Castellanos: February
This month for my nature blog post I have decided talk about my outing at Blunn Creek in Austin. It was a chilly day with enough sunlight to make the weather pleasant to be outside and go for a walk. Being a busy college student, always having something to do, can be very stressful and setting a time to go outside is difficult to plan, but it is always definitely worth it.
It’s incredible how close we are so close to nature and we seem to be caught up in our own world and forget how simply being outside can help us feel better.
As I began walking on the trail, the sound of the passing cars on the nearby street where the trail begins could be heard but began to fade away as I walked deeper into the trail. At that moment I realized how nice it was to escape the noise from the city and not have anything in your mind and just listen to nature. The sound of nature is something beautiful, whether it be the sound of rustling of leaves above you due to the wind or the chirping of a nearby bird trying to make it through the winter. It is definitely nice to be surrounded by trees instead of concrete. As I walk through the trail I notice clearings done purposely to try to minimize the invasive species such as ligustrum which have had an impact on the Blunn Creek ecosystem and prevent the native species from thriving. As I continued the trail I expected to observe animal life, but was disappointed to not encounter much animal life. I walked along the trail and came close to the creek where I chose a spot to simply sit, observe, and relax. I truly enjoyed sitting there observing and listening to the water flow, it was very relaxing and peaceful. Something that seemed to fit perfectly with the stressful college life.
For this blog entry I decided to not focus so much on the vegetation and animal life but on the role that the environment can play in our live and vice versa. Our relationship with nature is very closely connected and sometimes we fail to realize the close-knitted relationship we have. We tend to also forget that we are a part of nature and that we are having a great impact on it. Humanity is in charge for most if not all the changes that are occurring in the environment on a global scale. My nature outing at Blunn Creek made me realize that we are affecting our local ecosystems more than we realize. The Blunn Creek Preserve is surrounded by the city life and all its pollution, and I believe it should be different maybe if everyone had a moment to be by surrounded by nature and forget all about the city life maybe then they could realize the huge impact we are having on our beautiful environment.
“Man always kills the things he loves, and so we the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we had to. Be that as it may, I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in.” –Aldo Leopold
It makes me sad that we are having such a negative impact on something so big that has given us life for so many years. Unlike Leopold I am not guaranteed nor are my children to live a young life in such a wild beautiful country, like it was for him.