A wild Exploration

As a busy and sleep-deprived college student I write this piece from a study room in Lowry; the room is cold with stagnant air surrounded by man-made materials. I look outside to “nature” and see the sun shining down upon lustrous emerald grass, bleaching the stone steps outside of the scot center. There are no birds, squirrels not even insects to take my attention away from the beauty of what I previously perceived as nature. I grew up on a farm with a large space of woods that led to a creek. In my childhood, I remember being so happy about walking through the woods to that little creek. The path to the creek and the “nature” around campus is all man-made; it’s a fake to appease us who have forgotten what real nature is like. This summer I decided to walk back to that little creek; the path was overgrown with fallen trees to navigate through. It was not the clear weed-free path of my childhood. My first thought was of how inconvenient all the extra footwork was. How the bark of the fallen tree scraped up my legs along with the itchy feeling of weeds brushing against my skin where my sock and pants did not meet. The reality is that in real nature you are not comforted instead it is something exciting, terrifying, and beautiful. This nature does not follow rules it does as it pleases placing weeds here or there. A few trees are thrown to the ground to join the brush after a powerful storm with no consideration of us walking in the area. I had to find new paths to get where I wanted to go; at points walking in directions where I wasn’t even sure if I was going the right way. The place from my childhood is now wild bringing me more excitement than it ever did previously.

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