The Nature of Nature 2019

It’s not quite September, but the fountain has already been turned off for the year. Instead of a waterfall cascading from the overhang behind Lowry Center, the “fountain” is now little more than a puddle of leaves and muck, reeking of stagnant water and Natural Lite. On mid-July nights, when you’re seemingly the only one left on campus, this is the perfect place to sit and watch the stars; there aren’t many, but compared to Louisville, this is easily the darkest night you’ve ever seen. On those nights, when the fountain is still spewing water, the fountain almost seems natural–except for the stray McDonald’s bags and crumpled paper tossed on the ground leading up to it. For now, though, it’s been turned off. The authenticity waivers a bit without the constant stream of water, but really, you’re sitting behind a college student union alternating between watching the leaves swirl in the water and the notifications that pop up on your phone. It’s not exactly nature–but it’s a decent fake.

There is a statue next to Ebert: A life-size girl in a short, flimsy dress, who looks like she’s in constant motion. Her hands reach out to pet small birds. She is meant to look as if she is frolicking in the Oak Grove, one with the birds and the trees etc. Every since I first saw that statue, I’ve wondered ‘why her’? Why is she young? White? Thin? Scantily clad? I can’t help but think that despite the school’s best interests, they’ve once again bought into the ideology of nature as the pure female virgin. How predictable yet disappointing.

With each step you take deeper into Ruth W. Williams Hall, you can see nature was a large consideration during its design. As students learn about climate change and natural selection, they find themselves surrounded by walls covered in green: be it paint, photos of the outdoors, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, or living, photosynthesizing, growing plants. They are stapled against a faux-wood backdrop in large brown sacs filled with packaged potting soil. Above them is a single ever-burning light-source—not a grow lamp or a window, but a single fluorescent bulb. While caring for these plants in the last few months, I would wait for a guest of the college to ask me why the plants looked so unhealthy. Instead tours would pass by one after another, cooing over the plants. Alive! Can you believe it? Nature, but in here!

Without a proper light source or light-dark cycle, the plants on the wall are not the most beautiful, not the favorites of faculty and the community, and not significant to the wildlife beyond the walls of Ruth W. Williams. They are only the survivors. They have sustained themselves only because of their ability to suffer through sub-optimal conditions. They stretch themselves thin and etiolated, as if being taller or longer than their neighbor would bring them bright and plentiful sunlight. They grow where less hardy plants grew and stopped growing, also searching for light.

Perhaps, in that, there is a piece of nature growing in the living wall along with them.

I think of nature when I’m walking and I see trash on the ground or a beer can crushed on the sidewalk.  I think this is because of all the daily news stories I see about the threats of climate change, trash in the ocean, burning rainforests, or whatever other negative impacts humans are having on the world.  It makes me wonder if one day I will be reading about how things have gotten better and how we’ve found ways to live more sustainable lives and help the environment.  I wonder how long things can continue to get worse.

Although sometim–always– trodden underfoot, the paved pathways we walk every day are fairly close and far from “where we’ve come from”. On one hand they represent, at their most basic, the small deer paths and game trails you can find wherever semi-to-very-large life is. On the other hand we’ve paved over the earth and roots removing the nature aspect.

The second example is related, the stairs. They are, to me, a more egregious affront to whatever “nature” is. They break the smooth slopes of hills with their cliff-like edges…which may make them to be just as natural as anything else. I’m not committed strongly one way over another.

There is a statue of a girl standing outside of Ebert who appears to be interacting with the nature around her. She is barefoot and standing on her tiptoes. She is wearing what would be a flowy dress if it were not made of bronze and she appears to be dancing. She is reaching out a delicate arm and has a butterfly perched on her finger. She is also situated among bushes which makes her give off the impression that she is enveloped by nature even though she is manmade. She almost seems to represent the idea that man and nature can exist peacefully and in duality with each other.

I live in a green house on College Ave. I think I like living in a house. There are very few alternatives, but out of the options on campus the houses are distinctly preferable to Holden. I’ve been inside Holden before to move someone out and in the hour or so I spent moving things from one floor to the entrance, I, for the first time, understood what it was like to feel trapped in a place. For me, someone whose schedule and interests rarely permit her to leave her desk, a porch is a rare pleasure. It is a gift, I think, to sit on a porch in the rain. Able to listen to the world and feel the cool air swirling around you, and keep your socks dry at the same time. It’s nice inside, but its not the same. You can’t feel the shifts in temperature in the air. You can’t smell the rain as it falls. It’s too distant to remove yourself from your work.

My freshman year I got rain boots that were a size too small. When Autumn came, and the rain was too cold to justify walking out in my flip-flops, I would pull on my rain coat, squeeze my feet into those rain boots, and sit out in the courtyard to listen to the rain. I looked ridiculous. The knees and the seat of my pants were soaked through from how I was sitting, leaving me cold and uncomfortable. People walked by on their way to swipe into the dorm, giving me a questioning look. And granted I felt ridiculous. So I would often get up and start walking. There are brick paths all around this school, marred with holes from where seniors have pulled out their souvenirs. I got to know them well on my walks, and I learned how to side step the hydroplane from oncoming traffic (the roads, it seems are worse than the paths).

I think it’s human nature to want shelter. No one wants wet socks. But a porch is a liminal shelter. It allows for a more complete immersion into an aesthetically natural environment. The shallow end of the pool where you can dip your toes in–or simply hang your legs over the side into.

When I was first considering a place on campus that has “nature” my first thought was of Williams. The café in Williams has many examples of “nature” but upon further investigation in Williams I was reminded that some walls have plants on them. The walls have wood as the backdrop and the plants are in these cloth like envelops. Since the first year the plants have changed. Some of the plants now spill out over their envelop while others remain small succulents. The section of the wall with the plants is back and is not flush with the rest of the wall and underneath the plants are stones. If you stand at the very end of the hall the plant wall sticks out not only because it has plants, but because it’s the only section of the wall painted green, the rest of the hall is white. If you walk down the hall it feels like a sterile environment with the exception of the plants that bring life. Obviously, the plants did not naturally start growing in a brand-new building but were put there by architects and designers to resemble nature. Throughout the whole building there are similar pockets of “nature” that the architects and designers have used to create a modern building that integrates elements of the natural world.

One of the first places that I thought of, which concerns our imitation of nature on campus, was Knowlton cafe and the “trees.” In many ways these sculptural fixtures are quite beautiful. They rise out of circular benches with trunks that resemble those of aspens, with felted leaves and hidden bulbs that illuminate. Yes these trees are not living, but as far as architecture goes, they are natural elements that reflect the towering oak trees just outside on the green.