Recently I came across this quote from Teddy Roosevelt.  I think it appropriate to remember those field researchers who quietly go about their business of recording sounds, casting footprints  and looking for evidence.  Many of these individuals are unsung heroes not spending much time on the forums, chats or facebook. Instead they spend their spare time and vacations in the great American outdoors knowing that whatever they find or uncover will ultimately move the discovery of the last great mystery one step forward.

The Official White House portrait of  President Theodore Roosevelt
John Singer Sargent — American painter  – 1903

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy course; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt

“Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910