As I am a very visual person and most of my site sits (plus my usual interactions with nature) are very sight-based, I decided to sit outside at night in the dark (on the Batten porch because still a little jittery from the recent robbery in Batten, I don't want to walk down in the woods by myself at night...silly feeling, but temporary) and focus on all my senses besides sight. To make things more interesting, I was taking notes and writing things I observed down in a notebook as I sat, but because it was so dark I couldn't see what I was writing the entire time, thus my notes are a little messy and extra wild. So, here are my observations as written in my notes:

dog barking in the distance

creek babbles

cold air fills my nostrils

car wooshes past

In reading Mathew’s “On Desiring Nature,” I was reminded of an article we had read a few months back in the Multicultural Ed class Rosa and I are taking this semester – “Suspending Damage: A Letter to Communities” by Eve Tuck. In the article she talks about revising education frameworks to be less damage-based (seeing marginalized communities as broken, depleted) and more desire-based. I hadn’t actually translated this before to thinking about the environment and how we teach about the environment and work to improve our relationship with it. But it feels like Mathew’s article did exactly that. I was struck at the very beginning of the article when she says:

            Timothy Morton in “The Ecological Thought” urges us to action born from our loneliness and separation: “Is that the sound of something calling us from within the grief-the sound of the ecological thought?” (Morton 2). Why are more of us not driven to answer this question of separation and destruction? Why can we not feel the urgency to change? Why does grief inhibit action?

            Timothy Morton explains the “Ecological Thought”: “It has to do with amazement, open-mindedness, and wonder” (Morton 2).

            Timothy Morton involves us in our own demise, the destruction of what sustains us in “The Ecological Thought”: “It has to do with ideas of self and the weird paradoxes of subjectivity” (Morton 2).

After our (two) discussions in class on apprehensible readings vs. accessible readings, and why all readings aren't created to be apprehensible to all, I thought of a couple points after.

For my final paper I would like to explore the ways in which teachers act within the system in order to provide the best education and opportunities for their students that they can. Throughout the class I have focused primarily on the systemic issues with public education and how those issues impact schools on a micro and macro level. In exploring a new perspective on how teachers try to subvert systemic inequalities I hope to gain a more dynamic understanding of the education system. The specific questions I am interested in is how do teachers form relationships with their students and to the best of their abilities create engaging and fulfilling material/assignments.

            One word that David Gessner used several times was “safe.” We often write within boundaries, consider human audiences, and we are constantly modifying and contorting our speech. We frame our words so that other people can understand what we are trying to explain, not necessarily so they more clearly articulate what we aim to express. I find that even when we use words that describe natural objects or settings and we assign new meanings to them or use these “ecological” words when referring to human-produced commodities, there is wildness that surfaces which is rooted in the complexity, depth, and vigor of our surroundings.

For my teach-in, I wanted to go back to the idea of geocaching that we had earlier in the year. I think it'd be really cool if we, as a class, could make our own geocache and place it somewhere. I'm thinking  we could make a group collage or art or thing. It could have pictures in it or whatever. Or our thoughts about the class. Something that kind of reflects us as a whole on a single sheet of paper. Along the lines of what Teresa is doing, but only one sheet for the entire group. Then we could put in a special weatherproof box/container that I will bring and walk into Morris Woods and put in a special spot and submit it to be marked as a geocahce. I think it'd be a cool way for our class to be "immortalized" even after it's over.

How it works:

Everyone will sit in a circle
I will hand everyone some paper
Everyone writes a sentence (perhaps something ecological) on the first page 
Everyone will pass it to the person to their right
Then that person will  try to draw whatever that sentence is (1 minute drawing time)
After 1 minute has passed, everyone will pass it again to the right
Then the next person will write another sentence to describe what the drawing is...
Repeat till everyone gets their own "paper" back

-Vision
-Revision
-representation
-Interpretation
-Perspectives

It really is amazing how much clearer things become in the darkness.

Detail is lost, but the presence of things becomes much more apparent.

The lines and figures and spacing. No room for the distraction of lights, details, pretty colors. Just shades of gray and black. Illuminated by the two-toned sky. 

Dark blue in the southern sky. Lavender-Pink in the northern.

The labyrinth changes from a circular path to a horizontal form of hopscotch.

The satellite has a stronger presence. Protruding out.

The trees around the labyrinth. Almost like a shower curtain. Curtain of leaves. 

There's also a swing. Twig attached tied on a rope attached to a branch of a white thick tree. I never noticed.