It is not every day that Bucknell becomes a portal to the rainforest.
On the evening of September 30, the Weis Center for the Performing Arts transformed. What began as a crisp fall night soon unfolded into an immersive journey through one of the world’s most vital and endangered ecosystems. The performance, an extraordinary multimedia presentation by National Geographic explorer and ecologist Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, pulled back the canopy’s veil and invited us not just to see the rainforest but to feel it.
Even before the lights dimmed, the Atrium pulsed with life. The Environmental Expo turned the space into a microcosm of the world Dr. Nadkarni studies, alive, breathing, and interdependent. Tables filled with displays from DCNR, Linn Conservancy, Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper, Seven Mountains Audubon, and the Susquehanna Greenway Partnership surrounded visitors with stories of care and conservation. These were not distant causes but human efforts, faces and hands dedicated to protecting the very earth we walk upon.
Inside the theater, the transformation deepened. As images of emerald treetops and shifting light filled the screen, Dr. Nadkarni guided us upward into the canopy, where life thrives between earth and sky. Her voice, calm yet urgent, carried us through decades of discovery. This was more than a lecture. It was a passage. Each photograph, each sound, each pause drew us closer to the truth that the rainforest is not separate from us, it is us.
Her reflections flowed seamlessly between the scientific and the spiritual. She spoke of nitrogen cycles in single leaves and of the human cycles of redemption and renewal she has witnessed while bringing the language of nature into prisons, churches, and classrooms. What she offered was not just research but reverence. Her work reminded us that science, at its heart, is an act of empathy.
The atmosphere within the auditorium mirrored the very forest she spoke of, alive, breathing, and deeply connected. There was a stillness that held both awe and understanding, a quiet recognition that the rainforest’s story was, in many ways, our own.
Dr. Nadkarni’s visit was more than a single evening. It was part of a larger residency that extended her reach beyond the stage, into classrooms, conversations, and hearts. Over a hundred students met her the day before during a Residential College Common Hour, where she spoke not only about her research but about curiosity as a form of care. Many left with notebooks filled not with data but with questions that felt alive.
In her presence, the boundaries between science and soul, between learning and living, seemed to fade.
Events like these remind us that education can be both rigorous and tender, that knowledge can take root not only in the mind but in the heart.
When the final images faded and applause rose, it felt less like the end of a talk and more like the beginning of a relationship with the rainforest, with one another, and with the shared world we inhabit.
Something had taken root that night, something gentle, growing, and profoundly alive.
~Shaheryar Asghar, Class of ’28