Summer has officially arrived! It may not actually be summer yet, but it sure feels like it. I have a love-hate relationship with the trail right now, because I love seeing the flora thrive but I hate the heat! But alas, I still try and go everyday, not just for exercise, but to see how out of control the plants are. The amount of growth since January is unremarkable. What started out looking like a Tim Burton film now looks like a Dr. Seuss wonderland. The trees that were once just branches and now draped in leaves. The grass that was once crisp and dry is now rich and overgrown. The main reason the grass was overgrown was because there were bluebonnets growing in it.
The only constant I noticed was the amount of birds, because I guess they are just starving year round. All in all, everything was beautiful and the perfect subject to write about in my April blog. Almost too perfect…
I had a strange feeling that things were about to change around the trail. Throughout the past few months, there had been certain things I had noticed happening on the trail. Most days that I went running, I noticed a construction worker somewhere along the trail. I tried to ignore it at first, because for the past three months I had been writing about how nice the trail was because of its preservation of nature and biotic ecosystems. I was afraid that maybe they were going to build something that would ruin the peaceful outdoor atmosphere. When I looked it up and found out they were building a bathroom, I was skeptical. However, I understood the necessity because there were no bathrooms along the trail, so I was willing to have an open mind.
They finally finished building the bathrooms a couple of weeks ago, and believe it or not, they are actually really aesthetically pleasing. They look really abstract, but still very beautiful and natural, like they belong in this environment.
I found a quote from Aldo Leopold that related to how I felt about the bathrooms. “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”- Aldo Leopold. I don’t think that they take anything away from the environment like I thought they would, but actually add something. So now that I had dealt with the bathroom issue, I thought that I could rest easy that the trail that I had been observing would be remained untouched. But the very next day, I saw another construction worker! This time, I decided to follow him and see what he was working on. To my surprise, I found out that they were actually helping the trees! They are a part of The Trail Foundation’s mission to help proper canopy pruning and root pruning.
The Trail Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to protecting and enhancing the trail. I was so pleasantly surprised to see that everything I was originally worried about turned out to be helping and contributing to the trail.
I think that the reason I was so worried about all of these things was because of all the problematic things I have learned this semester in Environmental Science. There are so many issues in the world with deforestation and the destruction of ecosystems right now that I feared for this beautiful area I had been studying. I realized that I need to put more faith in Austin. Austin is actually extremely environmentally conscious and I was reminded of that because of what was happening to the trail. There are many non profit organizations in addition to The Trail Foundation that strive to keep Town Lake healthy. One organization called Keep Austin Beautiful conducts large scale cleanups along the lake every other month and targeted cleanups throughout the year. I am proud to say that I live in Austin because of all of the wonderful things we do to protect the environment.
Throughout this semester, because of my environmental science class and posting this nature blog, I have become so much more appreciative of the environment. Before this year, nature was always just something that was there. I never really acknowledged it because I was usually distracted with technology. Now, I only bring my phone with me to the trail so I can take pictures of all of the fascinating landmarks I run in to. In this moment, I consider myself to be part of the minority that Aldo Leopold mentions in the following quote. “Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher ‘standard of living’ is worth its cost in things natural, wild and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television.”- Aldo Leopold.
Not only have I become more appreciative of nature, but I also think that experiencing nature on a regular basis has made me a happier person. With the stress of school, it is easy to just go from place to place without taking a minute to breathe. Now that I go around the trail so often, it gives me a chance to collect my thoughts from the day and reflect on how I am feeling. I think that interacting with nature has helped me find an inner peace that I didn’t have before when I would just go directly from school to watching television. I am not the only one who feels like this. Judging from the word cloud, it seems like everyone in my Environmental Science class had a pleasurable experience with nature this semester. There have been numerous studies that show the health benefits of viewing nature and going outside. The health benefits could be increased pleasurable emotional states, healing, reducing stress, anxiety and aggression, and improving cognitive abilities. If I had to simply sum up what I learned from writing this nature blog, it is that everyone needs to go outside more!
