Asides

For me, the best stories have always been connected to nature.  Perhaps it is because of nostalgia.  Growing up in a New Jersey suburb doesn’t allow for much time to relax or breathe, or for children to explore the outdoors.  My sister and I escaped to the park down the street, but instead of the brightly colored, sun-baked slides and swings, we were drawn to the creek and the low-hanging branches on the far side.  Playing “pretend” had a time and a place; the only proper place was by the creek.

It began with movies and books.  At 6 and 8 years old, we were Harry Potter and Hermione Granger.  We brandished fragile twigs that we found on the ground, fighting off invisible villains with our makeshift wands.  At 10 and 12 years old, we were members of Thorin Oakenshield’s company, slowly but surely making our way to the Lonely Mountain- or rather, the Lonely Raised Patch of Land on the Other Side of the Creek- to reclaim our gold from a greedy dragon.  As the years passed, we drifted away from the constraints of existing fiction.  Hannah and I began the main characters of our own narrative, fishing storylines from thin air and building from each others’ ideas.  The wind whispered prophecies, rejoicing at the arrival of the new heroes.  A squirrel chittering at us from a tree was a servant of the dark forces.  An acorn falling from a tree was actually a calculated attack against us; as we all know, an acorn is a devastating magical weapon that can raze entire villages if it passes into the wrong hands.

Nature is hard to predict.  Whenever we created a story in the park, it felt as if another mind was there with us, throwing us new ideas and plot twists.  Our narrative transformed our surroundings, and our surroundings transformed our narrative.  As I grew older, such things became harder to see.  Transformations became less obvious.  I wonder what 10-year-old me would see if they visited Wooster.

When I was little, my older brother and I were obsessed with the outdoors. We lived and breathed to be outside doing whatever mischevious deeds we could do without being under the watchful eye of our mother. These mischevious deeds included making potions out of whatever toxic plants and rocks we could find and mixing them together with water in a hole that we dug in the ground. Another activity we entertained ourselves with was selling bags of “fertilizer” (which was really just Georgia Red Clay that we dug out out our backyard) on the side of the road. However, out of all of our doings, our favourite thing to do was to run “Bug Hospitals”. This meant that we would take whatever plastic containers we could sneak out of our kitchen and fill them with bugs that we thought were in danger or hurt. We would them squirrel these bugs away inside our room to take care of them. Out of all of the bees, caterpillars, and scorpions, our favourite bug that we rescued was an earwig whom we later affectionally dubbed Mr. Wiggy. We saved Mr. Wiggy from an ant-bed where he was being eaten alive. We kept Mr. Wiggy in a plastic container for a little over 3 months and fed him healthy diet of Saltine cracker crumbs and water served to him in a bottle cap. We would take him outside and let him crawl around in a sort of pen that we made him and heavily supervised him. We even got to see him moult a couple of times. By this point, our parents had long since discovered our “Bug Hospital” operation and had made us get rid of all of the bugs except for Mr. Wiggy because he was arguably the least reproachful of all of our creepy crawly friends. When he died, we were quite devastated. In order to console us (and also probably to preserve their house from being overrun by termites or whatever else we decided to take care of), our parents opted to get us an actual pet (a guinea pig). To this day, my parents like to blame their fear of another bug menagerie for the plethora of animals that we have. However, now I am absolutely terrified of bugs and cannot for the life of me imagine why I ever felt it was a good idea to allow bugs into my room. But hey, I guess that’s growing up.

This past summer, my father and I took a trip to the southwestern U.S. to see some of the natural wonders of a landscape far more arid than our native New Orleans. My father and I share a love for the road less traveled, tending towards abandoned, half-overgrown paths rather than popular tourist destinations. It was due to this mutual love that we found ourselves hiking on a dusty, deserted trail off of House Rock Rd. in Vermilion Cliffs, AZ. Red and orange stone behemoths jutted out of the earth, and as we climbed up over the rocks at the foot of one cliff I became acutely aware of how much higher in elevation we were than my mother and brother, who were still below sea level back in our hometown.
Near the foot of the cliff there had been a condor watching station, complete with mounted binoculars, informative signs, and a rugged picnic table on which some child had abandoned their Spider-Man-themed sunglasses. What it lacked was any visible condors, so after ten or twenty patient minutes, we headed up the trail. However, as we arrived at the summit of the cliff and turned to look out at the desert landscape below us, an enormous bird swooped into our field of vision. It was much too big to be a vulture, and the bases of its wings were coated in downy white plumage that stood out against its inky black body. It was a California condor, a member of a slowly dying race. It whirled and looped in the sky above us for perhaps a minute before swooping out of sight again, but it wasn’t until just now that I realized just how impermanent that reaction was. If I had arrived on that cliff five or ten minutes early or late, I might not have seen that condor, and that may have been my one chance to glimpse this beautiful species. I’m glad I was able to seize it.

My parents tell me that since I was young, I had a “good eye.” Around age two or three my dad would push me in the stroller while walking our dog and I would point out aluminum cans discarded off the side of the street. I guess it’s turned into something of a nickname or a family phrase, “good eye Ingrid.” Come to think of it, I’ve usually been the one to first spot wildlife while going on hikes or simply driving with my family. I remember when we went to visit my aunt a long time ago, we were driving through the everglades and I spotted an alligator off the side of the road, quite near to us. I don’t think my parents believed me until they saw it for themselves.

In middle school I was gifted a camera from my aunt, and I took great pleasure in using it however I liked. By high school I received a nicer digital camera from my parents and continued to take photos pretty consistently (something I need to get back into the habit of). I became very interested in street photography. I read all about Henri Cartier-Bresson and looked at countless photography book by him, Robert Frank, Vivian Maier, and David Plowden. I was really fascinated by Cartier-Bresson and Maier because they truly mastered the candid photograph. They were able to take photographs at just the right time, often of complete strangers, and composed them in such an emotive and thought out way that they appear to be perfect little masterpieces. Cartier-Bresson pioneered this idea of the Decisive Moment: to wait, observe a scene, and take the photo at just the right moment where all of the desired elements of the photograph combine within the composition to create the photo.

Since having a camera myself, I feel a duty to myself to see and record everything around me that I deem significant. Through this, I feel like I have become a more diligent and detail oriented observer. I believe Dillard says something similar to this in chapter two. The camera has trained me, even more so, to take in the details, to pay attention to what others might not see (an interesting shadow or reflection). For instance my favorite moments are when I ignore the obvious attraction (the teams at a sporting event) and instead focus on the background (the kids running under the stands, the faces of those in the crowd, even the moths flying under the stadium lights). Essentially, anything in the “background” fascinates me and in my opinion, usually tells a more interesting story.

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.

It’s a chipmunk. Honestly, I thought it was just a baby squirrel. It’s markings are a little weird, but Wooster is known for its black squirrels–who’s to say there aren’t miniature versions of brown squirrels with little racing stripes down the back? He’s been hanging out outside my dorm for two weeks now, scurrying back and forth between the door and my window. Not causing any sort of trouble. I’d heard of chipmunks, of course, but had never actually seen one in person. They look surprisingly different than the Simon, Alvin, and Theodore I’m used to. Sitting on my bed, my elbows trained on the window sill, I watch him dart back and forth with no clear goal in mind. He stops for a second, sniffs a bit of glass that’s found itself shattered in the bushes, and takes off again. Only took a bit of Googling–Ohio critter, rodent with stripes, looks like squirrel but isn’t–to figure out what I had been questioning for the bulk of the semester.

 

Walking in the oak grove and around Kauke i found a leaf which i looked up to be white oak. There isnt much of a story around it because I simply dont know anything about leaf identification so I just had to look it up. While looking up white oak leafs, I was surprised to find a couple websites using the white oak as a symbol of wildlife conservation. I appreciated how others seem to think as I do about trees which is that they are protectors of sorts, a good vehicle to get people to care about species and animals that others might not know about.

The black squirrel is an abundant yet exotic animal that is featured on the college campus of Wooster. One can often see them skittering along the grass or climbing up a mighty tree. They can be seen just about anywhere on campus yet not many people know much about them. It’s like its slick black coat of fur brings a shroud of mystery behind it.  How are they different from other squirrels? I intend on answering this question, as well as looking more in-depth of its cultural impact, in hopes that we get to make a deeper understanding of these furry little creatures.

The origins of the black squirrel may shock you but these critters are found in most of America and even in other parts of the world like England. They are a subgroup of two animals, the eastern gray squirrel and the fox squirrel. The phenotype of the black squirrel is due to it’s dominant genetic alleles determining the hair pigments. As genes determining fur color are complex, to put it simply, black squirrels have special genes that make its jet black appearance and cannot be mixed with other squirrels.

As a result of their human interaction, there are many effects they have on the humans they live with. One of which, is the Mid-West culture surrounding the black squirrels. An example of this is the Kent University Black Squirrel statue. It’s a cultural icon of the university and has its own dense population of black squirrels that reside there. This isn’t the only place that has pride in its black squirrels. There are towns all over the U.S., most often Mid-Western towns, and even Canada that enjoy showing them off!

 

I am always so impressed with the grounds crew at this school, and the work that they put into making our campus beautiful. For the past week or so I have notices these vibrantly colorful flowers outside of the library and so I took this writing opportunity to snoop around and figure out what they were. Frankly enough, I used the power of the internet and my googling abilities to search, “colorful fuzzy flowers,” and was able to identify them through pictures online. I found out that this species is called Celosia, Plumed. They are annuals meaning that they are only alive for one growing season, and what makes them unique is their feathery and plumelike flowerheads which come in colors ranging from pink and red, to yellow or violet. Overall, they seem to be a nice bright addition to this constantly changing fall weather.

http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/homegardening/scene445b.html