants: how banyan trees pay ants in sugar to be their bodyguards, and how elephant foot yam can trick beetles by pretending to be a dead rat (I squealed). He broke open a rattan stem and let water sweeter than coconut drip into my palm. “Plants have résumés,” he whispered. “Rattan: furniture maker; Dendrobium: medicine maker; fig: peace maker—everyone eats figs.” I drew little CVs in my notebook.
On Day 3 we cleaned elephant bedrooms. I found a blue hair-tangle that looked like mine and wondered if pachyderms like fashion too. While scooping poop (it smells of grass and fermented mango), I told the elephants, “I drew you with flowers once.” One flapped her ear, scattering seeds like confetti. I took it as a signature.
The night market twinkled like someone spilled stars on the ground. I bought a bracelet woven from pineapple fiber and asked the vendor Auntie if plants ever get lonely. She answered, “Only if we forget them.” I tucked the sentence behind my ear like a flower.
Saying goodbye, Mr. Yan gave me a dried wild coffee bean. “Plant it when you’re scared,” he said. “Courage grows slowly.” I keep it in my pencil case now, beside the pink notebook whose pages smell of elephant grass and strawberry gum.
I used to think saving the world needs capes. Now I know it needs curious kids who refuse to let gossiping plants, flower-eating beetles, or hat-wearing rangers vanish. One day I’ll return—taller, maybe braver—carrying a glitter pen still. And if the elephant remembers me, I’ll ask if she’s bloomed yet.
Next time I will not come as a tourist. I will arrive as a freshman biologist, armed with transect lines and bar-coded vials, ready to map every ant-plant contract and fig-wasp treaty. My major will be life itself—tropical canopy to forest floor, chloroplast to mitochondrion, human to elephant—woven together in one green syllable. When that day comes, I’ll kneel where Mr. Yan once knelt, press the wild coffee bean into the soil, and let both of us finally root.