For months I had a trip planned for fall break. I was suppose to head down to Columbia, South Carolina to visit a friend from home and to get a real SEC football experience. However, Mother Nature had a different plan for me as historic floods ripped through Columbia. As a result of this rain storm, a dam breached in the city and flooded out many residents. With law enforcement stretched thin and limited running water, my SEC experience slipped from my fingers as the game was moved from Williams-Brice Stadium to Baton-Rouge, LA. Seems kind of ironic being that Hurricane Katrina ripped through Louisiana exactly 10 years ago?

I spent the week trying to figure out if I should still make the trip since my friend’s apartment and most of downtown was left undamaged. As I researched the city’s damage I came across this article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/10/05/what-the-historic-south-carolina-floods-can-and-cant-tell-us-about-climate-change/.

This article discusses the affects climate change may have had on the South Carolina floods. One conclusion it draws is that this flood exceeded the NOAA predictions for Coumbia’s 1,000 year flood event and reminds us that this type of flooding is consistent with what we expect to see with a warming climate. Hurricane Joaquin even made the article as an example of how a warming Earth and ocean produces “weather on steroids”. Although we cannot claim that the S.C. floods were directly caused by climate change, we do know that extreme rain events will increase as a result of climate change.

The science behind this flood event is still premature but I have a feeling that with time we will be 98% sure climate change had something to do with this.

P.S. The Gamecocks lost. People may blame Coach Steve Spurrier on the loss but I think I can speak on behalf of many Gamecock fans when I say it is Joaquin’s fault.

The passage in Sand County Almanac on pages 190-191 regarding the tree growth on the north and south side of Mt. Spessart got me thinking about the first reading assignment we were given. The passage talked about how during the Medieval Ages the north side of the mountain was stripped of tress in order to allow for farming while the south side was preserved for deer habitats. The north side was then re-planted with Scotch pine while on the south side there were old-growth Spessart Oak.

This really got me thinking about what I think I’m observing as nature. I have no idea about the history of the nature landscapes that I interact with. That being said, what I think I’m seeing as nature could be completely different species than what were originally there before human involvement. Because I am without this knowledge I am completely misinterpreting the nature that I interact with.

Does nature even exist anymore? Are we all just interacting with a false nature that was created by man? Or are we just without wilderness and nature is what humans have created?

I was so excited about Shana Weber’s lecture on Thursday night!! She far surpassed my expectations and really did a wonderful job presenting on college campus sustainability.

Weber talked a lot about how college campuses are living labs and how we must take advantage of the opportunities that this atmosphere allows. There are hundreds of brilliant minds on Lafayette’s campus and we should not be constrained by the label of our majors. There is the potential for so many multi-disiplinary projects to be done on campus but in order to do so we must pop “major” bubble that we put ourselves in. Like we discussed in class, we cannot pre-package our college experience and only work in our fields otherwise we will never reach our full potential.

Sustainability allows for so much multi-disiplinary work and that was clear throughout Shana Weber’s entire presentation. The “Do it in the dark” campaign was a perfect example of this. Weber connected a sustainability employee with someone in the psychology department who then collaborated with a tech start-up near Princeton in order to track energy use on campus. So cool right?! Without a sustainability director these connections never would have been made and a lot of the progress that Princeton has made with sustainability could not have been done.

There is so much room for sustainability change to be made at Lafayette so PLEASE lets fight to get a director of our own! We need a voice in administration to make this change and to make the change effective. President Byerly and Provost Abu Rizvi both came from schools in Vermont, a state that is far ahead of others in sustainable practices, right before they were hired by Lafayette. So I am surprised that they have yet to make significant change regarding our campus’ environmental impact. They have seen how well it can work out so why not bring it to Laf too? Hopefully this change is coming down the pipeline and we can join the many colleges who are becoming leaders in sustainable living.

Maggie Gray’s discussion on local food and labor laws was truly eye-opening. I have always been interested in the environmental impacts of food production and always framed monoculture/industrial farms as the bad guys. This semester I am taking Gender and Development and from this course I have started to think about the impact of development and gendered labor roles. However, it was not until Maggie Gray’s talk that I put the 2 topics together. I always assumed that “local” farms were all around better, including better treatment of their workers. I also assumed that these gendered labor roles and negative affects of them were problems in only developing countries. I learned that this is not the case at all and that farm workers in Upstate New York need to be treated with more respect just as much as workers on farms in the developing world need to be treated with more respect.

Gray discussed how farm workers’ jobs are unstable, require long hours and they receive low wages. Despite these negatives of the job, many do not speak up out of fear of losing their jobs or because their boss has given them “benefits” in the past. These can include providing employer housing for the worker and their family to live in, help with receiving a green card and permission to use farm owned vehicles. Gray described these favors as paternalism which creates a docile work force. Therefore they do not speak up when something else goes wrong.

As a consumer we assume that when we buy local and/or organic food that we are doing the right thing, when in fact the humans that harvested the food are not being treated fairly.  I think that inspecting and then certifying the farms for good labor practices would be a good way to tackle this problem. Then similarly to the USDA organic seals, food packaging could include these labels so that the consumer knows what goes on on these farms and can make an informed decision when buying food.

Lastnight on my way to dinner at Marquis I looked up and noticed a crest on the top of Marquis Hall that i had never seen before. I have walked by this building millions of times without seeing it!!  Has anyone else noticed this before or know what it might be?

I know that this isn’t exactly an image of nature that we were asked to snap photos of but its definitely something in my environment that stood out to me.

Today, Julie, Joe, and myself went out to our site near a bend in Bushkill Creek to spend some time learning about its past, the current state of nature, and man’s interaction with the site. Nestled just underneath the football stadium, the Bushkill lazily meanders around bends that border roads, paths, and lush vegetation. Thousands of flies hovered around slack pools in the Creek, as they also heard the few splashes that we did, indicating that fish were feeding in our vicinity. While the immediate border of the Creek was dense with trees, vines, roots, and other plants, not much else was still left unmolested by man. Standing on the elevated bank of the river, it was hard to communicate with one another; not because of the water’s force, but rather, because of the sound of the road very close behind us. A pump station had a release pipe entering into the Creek, shooting water in a new direction, combating the natural flow of the river.

Beyond the banks, we are sure that an interesting story is to be told from the ruins of old buildings dating back to the 19th century in some instances. Walking around in the shadows of failing brick works, weathered exteriors and windows, we saw numerous signs for different enterprises: paper mills, Cordage companies, and other signs which we will be sure to discover more about. Trees battled foundations, as buildings and nature interacted with one another for space in the compacted area. Auto body garages now take up the space that these former businesses occupied, but they too are also part of the story of our location. It is a unique place because when driving on the road next to our location, it is nearly impossible to know you are next to the Creek; the vegetation is so dense, the flow of the water so removed from the bustle of humankind, it requires getting out and walking practically into the water to discover your natural neighbor.

We look forward to learning more about the aging buildings in our zone, and crafting a story regarding their interaction with the Creek, the College’s interaction with the Creek and buildings (the College owns some land in our site), and understanding why things are in Site 4 the way they are currently.