The Nature of Nature 2019

I like trees.  Beach trees. The bark is smoother than most pillows I’ve come across. I don’t begrudge kids either for marking up beach trees. It’s trashy, and ignorant, and ugly, and takes so long to do that they should reconsider what they’re doing while they’re doing it, and without purpose, and really who cares about KM and JS or BS and FU, but regardless they’re kids so I don’t particularly begrudge them a stupid mistake. God Knows I’ve had my fair share.

One of my favourite places to be outside and in “nature” is on a blanket in the middle of the Oak Grove, which is where I am currently writing this from.  I like being underneath the canopy of green leaves with sunlight dappling through. I like hearing the birds singing to each other and watching the squirrels frolic on the ground and leap among the branches. I like listening to the wind rustling the leaves of the trees and seeing how the wind makes the trees dance. I like smelling the freshly damp soil after a good rain. However, it is very disconcerting to be surrounded by “nature”, but hearing the rumble of cars going down Bever and hearing the incessant buzzing of a lawnmower. It is also interesting to me how -even though the Oak Grove is largely commercialized by the College as one of the most prime nature spots on campus- it is often taken for granted by students and faculty alike. People just walk right by it in a bustle to get to class or to work and never take time to appreciate it. Both of these occurrences show a conflict in the way humans interact with this “nature”. It is almost as though we like to be able to SAY that we love and value nature, yet our actions convey something completely different. Valuing nature has become almost just an idea to talk about as opposed to a reality that we should be living.

The standing water is murky–a tan-grey color–and water striders tap along the surface.

I could tell that I was approaching water before I could see it by the number of mosquitoes on my arm. Two meant it was just down the hill, three meant it was around the corner, and eight meant I was standing in it.

When I was a kid my parents took me camping in Michigan. About five minutes after stepping out of the car we were over taken by this cloud of them. I remember all of us were running in circles slapping our arms and faces. I don’t remember how it stopped, I remember the days after. My eyes had been bitten so bad that they had swollen completely shut. I couldn’t see for most of that trip, so if you ask me how Lake Michigan looks I can’t honestly tell you.

As I sit here writing this they’ve gathered close. My reaction has tempered a bit since then, but I can feel one poke through my skin.

I think often of a sanitized nature. My home is near a protected wetland and some of the rich neighbors spray their lawns for mosquitoes. My family recently drained a man-made water feature that had become such a breeding ground that in order to stand being out there we’d have to stock it with feeder fish to thin the larva. There’s still mosquitoes, but it’s considerably better.

I think it’s hard to be out in nature, let alone to think of your place in it, amongst mosquitoes. I think its beautiful in theory, but I kinda can’t stand it. Rude to say, I know, but when I leave this place the sunburns and poison ivy and mosquito bites will stay with me. I cannot contain nature to nature walk, and so I pass the trees. I ignore the deep rich black of the bog.  I leave behind the pristine fungal caps. Snapping quick pictures of each to consider later. I think it’s me. It’s my fault I can’t enjoy this place because I’m a suburbs kid and I have a bad hip from sitting at my desk all day. I think it’s a place better used by other people who can appreciate it better.

Perhaps this is the problem. We want the postcard. We want to focus on the trees and the wildflowers, but they live in a bog. Like it or not the bog smells and the bog bites. In nature, we realize that our comfort isn’t guaranteed and that’s the point. For Johnson’s Woods, the inhospitable parts of the land kept it safe from agriculture. It was kept safe in part by the very feature that leaves me itching my knuckles as I write this.  We can’t really have the post card without the world around it.

Johnson’s woods is a beautiful sight. It’s truly stunning to see the great old tree alive in front of you, and the great old corpse sitting beside it adorned with a crown of mushroom caps and a skirt of lacy fungus. But Johnson’s woods is also a smell–the smell of greenery and decay and stagnant water. It’s also a feeling–the feeling of hot sweat rolling down your back in the heat and of mosquitos swarming around you and the poor chipmunk under the boardwalk. Mosquitoes kind of suck, but that’s the cost of these trees.

I sit here once again in Knight’s Hollow today. After searching campus for what could be called a “natural place”, I found there were few spots not in direct sight of the road that didn’t require trespassing to access. Knight’s Hollow is not that different at a glance. It is a small patch of forest adjacent to two roads and thus the sound of cars going past is an inevitability. The clearly human-made stools and board do not help this impression either. However, this place still manages to feel isolated, a thick wall of vegetation preventing one from seeing into the campus beyond. If you can tone out the noises of the road, there is a pleasant tune passing through this small grove of trees by the continuous chirping of the crickets and cicadas along with the intermittent peep from a bird. It is evening now, but perhaps in the earlier hours of the day there is more birdsong.

I find that I can enjoy myself here now. On my previous trip to this place, I was too distracted by batting away insects to find any sort of appreciation for the woods. Some bug spray was all it took to fix that issue, although I cannot help but feel some discontentment that the natural scents of the forest are blocked by the strong chemical smell. In the distance, an ice cream truck is playing it’s jingle. I do not want to focus on that however. Instead, I direct my focus to the sound of a lone cricket near where I sit, it’s chirp that much louder due to its proximity.

I have found that attempting to completely separate myself from the man-made world is an impossibility, at least whilst remaining on campus. This is an educational institution first and foremost and thus the usage of technology and automobiles is necessary. However, it is possible to find a bit of joy in the brief glimpses of nature I can encounter. The chirping crickets, the fading sunlight passing through the leaves of the trees to leave puddles of light upon the dirt, muddy and soft and unpaved. These things are not to be dismissed. Even if the human world has permeated so much of our planet, I believe we can still find nature in the smallest of ways.

As I pace brick paths long past midnight, it shocks me to think that life made do without leaves for over two and a half billion years. The leaves that rustle in the early autumn breeze over my head are ingenious alchemical machines, built to transform light, earth, water, and air into life. Even in the absence of direct sunlight, pale moonlight is enough to power this ancient ritual.
But neither sun nor moon illuminates the leaves I pore over tonight. The light they absorb and transmute comes from a nearby streetlight whose insect-like hum mingles with the calls of cicadas. It’s an odd thing to think that humans can toil away turning natural coal into man-made light, only for that light to loop back around into nature again through the simple sleight-of-branch magic of trees. It’s even odder to think that the same coal that powers the plants that, after a fashion, power this cold man-made light was once itself a prehistoric forest, leaves fluttering in the sun-soaked breeze a million years before man arrived to wonder at them.

I am writing this at the College of Wooster in the year 2019. More specifically, I am writing this at the top of the hill behind home plate of the baseball field, where the view gives rise to the city of Wooster and the countryside rolling hills that surround the town. Ultimately, I recognize this position on campus as nature because I have always felt connected to hills and the view they give. Hills like these give views that allow you to see other aspects of nature from a unique perspective.

When I stroll around Wooster, I often find myself wandering the paths winding through the various areas of the campus. It was until recently that I realized that these man-made paths were created in synthesis with the nature that surrounds it. This complement of daily, faint exposure to the environment was something that I hadn’t thought of. It wasn’t until I forced myself to consciously recognize the intentions made in creating these paths were that it was a small glimpse of what we all ignore or just take advantage of. From the trees overhead to the plots of grass below, traveling through Wooster was meant to keep the plants around us in mind.

Between my busy schedule and allergies, most of my observations of nature come from peering through my dorm window or walking to class. Since my Freshman year I have noticed the plaques placed in front of certain trees on campus. Now, my eyes simply pass over them as the names of the trees tell me nothing about them besides an official name that means little. What is special about these trees? In order to know, do I have to google the names? If these distinctly unnatural plaques are being placed before trees to identify them, I wish they actually did so in a meaningful way.

Outside of Lowry you will find a set of stairs leading to the area between Mom’s Truck Stop and the Scot Center. Directly to the left of those stairs rests a waterfall built into the side of the hill. This can easily be identified as a man-made structure because the water comes out of the hill at an even level and speed. The unnaturally crystal clear water then falls into a small pool that is lined on the sides and bottom. This waterfall attempts and fails at appearing natural because of these reasons. While it is a nice addition to campus and gives it a decorative feel, it must be recognized that this is not a naturally constructed waterfall.