“In a pleasant spring morning all men’s sins are forgiven. Such a day is a truce to vice. While such a sun holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return. Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors. You may have known your neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world; but the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning, recreating the world, and you meet him at some serene work, and see how it is exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy and bless the new day, feel the spring influence with the innocence of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten” (Thoreau 341).

This impression of spring expressed by Thoreau struck me. Everything does seem new and innocent in the spring, and he extends this to man.

“In the spring the wish to wander is partly composed of an unnamable irritation, born of long inactivity; in the fall the impulse is more pure, more inexplicable, and more urgent.” (Dillard 249).

This impression of spring, as well as fall, expressed by Dillard also stood out to me. She has observed that the bustle of and wish to wander in spring and fall are of a different nature.

Today Maggie and I were walking up the hill from the media workshop when I saw something I see about once a year on campus. I saw it and exclaimed “Look a monkey brain!”. Maggie had never heard of “Monkey Brains” and had never seen one before; I had come to know these large, lumpy, green fruits by that name as a child. We spent our way up talking about them and trying to find some broken ones to look into. However, while we were talking I realized every time I find one of these at school and call it a “Monkey Brain”, no one has any idea what I mean. So today I learned the official name of this strange thing–the Osage Orange (Maclura pomifera). Be on the lookout for these cool, curious fruits in our Lafayette backyard!

For some more information on the Osage Orange:
http://www.augustaga.gov/1624/Osage-Orange

“They possess a quite dazzling and transcendent beauty which separates them by a wide interval from the cadaverous cod and haddock whose fame is trumpeted in our streets. They are not green like pines, nor gray like stones, nor blue like the sky; but they have, to my eyes, if possible, yet rarer colors, like flowers and precious stones, as if they were pearls, the animalized nuclei or crystals of the Walden water. They of course, are Walden all over and all through; are themselves small Waldens in the animal kingdom, Waldenses” (Thoreau 309).

It would seem through the winter Thoreau is struggling connect spiritually, but here he begins to reconnect in this chapter. He once again finds this “transcendent beauty” musing in him once again spiritual, transcendental thought.

“Such a rule of two diameters not only guides us towards the sun in the system and the heart in the man, but draws lines through the length and the breadth of the aggregate of man’s particular daily behaviors and waves of life into his coves and inlets, and where they intersect will be the height and depth of his character” (Thoreau 315).

Here Thoreau seems muse the idea of extending this analysis of pond topography to an analysis of the depth of man’s character.

“No, she must keep silence! What is it that suddenly forbids her and makes her dumb? Has she been nine years growing, and now, when the great world for the first time puts out her hand to her, must she thrust it aside for a bird’s sake? The murmur of the pine’s green branches is in her ears, she remembers how the white heron came flying through the golden air and how they watched the sea and the morning together, and Sylvia cannot speak, she cannot tell the heron’s secret and give its life away” (Jewett 1207).

I interpreted this quote as a passage that summed up the main character’s inner struggle. She has these social anxieties that nature allows her to escape. In this one instance telling the hunter of the bird’s whereabouts would allow her to step into the social world and escape these anxieties, but she realizes she cannot do that. Nature has been her comfort away from the uncomfortable social world, and she cannot do it wrong as a way of trying to step into the social world.

In Sterba’s chapter Teddies, we learn about how wild beasts once feared by the settlers and Native Americans took on an image as cuddly, friendly creatures. Sterba explains the phenomenon by discussing its occurrence in Europe, “Long before the modern era, however, bears had taken their unique place in European cultural mythology. Extirpated from most of Europe for centuries, they became the subjects of stories, folktales, and books, often portrayed as cute, even cuddly, and almost human. Later, in films and on television, they could be shown to behave like people. As real wild bears receded from memory, anthropomorphized bears took their place” (466-467). In this chapter Sterba mentions a number of examples of how this has occurred in our society. Here are some of the mentioned examples below:

<a href="http://sites.lafayette.edu/evst254-fa15/files/2015/10

/Bear-in-Circus.jpg”>

At the end of the chapter he brings this issue back up and connects it to our “denaturing”. “In our minds, we have always given animals human traits. We romanticize and sentimentalize them as members of the animal kingdom to which we belong. Children grow up surrounded by images of wild animals presented as furry or feathery little people like them. We learn from our pets how some animals live and then mistakenly project that knowledge onto wild creatures living a much different reality. In the past, however, people had enough direct experience in the natural world to to sort sentiment from reality. Not so today. Today’s denatured adults often continue to see bears and other wild animals the way they did as children without the corrective lens of direct experience” (185).

After reading about how forests in the United States have changed since European settlement, I was curious about how that image would look from above. While looking for some sort of image that might demonstrate the trends Stirba discussed I found this image from NASA that shows exactly what Stirba was talking about. Based on satellite data, NASA has noticed as well that forests are regenerating and it is different growth. They have been able to observe this regenerative growth is different than what there was before as the forests have different albedos (reflectiveness of forests changed- different growth, lighter colored, different reflectivity) than they did in 1650.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/AncientForest/ancient_forest6.php

The last of that stirp, sole survivor of the family. Little did the dusky children think that the puny slip with its two eyes only, which they stuck in the ground of the shadow of the house and daily watered, would root itself so, and outlive them and house itself in the rear that shaded it, and a grown man’s garden and orchard, and tell their story faintly to the lone wanderer a half century after they had grown up and died (Thoreau 286).

This passage from Thoreau made me think of Nick’s earlier post in which he considered the age of the trees he was picking leaves from on the day of our leaf snap ramble. In this chapter Thoreau discusses all the neighbors who once lived there, and the nature near them seems to tell a story.

For a long time he stood still and listened to their music, so sweet to a hunter’s ear, when suddenly the fox appeared, threading the solemn aisles with an easy coursing pace, whose sound was concealed by a sympathetic rustle of leaves, swift and still, keeping the ground, leaving his pursuers far behind; and leaping upon a rock amid the woods, he sat erect and listening, with his back to the hunter. For a moment compassion restrained the latter’s arm; but that was a short-lived mood, and as quick as thought can follow thought his piece was leveled, and whang!- the fox rolling over the rock lay dead on the ground (Thoreau 302).

I found this passage interesting as I feel we have discussed regret following the hunting of animal such as in Leopold’s “Thinking Like a Mountain”. This passage stood out to me as this instance seems strange as the hunter hesistates briefly due to compassion prior to shooting the fox.

Seeing the same bit of nature at different times can be such an interesting experience. Over years, over seasons, and even over just the course of one day, a nature scene can change so much. The change in the nature of our trail that I observed over the course of our hike was fascinating, and showed me how dynamic nature can be.

Starting up the trail in the morning the trail seemed so quiet with the exception of some fellow hikers and their canine companions. About thirty minutes into the hike I realized just how quiet it was. I had not yet heard the call of a bird, the leaf-rustling of a chipmunk, or even the buzz of an insect. I continued to notice there were very few sounds to be heard besides the noise of our steps, conversation, and the rustling of leaves in the wind.

However, upon our return back down the trail I noticed the forest seemed to come alive. The forest was bustling with chipmunks scurrying back and forth, more birds were to be heard, and for the first time ever I heard a chirping squirrel? Yes this hike was a hike of firsts, not only because I had never been on the trail, but because I had never heard a chirping squirrel.

It was interesting to see the activity of the forest change. To see if go from a place of quiet filled with dormant life when we started out, to one full of various noises from the active and awakened life along our return.

“Hermit alone. Let me see: where was I? Methinks I was nearly in the frame of mind; the world lay about at this angle. Shall I go to heaven here or go fishing? If I should bring this meditation to an end, would another sweet occasion be likely to offer?” (Thoreau 245).

This passage stood out to me as it seems Thoreau is very clearly pointing out this transcendental moment he is having by himself, that he is in this state at this perfect “angle” for the moment and changing this would jeopardize the important, hard-to-find moment.

“I pursued with a paddle, and he dived, but when he came up I was nearer than before. He dived again, but I miscalculated the direction he would take, and we were fifty rods apart when he came to the surface this time, for I had helped to widen the interval; and again he laughed loud and loud, and with more reason than before” (Thoreau 255).

Throughout this chapter Thoreau gives many of his “neighbors” in the form of animals personality. One example of when I saw this was during his interaction with the loon; I found this perspective that extended personality to the animals around him and to view them as neighbors to be interesting and entertaining.

After reading Nicole’s post on Lafayette landscaping, I became curious about landscaping on other college campuses. I began to wonder if any college campuses just let their landscaping go and grow naturally as they would in the wild. I found this interesting link with a list of sustainable landscaping initiatives on college campuses across the country:

http://www.aashe.org/resources/sustainable-landscaping-campus

In particular one of these projects stood out to me, at SUNY Cortland, they are focusing on creating “no mow” zones to promote sustainability. While their current 1 acre “no-mow” plot is by their athletic fields rather than in the center of campus, I thought it was cool that a campus was promoting natural growth like this. They are hoping to establish about 2 to 3 acres of “no-mow” zones. In addition this site mentions the abundant wildlife that has been seen in this “no-mow” area: turkeys, fox, deer, woodchucks, raccoons.

http://www2.cortland.edu/news/detail.dot?id=e610077e-3931-4945-8cba-68c058e96add