Shosh – The Nature of Nature 2019

Wanted: Dead and Alive

I felt the moral obligation to respond to a senior biology student’s Facebook post. It was a plea for fellow Wooster students to go to Spangler Park and look for salamanders and frogs. there were only about four of us who made it to the trail that day, and after a quick intro on how to find and safely catch our amphibian friends, we were on our way.

After about an hour out and about with many salamanders caught and released (no frogs that day), I found myself drawn to a certain rock. It was smaller than the rocks that normally homed the reptiles we hunted, but I felt drawn to it nonetheless. Underneath this rock was a small black salamander, the exact identification I forget, but on the rock was a small bivalve, likely from the Cambrian Era. The fossil was waiting millions of years to be found but the salamander would not have even been there an hour later and possibly not even an hour before.

Living with Yourself (through the eyes of Thoreau)

“I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the theatre, that my life itself was become my amusement and never ceased to be my novel” Walden, Henry David Thoreau

Many pieces of writing criticizing how people live may grow old and out of date as time passes, but in this peace speaks to something that has only become more true over time. We have gone from plays to movies and novels to binging episodes of our favorite shows on Hulu or Netflix or even Amazon Prime. Growing up I was never truly alone. I either had one of my siblings or a book with me. As I grew up I found enjoyment with TV shows and sports, limiting the time that I was alone with my thoughts to next to none.

The conversations I have with people show similar experiences. Where they may have been ‘left alone’, there was always the chance for outside entertainment, be that from a book, TV or tablet and smartphone as they got older. Even now, if I’m in the elevator alone I often open my phone and scroll through Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram while I wait for the doors to open and have many friends who are the same way.

This nature of always being a touch away from entertainment has a positive and negative side. The positive being a stronger sense of community that we feel. I can know who my twin sister’s friends are despite living 414 miles away and have even been able to speak to some over the phone. Even with distance we stay in each others’ lives. The negative side hits much harder. We no longer know how to be truly alone. Where some people are good story tellers, they still look for that as an escape from human life.

In order to understand Thoreau, I am going to find time to be with only myself for a set amount of time, not allowing for anything but my own mind to amuse me. Check up on Sunday night for an update!

Knights in the Silurian

Knights Hallow is a beautiful little refuge on the north side of the College of Wooster campus. For the very short walk, trees surround you and about half the time you are greeted by the trickling of water down the creek. Everything about this place has been man made, from the planted trees, to the outdoor classroom complete with a whiteboard. The creek is actual an aesthetic way of draining water. But look back a few million years and the entirety of Ohio would have been underwater. Aquatic fossils are common place in sedimentary stones. I even found a the imprint of a fossilized shell on the side of the stream in Spangler Park last year when I was helping a friend look for salamanders.

Bring time back to today and the underwater span of true nature has been reduced to a drainage system that often doesn’t have water and moved stones and planted trees. The reduction of water was the natural change of climates, the rest was us.