It is crazy to have seen how much the green belt changes throughout the months that I observed the area. I started out walking the trails with my loving girlfriend, and a proceeded to go over and over by myself. It was so peaceful. The rivers flow in a higher abundance now. This caught me off guard because the summer months are rearing up right around the corner. This last time I went I could not take pictures of the beautiful flow of the water like I normally do, they were crowded with screaming children and many dogs that splashed through the water. Either way it was nice though.
I walked through the trails with my dog and girlfriend for one last feel of the landscape for my blog, but sadly could not find total peace. The summer months in the green belt are filled with laughter and people talking, much different then when I first started in the winter months and the weather was nice and cold.
Either way I took in the beauty of nature as much as I could. There were a lot more leaves in the trees and bushes this go around. The foliage was beginning to grow back but not as much as I expected.
Here is a picture from my hike through a portion of the trial where many things were still dead.
When we got deeper into the trail it was much nicer. It was more peaceful and I could actually hear myself think. My girlfriend left me to walk the dog and I sat underneath the giant tree half way through the trail that I normally sit at, and I took a deep breath.
I heard birds, I heard things fall, and I heard some kind of animal rustling in the brush to the left of me. The rustling sounded like a small rodent if you will. The peace by the giant tree was wonderful. It was serene. I honestly did not hear much, but the silence was not still. It was a type of silence that was still, but not sound. There was always a noise somewhere that caught my mental concentration.
As Aldo Leopold said in “The Sand County Almanac” while discussing the beauty of nature, he states “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.”
That exact quote is how I feel every time I’m here, and every time I’m here and see people disrespecting the environment. People here constantly litter, and I’m constantly picking up after people. Its almost monotonous.
I enjoy the land and I love watching it change with the seasons, but I like to see the land as beautiful, and not dirty.
Having this class, Environmental Science, has given me the opportunity to realize the wrongs I have done in the past, and how I need to conserve more in the future. Another semester has passed by me without me even realizing it is over. This blog is my final assignment of the semester and it still is crazy to think of. This class has made me realize that I should have been more environmentally conscious of my surroundings. Through the course of this class I have made the initiative to change my whole family’s view on littering, and have started recycling. As a family we go around the neighborhood we live in and pick up trash every week.
Having to do this land ethic blog has made me grow to love nature for its beauty. I realize now that there is no longer many places where one person could find nature. The human populous has built so much and destroyed so much. It is absolutely terrible.
Hiking the green belt through the course of this semester has really grown on me. I more than likely will sit down every week and create my own blog. I love the peace of nature, and once a week I feel like I need that peace of mind.
After a hard week, you need that time to sit down, leave everything behind you, and just sit in peace and serenity. It takes a ton of burden off of my shoulders and lets a stressful week wash away with the sound of water flowing.
THE CLOUD
Some words I did not expect to be used as much as they were. Obvious ones such as “trail” and “Bunn Creek” showed up a lot. That is understandable, because when in nature most of the time you walk on a trail, and since many college students do not a have a form of transportation, Blunn Creek nature trail would be one of the best places to go. Location and obvious features of a trail make those words stand out.
Another word that stood out was “Leopold”, which makes sense because every blog entry had to have a quote from “The Sand County Almanac” which would be quoted by Leopold. When quoting someone you must give them credit.
“Almanac” stood out as well, I suppose for the same reasons, but I could be wrong.
A word I thought would not show up at all was the word “run”. I assumed no one would run the trail, or be active. If I ran a portion of the trail I never thought of mentioning it. When running you can not take in all of the beauty that nature offers due to your speed. I assumed no one would mention running unless talking about someone else, or a jogger.
I am going to miss this class greatly. It was super fun and the people were pretty nice. I enjoyed the teacher and material being learned. I like how the class was almost a contradiction to being in a religious school due to all of the material about evolution. In all though this class was amazing and I believe in a lot of the material.
I’m going to miss this class. To anyone reading, have a great summer!