For this blog entry, I decided to venture a little out of my daily exposure. I recently attended a retreat hosted though Campus Ministry at Cedarbrake Retreat Center in Belton, Texas. While on this retreat, we were encouraged to spend time outdoors and to explore. While I explored, I found that the overlook capture the most beautiful aspect of this particular region’s environment. I came back to the same place multiple times during the retreat. In my exposure to this particular area, I could not see very many animals aside from the occasional bat in the evening because I was too high up from the actual creek. There were of course some mosquitoes. What was beautiful in this place was the vast vegetation. Through my observations, each tree brought a different element to the area. There were some trees that had leaves and there were others that had not leaves but did have some Spanish moss. Overall, the tree that stood out the most was a leafless tree whose branches extended upward toward the sky. In A Sand County Almanac Leopold writes, “Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a shovel. By virtue of this curious loophole in the rules, any clodhopper may say: Let there be a tree – and there will be one.” Although this particular tree at Cedarbreak seemed to be over powered by the surrounding vegetation, this tree sprung up and managed to survive.
