On a sweltering afternoon in Sebastopol, California, two graduate students knelt on the pavement in front of a wooden bench.

The June day was the hottest of the year so far. The sun scorched overhead, beaming down heat that pushed the temperature toward 100 degrees.

A handful of baby carpenter bees wriggled at their feet. They had hatched and crawled out from the tunnel their mother had dug in the bench, but it was too hot for them to fly away. Now, they lay dying on the pavement.

The two graduate students, crouched down in the summer heat, had contrived a device to give the bees little drops of water. Together, they coaxed these baby carpenter bees back to life.

What kind of act is this? It wasn’t part of their research, and the deep compassion of it can’t be explained by data alone. I think it points to something deeper: the power of paying attention to creation, and the way that attentively caring for it can draw us closer to the earth.