EcoLit ESem

Does economic prosperity equal environmental destruction? Waring seems to think so. She talks about how CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) are actually counted as economic growth, not environmental degradation, and about carbon trading as an economic activity, much more like a service than an action that might impact various ecosystems. However, I think that her outlook on our relationship with nature (as humans wishing for economic prosperity) is quite dismal and I'm not so sure I completely agree with her. Granted, economic growth has taken its toll in the natural environment in the countries where it has been most apparent (Japan, USA, China, Germany, etc.), but to say that a country must be environmentally destructive in order to be economically productive is a little far-fetched. I'm thinking of Norway when I say this. Norway has fared quite well economically; while it has never been a global (or even European) economic superpower, it has certainly had one of the most stable economies, as well as highest life standards. Additionally, they have exploited very little of their natural resources when compared to other global economic powers of the same strength. Indeed, they have extracted a lot of petroleum and natural gas and have one of the largest global timber industries, but they also have vast expanses of untouched nature, a percentage of "natural purity" that countries such as the US can only dream about.

Today was a beautiful day to be outside, and yet, I couldn't really enjoy it. I woke up much later than usual, and I felt as if I had already lost half of my day (which, technically, I had). Everything felt rushed, cramped into a time frame that couldn't allow me to truly enjoy the benevolent weather. I felt disoriented and stressed, and then frustrated because I felt disoriented and stressed--you can see how this quickly became a vicious cycle. My spot behind Rhodes, which usually provides a much needed hiatus from my day, became another chore on a long to-do list. I was trying to force myself to immerse myself in the quiet, trying to connect with a more peaceful version of myself. 

In doing so, I realized that I couldn't make myself feel a certain way. The frustration I was feeling was a natural part of being me, and if I wanted to connect with nature, then I needed to be in tune with those feelings--even if it made me uncomfortable. Sometimes I feel like I will myself to feel certain ways, a very mechanical process; so today I let myself feel frustrated, and acknowledging that made it a lot more easier to deal with than having is fester in the corner of my mind. The experience was almost like a detox, getting all of the "bad stuff" out of my system. The trick wasn't to ignore those feelings, but to embrace them--and then I could enjoy the warmth of the sun on my back for a little while. 

The weather has been better these days and temperature rose somehow. The sun warms the world--the site I picked looked just the same as the first time I saw it. Grass was still green and the bench stood there, quietly, as if it had not experienced any wind, storm, or snow.

The Hurricane came and went away, leaving mess behind. It damaged trees, wires, houses, and hurt animals and people. However, it could never bring away the sunshine. When another day comes, everything natural grow back to normal, as if nothing big has ever happened.

For us, the hurricane is a disaster, but for nature, it is just a trivial event that brings nothing and takes nothing away.

The sun is casting its last hour of glory on the roof of Rockefeller and Goodhart. The warmth of sunshine is back this weekend. So am I back on the lawn behind carpenter. The benches we- Ecological Imagining group - sat on shivering on Tuesday was still somewhat in a circle. Yet the conversation is gone. The air is quite without the think-aloud reading of Kincaid’s “Alien Soil.” I could hear rustles from far away, is it the wind in the trees? Or is it the water on the rock beds?

What am I doing on the bench? Reflecting. Am I productive in the value system where only what can be counted counts? Definitely not. I am spending an hour, $12.5 tuition (calculated by my friend) writing a short passage. Yet the conversation we had takes time to digest, reflect, and ruminate – one of the intangible thing I am doing simultaneously. And the intangible appreciation for nature and cosmology view of the universe Bryn Mawr college is teaching me every minute of the day can not easily prized with a number.

The cozy corner of the moonbench is its own little haven within itself. Anyone is welcome to sit there and enjoy what it has to offer. The upward view of senior row makes the path toward the moon bench a subtle, natural focal point of beauty. At the same time the moon bench lays empty often. The tradition goes if you kiss your significant other while sitting on the bench you will break up. This does not attract many couples. Plus the bench is also cold an hard like most man-made structures while the bushes bend around it to soften its features and the trees create a cocoon. The simplicity of the moon bench allows it to just sit and be its self. To have a timeless face and never change. Unlike the people and naute around it.

It’s a beautiful day today. The sun is warm and the sky is clear. I am very happy to be outside.

The trees behind the English house don’t discriminate among themselves by class, gender, race or sex (or if they do I can’t tell). The trees probably have some sense of sex difference among themselves, but I’m not sure if they have any sense of the meaning of class gender or race. These words probably don't mean much to the trees (most likely for the better). But the English House itself signifies wealth and higher class. Mostly because of what goes on inside of it -- students learning and professors teaching and working. College in this country is not something that is limited to people of a higher class, but is a place that is harder for people of a lower class to get to. This means that the people around the backyard of the English house would usually be a part of the upper middle class. It isn’t the trees themselves that make race gender and class significant, it’s this people who surround the trees, and the perceptions of those people.

Last night, my site was different than usual. For one, I visited the site at night. The tree I sit under has also lost a lot of leaves. When I was wondering around last night, trying to find my usual branch, I was scared out of my wits. The tree looked incredibly different--I wasn't sure if I was looking in the right tree. And I couldn't see any squirrels (which is not a good thing, because they have become very fond of sneaking up on me). So, despite not being very religious? I said the Hail Mary out loud over and over again. But, after I'd found the spot andfoully checked out the tree with my flashlight for squirrels, I managed to settle down a lot. The only noise I could hear was from humans. I could hear myself, and also a lot of noise from Radnor and a few people walking by the tree. The piece of "nature" I go to every weekend is really not in nature. Now that the leaves aregoing, it no longer even looks like that might bepossible. It's very touches by the well-to-do "nature" of the college. It's even touched by religion.

Today I was struck by the way the colors could almost be spring rather than fall. We're just at the precise indeterminate balance point... The few remaining greens are thin and sparse, and even the reds and russets have faded to a shade that could be the color of new leaves budding instead of old ones falling. The light, too, in the late afternoon-- a gentler, warmish day today-- could have been a blush of spring. It made me think about my mother. Something about cycles, and an equivalence between the seasons and the ages of (wo)man, so that old age is like the autumn drawing into winter, and just as fall can be mistaken for spring, so too old age has its kinship with childhood. My mother loves her wind-up bunny rabbit that can hop hop hop on the breakfast table: it can keep her entertained for a surprisingly long time. She's 87. And today at lunch, as we were talking about the birds at the bird feeder, species we've never seen before here (a red-bellied woodpecker!) and whether it's to do with climate change that they come further north now, and whether it's a bad thing because we have interfered with nature, and Mother says, "Well, humans are part of nature too. We are part of nature, and, we watch it." A kind of wisdom I would never have expected from her. Well, I didn't realize till I was almost middle-aged that my mother is someone who always kept track of the phases of the moon. "Oh yes, I'm a moon-watcher," she said. Does your mother watch the moon?

I chose to have class today in the Quita Woodward Room because of its windows. Goodhart's glass atrium would have given us a more panoramic, uninterrupted view, but it was closed for student use because of the production. So, the Quita Reading Room it was! I'm really glad that we ended up having class there (although sorry for the short notice!)--it was warm and the wood paneling and bookshelves made it all the more cozy.

From where I was sitting, there was a large tree right in view, and Rock seemed to almost create a courtyard around it. The wind was twirling its branches all around, and it seemed to have lost quite a lot of its yellow leaves because of it. I was certainly very glad to be out of that storm! A major downfall of not being outside was the lack of noise, though. If we had been out in that windstorm, I could have heard the wind whipping through that tree. Instead, I heard myself typing notes about the view. More isolated from the outdoors than usual, I wrote instead of observing. There are quite a lot of distractions outside, but I usually give them all equal weight, instead of being more involved in note-taking than the actual class.

That being said, I was still a lot more comfortable out of the cold. Especially now that winter is coming, I'll just have to get used to observing inside, and find a balance between reflecting on my surroundings and paying attention to them.