My family flew out to the east coast for fall break to see me and my brother who goes to Colgate, but also to show my youngest brother who is a senior in high school some different schools on the east coast. The goal was to show him one school that was urban (Fordham), one school that was semi-urban (Lafayette), and one school that was rural (Colgate). I visited all of these schools with him, and one of the things that stood out to me while visiting them was the “nature” found on campus at each place and what green initiatives were apparent on campus.

Out of all three schools, colgate seemed to be the most environmentally friendly. I know through my brother that they require two outdoor education classes, but their campus also encourages a lot of interaction with the environment. It had a lot of green space and there were wild animals such as geese all over the place. There were also a lot of signs and projects advocating for being environmentally friendly. Fordham also had a lot of birds on its campus, but the small patches of green space were nothing compared to colgates rolling fields and dense forrest.

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For the last three summers I have worked at a family camp in the Sierra Nevada Mountains called the Lair of the Bear. I always miss the Lair when I am on the east coast, but reading John Muir’s vivid descriptions of Hetch Hetchy made me really miss my home away from home last night. Check out where I spend my summers:

Our Staff Area. We slept without tent tops under the stars

Playing Snappa

The top of half dome

Creekside

Pinecrest Lake

Therapy

While our class will be going to the Nurture Nature Center in Easton for the first time tomorrow, I went for my first a week ago to begin my work volunteering there. As background:

“The Nurture Nature Center, located in Easton, Pennsylvania, is a dynamic center for community learning about local environmental risks. NNC is housed in a beautifully renovated, historic, 30,000 square foot facility, where the staff uses a blend of science, art and dialogue programs to get the community talking and thinking critically about the local environment.”

When I went to the NNC the thing that intrigued me the most was the different artwork and photographs around the building. I wondered why the center had chosen those specific photographs and whether research had been done to see if the photographs chosen connected individuals with the environment similar to the murals we discussed in class. When we visit tomorrow everyone should try to look at the walls and try to determine the motivations for selection.

In the older clearcuts I can see a fuzz of seedlings. They are all Douglas fir, since the other less profitable species that might grow there have been poisoned. When they are mature they will not add up to a forest, but to something like a gargantuan cornfield, with each tree the same size and shape, placed a scientific distance from its neighbors (Feasting on Mountains 61)

I completely agree with Sanders that nature cannot be copied through human efforts. What I see above is not nature. It is not a interconnected ecosystem, it is calculated and separate. The only way humans can recreate nature after it is destroyed is to leave it alone.

In our third visit to the site our group made a conscious effort to try and notice something we had not previously noticed about the site and to notice something that had changed. The first thing we immediately noticed that was new was the smell of the island. It was not a new thing we had to search for. As we had walked across the bridge, we had all wrinkled our noses at the terrible smell, but assumed it was from the construction site. Yet after walking down to the shore the smell remained. We were confused by the origin of the smell, but new it was overpowering and smelled like mold. It changed the way we viewed our site and how long we had hoped to stay there. The main change we noticed in our third trip down to the site was that many of the leaves closest to the shore had begun to change into their fall colors while those further away remained green. We wondered whether this was due to the type of plant that grew closer to the shore or that it was slightly warmer further away from the water.

Along with visiting the island, this week our group did a lot of background research. We discovered that Getter’s Island sits in the Delaware opposite the mouth of the Bushkill River at Easton. Years ago the place was called Abel Island. It was named for a respected local family who listed the island among its extensive land holdings, although some people believed in commemoration of a murder. The island’s association with murder, and its present name, didn’t occur until long after that original crime in 1833.

Carl Getter was a young recent German immigrant who had found employment as a farm laborer in Easton. Carl was known for being quite the ladies man. On January 19, 1833, he was charged by Margaret Lawall with being the father of his unborn child. The Easton magistrate gave him a choice of marriage or prison, and he chose to marry her, hoping it would be the easier path. Although married, Carl continued to pursue other women, namely being Molly Hummer. Carl liked Molly a lot, and chose to end his short marriage to Margaret.

On the frozen morning of February 28, the body of Margaret Lawall Getter was found in a limestone quarry about three miles from Easton. The woman, still with her unborn child, was choked to death. Police arrested Getter the very same day for her murder.

The murder became the area’s most sensational crime. Getter’s lawyer could not get him off of the hook and he to be hung on October 31^st. Due to the intense public interest, the hanging was to occur on Abel’s Island. People came and stayed in hotels near Easton to see the hanging.

The first time they tried to hang him, the rope broke when he was only three feet off the ground. Getter smirked and said, “Well that was good for nothing.” The second time when the job was done, Getter remained in the air for eleven minutes quivering, when all motion ceased. After 30 minutes he was cut down and put in his coffin.

Although Getter’s life was short, he is now immortal because the Island lives on in his name.

The island was the site of another tragedy thirty years later when the steamboat Alfred Thomas exploded on its shore. From this catastrophe- the barren sands were strewn with the bodies of innocent victims who, unlike Carl Getter, had committed no crime at all.

The above photo was on top of our guide for the camping trip this weekend. The second cartoon reminded me a lot of my experience climbing half dome. I spent four hours during the middle of the night climbing half dome by headlamp. When I finally reached the top the sun was beginning to rise, and the first thing I did was take out my phone. Because half dome is so high in elevation, it surprisingly gets perfect cell signal. I had known this before my hike, so had messaged the rest of my family who were in Cambodia telling them I would have service and the approximate time I would be up at the top. I immediately facetimed my family from around the world and talked to them and showed them the view and the sunrise. In some ways I think this ability is absolutely amazing. My family can be on a trip thousands of miles away and still experience what I experience and see what I see. I think it is an incredible use of technology. Yet on the other hand I felt slightly impure or off that my first move upon achieving an incredible accomplishment was to pull out my phone and document it. In such a pristine “wild” place it felt weird using technology.

“God was on the mountaintop, in the chasm, in the waterfall, in the thundercloud, in the rainbow, in the sunset. One has only to think of the sites that Americans chose for their first national parks–Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Ranier, Zion–to realize virtually all of them fit into one or more of these categories”

I had never examined how national parks were chosen and I found it very true and very interesting that those that were the most aesthetically pleasing were the best protected. Other ecosystems such as wetland may actually have more valuable ecosystem services and biodiversity to protect, but they were not as well protected because they did not have the feeling of God.

“Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that musty old cheese that we are”

In some ways this passage speaks to me. Like Thoreau, I hate small talk and find it an annoying part of society. Yet I believe the more time you spend with a person the more interesting and relevant the conversation becomes. It does not have to be new things that have occurred in the recent hours since you last saw each other but instead conversation could be about the past and about learning each other’s true personalities.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/environment/investigation-finds-exxon-ignored-its-own-early-climate-change-warnings/

Very interesting article. Check it out

Some people may look at the abandoned houses of Elkmont, Tennessee and see a classic example of human waste and excess. These perfectly functioning houses built with natural resources such as logs cut down from the local forest have been abandoned. They are no longer hospitable in the slightest, and people who may have lived there will now be using additional resources to build new houses in a new location. Instead of having natural forest there is now a ghost town serving no purpose other than entertaining tourists.

I actually found the abandoned houses beautiful and reassuring.

The houses look as though they are being swallowed back into the forest. The image comforted and reassured me because it made me confident of the fact that nature and wilderness would recover, irregardless of what humans do to the planet. There is a lot of worry with climate change that humans are going to permanently alter the planet and ruin it. This picture reminded me that while climate change could potentially make this planet inhospitable towards humans, nature will always adapt and survive. Nature will always reclaim its land.

I was having an amazing day Saturday kayaking down the Delaware river. It was incredibly peaceful and beautiful. Then I noticed some trash by the side of the river, just a small piece of paper. It broke up the rest of the landscape, stark and white against the brown rocks. It also annoyed me, a lot. I find littering to be one of the things people do that annoys me most because it is so avoidable. Once I had noticed the first piece of litter I began looking for more over and over on the riverbanks. I noticed a lot, probably one piece big or small every 50 or 100 yards.

At one point I noticed a crushed ping pong ball floating 10 feet in front of my cabin. I was in the front of the group, and after trying to catch the ping pong ball and missing, I turned to watch it float away. I watched it float through our entire group, and saw no one pick it up despite all of us caring about the environment. I do not believe this is because we are bad people. I believe it is because most people did not see it, and those who did saw it through the corner of their eye and did not register what it was.

This experience made me think about how much trash we walk by on a daily basis without noticing it. The next morning, thinking about trash I made sure to pay attention to what was on the ground while walking to wawa. In a two block walk I saw two plastic cups, ten cigarette butts, and a panini box. What was incredible to me about this is that I am sure there is the same amount of trash there on a daily basis but I usually never notice any of it. I wonder if other people are like me or I am simply absentminded.