As we traveled up the final creek of our trip I saw the carcass of a deer underneath the water. When other students started to shout out about the dead deer I thought that I would freak out when I floated over it but a strange calmness and intrigue washed over me. I wanted to know what its story was and how it ended up at the bottom of the creek.

As I floated over the deer I thought of Eiseley and how he touched upon the interconnectedness of us all. I thought about death and how we need to face death like the deer I saw in the creek, we will all die one day. And when that day comes we will eventually become part of the Earth again. The water in our blood will become part of the rivers and our bones will become a part of the soil.

The water floating over the carcass has been floating this Earth for millions of years and the rocks beneath its bones has been there just as long. This Earth is older than all of us and we forget that everything has been there for much longer than we all have. Our own problems are so small compared to the lifetime of the Earth but we get wrapped up in the troubles of our life and forget to look at the big picture. I personally do this and forget to look around and as Walden would say I am asleep.

On this kayaking trip I was able to take a step back from my thoughts and think spiritually like Walden wants us to. I thought about the bigger ideas in life rather than the minuscule issues in my own life. I strangely became okay with the idea of death and accepted it. Seeing the dead deer in the Delaware was a wake up call- death is okay and it is a part of life just as the Earth is a part of our life.

Through out our walk today, and the past few days, I have noticed how much trash is in places that it does not belong.

On our first ramble I noticed a television behind Watson Hall. On Saturday I was driving off campus and as someone walked across the street an empty coffee cup fell from her bag, we stopped the car for her to go back and grab it but she turned around then looked at it and kept walking. Today on our walk I saw a sink to the left of the abandoned stone staircase. When we walked through the brush and came to the dam, I saw styrofoam cups, beer cans and overflowing trash bags scattering the tree line.

Why is it that we litter? The girl with the coffee cup and the television and sink owners were clearly polluting intentionally but why? Is it because we think that someone else will clean it up because we are just too lazy? Do we think that it won’t have an affect? Maybe we think that nature will just make a comeback and just figure out how to deal with it.

Well, that trash does have an effect. Take a look at this video I saw on Facebook over the summer of a sea turtle who was affected by someone’s decision to litter.

On Saturday I took a walk down the Karl Sterner arts trail. As the group who I was walking with separated out, I found that I was in the back. But, I didn’t care because I decided to take advice from class and slow down, really look up and observe.

As I walked, I noticed how the sunlight hit the creek differently with each step I took. I noticed that leaves were beginning to fall and I simultaneously had to come to terms with the fact that my beloved summer was ending. I could go on for pages about the little things that I noticed but one that stuck out the most were these clumps of red bugs on the fence that lined the creek side of the trail.

From afar I thought that the red clumps were little flower buds. As I got closer I noticed that they were clumps of 50-100 red and black bugs. I am no biologist so I have no idea what they were but the idea that they were there stuck with me.

I thought, “were they eating something, are they mating or are they just hanging out on this fence for no particular reason?” Whatever reason they were there, I thought about how nature will always find its way into the man made world. Granted this fence was intended to be outside and interact with nature’s forces to some extent. However, the stark contrast between the rusted, metal fence to the red and small insects opened my mind to this bigger idea of how nature will always make an appearance even in a world that seems so controlled by man.