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not "interconnected"

marian.bechtel's picture

Looking back on my first post about my site sit, it was interesting to remember that the image I put up for my site was a map of campus, with Batten House circled. I didn't think about this at the time, but I think the fact that I put up such a large scale, "practical" image instead of a picture of my surroundings from the site echoes sort of my mentality going into the site sits. I had chosen the Batten jungle because I had gazed over it many times from the back porch, but had only once before been actually down in it (at night, nonetheless, so I saw hardly anything). All I knew of the jungle was from above, from a distance, and by making it my site sit, I would have to go down into it and explore its depths. One word that keeps resonating in my mind as I think about both this map image of my site and my experiences during my site sits, is the word "interconnected." Not because I feel interconnected (and thus ecological) at my site, but because I don't. In the map image, it is clear that Batten is out on the edges of the campus (you can't even see the woods on the map!), socially, as a house, Batten often feels very separate from the rest of campus, and even moreso, being down in the woods I feel very separate from the rest of campus and Bryn Mawr life, and even separate from Batten House itself, because I'm down in the jungle looking back up at Batten from a totally different angle than I had looked at it pre-site sits. I also have times when I'm wandering down to my site, where I feel out of place, not because I don't enjoy the jungle or don't want to be there, but because I feel like an intruder on a sacred space that is not mine to monopolize for my own enjoyment, pushing my way through branches and inevitably stepping on some plants as I walk. So my question is then, if I don't feel "interconnected" with the rest of the world at my site sit, does that mean my site sits are not "ecological," since we talked so much about ecological being interconnectedness? Is it bad that I don't feel "interconnected" during my site sits?