I was scrolling around Youtube and the video below popped up in my feed.

I found it pretty interesting because I am an avid distance runner and there is huge differences between road running and trail running. The differences are deeper than just the terrain you cross, but also the amount of pain your body goes through, the visual experience, and the fact that when your trail running the head to head competition aspect is almost lost. Personally, while trail running I definitely have felt the openness and being one with the movement of nature that the narrator talks about in the beginning of the short film. On the other hand I have also felt in a 18 mile trail run race when nature does not agree with you; I literally tripped hard every 6 miles and by the end was covered in bruises and dirt, but oddly enough I was in pain. After the second fall, I just came to the conclusion nature did not want me to run as fast as my body wanted to, so I slowed down and took in the sights because of that decision had a more complete race experience. My greatest memories of the race was not finishing, but the the mountain lake I ran around and the scenic overpass I got to take in after climbing. Furthermore, if you hate running, I would give trail running a try is a completely different and almost enlightening experience.

“Maybe not actually incalculable, but it doesn’t rain any less now than before the city was built. Once, Manhattan was 27 square miles of porous ground interlaced with living roots that siphoned the 47.2 inches of average annual rainfall up trees and into meadow grasses, which drank their fill and exhaled the rest back into the atmosphere. Whatever the roots didn’t take settled into the island’s water table. In places, it surfaced in lakes and marshes, with the excess draining off to the ocean via those 40 streams which now lie trapped beneath concrete and asphalt” (The City Without Us).

I really enjoy the description and imagery contained in this passage. Nevertheless, I do not entirely agree with it especially because it compares the environment now to what it was without civilization. The first line in particular is something that does not to take into account climate change and the perception that humanity has altered the climate for the indefinite future. The longevity of humanity’s actions will last a lot longer then what people realize and I think its worth thinking about when reading “The City Without Us”.

“The mice which haunted my house were not the common ones, which are said to have been introduced into the country, but a wild native kind (Mus leucopus) not found in the village” (Thoreau 216).

Currently, I am taking Conservation Biology and in many case studies, the greatest problem facing an ecosystem is an invasive species. If you do not know what an invasive species is, it is a species of organism that is non-native to a given area and has the potential to cause harm to either an ecosystem, or towards humans. That definition is very anthropocentric in its definition especially based on the fact its with “or towards humans”, but in this instance its safe to say Thoreau has been in some way harmed by this mouse, or invasive species. Additionally, I find it very interesting to know that biological problems such as invasive species were well documented so long ago because it recently only has reached the mainstream media like in the cases of pythons in the everglades, or snakeheads inhabiting waters throughout the US. 

There is a pervasive myth in our society that we need certain things to qualify as a civilized member of that society. I don’t necessarily mean fancy cars or big houses, I mean more basic things. In the effort to decrease my output of waste and my regular expenditures, I decided to try to minimize the amount of these “necessities” that I actually need. So, I haven’t used shampoo or conditioner since July 1st.

Daily shampooing didn’t become a societal norm until the 1970’s. Before that, many people didn’t wash their hair more than once a week. This trend increased profits for hair care companies, advertisers for their products, plastic manufacturers who package shampoo and conditioner, and the chemical companies who provide the raw materials. Shampoo doesn’t just clean your hair, it strips your hair of the natural oils that your scalp produces. The glands that secrete that oil are triggered to secrete even more when it senses the oil it has already produced has been removed. This process has caused, for most people, a dependency on shampoo and conditioner because their scalp is overproducing oil which never makes it to the body of one’s hair, rendering it dry and needing of conditioner. That is why most people spend money every few weeks or so to buy these products that they really don’t need.

What I do to keep my hair clean is called the No Poo method. Instead of lathering my hair with shampoo every day, I use a solution of a tablespoon of baking soda to a cup of water every other day to get the dirt out of my hair. Instead of conditioner, I use a table spoon of apple cider vinegar to a cup of water solution every other day. This allows the natural oils to travel down the length of my hair while preventing the glands in my scalp from over-secreting those oils. I also make the solution myself, reusing the squeeze bottle containers over and over again. My expenses are about $2 for the box of baking soda which I’ve only used about a third of since July and Bragg’s Apple Cider Vinegar which is about $3 for a 16oz bottle of which I’ve used less than one third. The water cost is negligible. Just to summarize the benefits: my hair is a soft as it has ever been, I spend a fraction of what I used to on hair care, and I’ve minimized my waste output incredibly.

I’ve told so many people about No Poo (www.nopoomethod.com) and have yet to hear that anyone else is trying it. That truly displays to me how pervasive habit and societal norms can be. Much environmental activism takes place publicly, loudly, and aggressively. However, making a simple change that has so many other benefits also counts as environmental activism! Why don’t more people do this? After looking at the pictures of the birds full of plastic, don’t you want to start getting creative and selective about your plastic use? It also never hurts to spend a little less.

P.S. Skeptical? Come touch my hair.

Earlier this semester I posted the picture of the morning glories on the left. They were beautiful in full bloom, even though they had taken over the front porch. Unfortunately, in cold on Sunday and Monday my morning glories did not survive. This vine is now a very sad sight.

“If our native insect fauna cannot, or will not, use alien plants for food, then insect populations in areas with many alien plants will be smaller than insect populations in areas with all natives. This may sound like a gardener’s dream: a land without insects! But because so many animals depend partially or entirely on insect protein for food, a land without insects is a land without most forms of higher life (Wilson 1987)” (Tallamy, 12).

“Nearly every creature on this planet owes its existence to plants, the only organisms capable of capturing the sun’s energy and, through photosynthesis, turning that energy into food for the rest of us. Only in the deepest reaches of the ocean do life forms survive that don’t require this food, deriving their energy through chemosynthesis of sulphur’ from deep-sea vents (Ruby, Wirsen & Jannasch 1981: Novomv et al. 2006)” (Tallamy, 15).

“This may sound blasphemous, but maintaining native biodiversity is less important than maintaining a functioning ecosystem. What matters is that soil is protected, that water gets cleaned, that trees filter the air, that a canopy regenerates new seedlings to keep nutrients from draining away into the Bronx River.”- Chuck Peters of the New York Botanical Garden in The City Without Us, page 39

I think this statement is a very controversial one that would cause a big fight among people that strive to protect biodiversity. In EVST Capstone we read an article about a writer named Johnathan Franzen who thought that protecting biodiversity was more important than preventing climate change. According to Franzen, Climate change has gone too far and there is nothing left to be done about it. Franzen believes that we should continue individual biodiversity efforts for threatened and endangered species. I think Peters’ point is that if we want to sustain the earth in such a way that humans can continue to prosper, we should care less about biodiverstiy and more about just protecting green spaces in general. I would be very interested to see a Franzen response to Peters’ statement. I am surprised that Peters, as someone who works at NTBG, would have such a statement about biodiversity.

“Our perception has always been that, no matter how many subdivisions we build, or how much land we put to the plow, or how many roads we construct, there will always be plenty of undisturbed space left” No Place to Hide, page 27

I can’t remember what passage it was that we discussed but this makes me think a lot about the closing of the frontier. In the 19th century there was this perception that the wilderness went on forever. In 1890, the US Census Bureau declared that the frontier officially closed. Still today, people are ignorant of the fact that their cannot be endless development. We will eventually run out of resources and space.

I stumbled upon this very interesting article published a few days ago about Thoreau. While, I don’t agree with many of the authors points, it is interesting viewing Thoreau in the opposite light from which we have been discussing him for the past semester. Below are a few of the most interesting quotes I found, but the whole article is worth reading. Let me know if you think the author has any valid points.

“The real Thoreau was, in the fullest sense of the word, self-obsessed: narcissistic, fanatical about self-control, adamant that he required nothing beyond himself to understand and thrive in the world.”

“But “Walden” is less a cornerstone work of environmental literature than the original cabin porn: a fantasy about rustic life divorced from the reality of living in the woods, and, especially, a fantasy about escaping the entanglements and responsibilities of living among other people.”

“Like his fellow-transcendentalists, he was suspicious of tradition and institutions, and regarded personal intuition and direct revelation as superior foundations for both spiritual and secular beliefs. Unlike his fellow-transcendentalists, he also regarded his own particular intuitions and revelations as superior to those of other people.”

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum

Corn is a fascinating organism. We use corn for everything from food to biofuel to feed for farm animals. A DNA test of a single human hair shows that the average American’s carbon content is 69% from corn. That’s a huge percentage! So clearly we have some form of dependency on corn in our lives the way that they are operating today. What I find fascinating though is that corn needs us in order to reproduce. Should humans vanish off the face of the earth today, corn would vanish with us. The nature of the kernel, covered carefully in its husk and in extreme close proximity to many other kernels would not be able to disperse or survive without the help of human propagation. I find this to be quite ironic, our co-dependency upon one another, humans and corn.