EcoLit 313

I knew plants.  I knew the sun.  I knew the wind.  My head surrounded by the buzzing of bees.  I knew the darkness of the woods at night.  I knew the smell of rain. I knew crickets in my bushes during the evening.  I knew the sound of snow under my boots during the winter and I knew the crunch of leaves under my shoes in the fall.  I knew seasons.  Now, all I am familiar with the sound of metal under my shoes.  I am comforted by the smell of oxygen that saturates the air.  This scent used to fill my nostrils after a race to the hospital when I had an asthma attack.  I know that the war changed the way I sensed the world.    The war started hundreds if not thousands of years ago, but does the time really matter? 

I am old now.  I was young when my senses became cold.  I had just had my eldest child, who had my grandchild several years ago.  It will be my grandchild’s birthday soon.  I wish to take my grandchild to experience what I have lost in the only way that we still can.  I will take my grandchild to the zoo and then we will return to my house and I will show her the pictures and the papers of what my senses were once familiar with.  We will marvel at the beauty in those pictures and we will sit in shocked silence at how precarious life once was. 

Consider some possibilities for a (water-y!) field trip:
Mill Creek (see map, above, of BMC physiography, from the BMC Campus Heritage Preservation Initiative)
Dove Lake
Pennypack Park and Environmental Center (named after the Lenape word for deep, slow moving water)
John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge @ Tinicum (established to protect the last 200 acres of freshwater tidal marsh in Pennsylvania; from Lenape word "tennicunk" meaning "island" or "along the edge of the island")
Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center, which tells the story of the Schuylkill River and the urban watershed; the Lenape called it Ganshohawanee, meaning "rushing and roaring waters," or "Manaiunk"; it was later given the Dutch name Schuylkill-- "hideout creek"? "hidden river?" referencing the river's (nearly hidden) confluence with the Delaware?

Why would we go on a field trip? What are we seeking to find/see/learn?

Do we really know our ecological past? Do we really understand our present? These questions seem to be intertwined in significant ways; our construction of the past also lends itself to the construction of the present. Is part of the key then to facing current dilemmas confronting the history of the land? I decided to explore some of these more ecological questions by reassessing my own interactions with the environment I live today- Bryn Mawr College. I was interested in finding out whether knowing more about the history of a particular space changed how I interacted with it in the future. In particular, I was interested in the history of maids who lived in the dorms and served the undergraduate students. However as I searched for information, my interest broadened to include Bryn Mawr’s entire racial history, especially the history of Perry House, one of dorms on campus that is important both as a space for a multicultural community and as a piece of Bryn Mawr’s racial history.

Last week, I was so proud of my shiny new spot with the bright leaves in warm colors. This week, it looks absolutely nothing like it did.

The tree that had provided me with a spectrum of warm colors and a little autumn paradise has moved from shedding its leaves to shedding entire boughs and branches and ironically limiting my mobility in a spot I chose in order to increase it. At first I was disappointed (although not entirely surprised) by the extreme changes, but the storm, as it turns out, didn't ruin my nature observations forever.

Last week, my observation was about the diversity of leaves that I initially overlooked and the difference between my initial perception of them and the way they appeared to me upon closer examination. Honestly, I now wish I had saved that topic for this week as Sandy has brought me a huge range of not only different colors but different leaves, needles, acorns or pinecones, entire branches, and displaced vines that probably have no business being there or anywhere nearby, but make my spot full of a lot more interesting things to discover. Looking beyond the one primary tree to the ones nearby, I can identify a lot of the new additions as parts of those, but some are strangely nowhere to be found. This implies that some of the leaves (and one branch or part of a bush) was blown into my spot from some places that are nowhere in the general vicinity of the Erdman circle. The strength of wind that this suggests is both worrisome and fascinating.

Walked out onto the rock bridge again today, and spent a lot of time just kneeling on the rocks and staring out at the water. The ripples kept coming, but these are air ripples, not caused by what was going on underneath the water, but more by the heavy breeze that was blowing. It kept pushing the water in wave-like ripples toward the bridge I was sitting on. When I looked directly by the rocks, I noticed I could not see the continuous waves; I could only see the movement from afar, from up close, it looked as if the wave movement was blocked by the marshy grass and plant growth. Then I realized that you just needed wider perspective in orer to see, to actually stand up and look out at the larger body of water. The bigger picture. I found this fascinating, and kept changing my position to better see the waves. It was very very cold today, and sitting in the middle of the pond on the rocks was very exciting. I felt very awake and focused and aware. I also got to see how physically the breeze was affecting us all--the stemmed plants in the lake, the reeds, the water itself, and me. I had to pull on a puffy winter coat, gloves, and hood in order to sit outside. It was neat to feel mutually affected by the weather, and to, for once, be paying attention to these affects. I wore better shoes this time so I could spend more time walking around the area. I was, in this way, able to walk all the way to the dirt hill in the middle of the pond, and was thinking of going further, but the area was blocked by more reeds.

check it out

Besides briefly seeing it from a distance, I had not seen or visited my spot since before Hurricane Sandy hit the area. Luckily for me the bench had survived the storm although it was still soaked from the weather we had the last week as well as looking much more weathered. Besides this, there was also plenty of other signs of Sandy even a few days afterwards. Although the trees around the bench had been spared for the most part (save one that was slightly uprooted and leaning slightly on its neighbor) there was one tree that had been blown down that I had noticed on my route to the bench. Likewise looking around the ground was strewn with, sticks, and fallen braches so Sandy certainly had done some damage to the general area of this section of the arboretum. Besides blowing down the branches, Sandy also helped the transition towards winter by blowing off a good portion of the tree leaves, so the rainbow of colors I had noticed on the tree line earlier was now replaced with patches of bare leaves. Although this did allow me a better view of the nature trail I also could see Haverford road more clearly, so the scenery unfortunately was not solely a beautiful natural setting. For the most part the area was pretty empty, both of individuals using the nature trail and of the usual signs of nature, so at times I felt like I was my current observation period was rather dreary. It was cold, windy, and cloudy so that didn’t really help.

Introduction

After my cousin’s college graduation I asked her, out of curiosity, when her school was founded and by whom. She did not have the answers to these questions, let alone more specific answers about the geography of her campus, or the architecture of her school. While I can’t tell you who built all of the buildings on Bryn Mawr College’s campus, with each passing year I become more and more familiar with Bryn Mawr College as a community, as a place on a map, and as an interconnected ecosystem. The longer I attend Bryn Mawr the more adamant I become in the value of really knowing the place where I live and work. This gives me a feeling of centeredness, and a knowledge of my surroundings that is intellectually empowering. I think that to find the center of a place you have to start by exploring and learning about all of it. You must develop an ecological appreciation for it. You need to start from the center and move outwards. Moving in this way I have been able to expand my first web event (/exchange/turning-circles), in order to make it more expensive and representative of Bryn Mawr’s campus. I have tried to familiarize myself with information about parts of campus through the internet, my own experiences, and by taking to college staff members. Here is what I discovered.