I have lived in areas with a lot of nature most of my life and have spent many weeks each summer at cabins in the Adirondaks and the Finger Lakes.  Though there is not one moment that stands out just being surrounded by the lake and forest is very peaceful and helps me to re-evaluate what is important. Living in a city is difficult because there is not the calmness of the natural world and I get restless living here. There is a magical quality to nature, especially at dawn, when there is a suspended state as everything wakes up, and sunset, when everything goes to sleep. Those are my favorite times of the day because they have a different feel to them, and the hectic pace of life slows down in those moments.

Nature is worth saving because we our imagination is caught by the mystery of the natural world. What science cannot explain we use story and other means of expressing our thoughts to work out explanations.  This has led to the development of much of our culture and if we give that up, we may only have technology to fall back on, which will be a loss to us.

A stary night

I have had lots of "enchanting" experiences while amongst nature. However, one night stands out in my mind above all the others. My father was a boyscout leader while I was growing up. Thus, I had to go camping with a bunch of boys at least one weekend a month. I remember that on one of the trips, I just wanted to get away from the boys, my parents, and everything. So, I wandered into the woods on my own. I know it wasn't very smart, but it was worth it. The weekend was not going well, and it was just one of many miserable nights I had as a child for several other reasons. I remember wandering aimlessly crying and kicking leaves. As I kicked one pile of leaves, my foot hit a root and I fell. Just as I started cursing and thinking "Why me?", I looked up. There was a clearing in the trees, and through the clearing was an image still ingrained in my mind. Colors like I had never seen them, blues, purples, green, whites, ...took my breath away, just as the memory still does today. The sky was so clear that I could see thousands of stars. I spotted Orion's belt and all the familiar stars above my house, but there were hundreds of thousands of stars surrounding them I had never seen. I sat there for hours until my mother came and found me. Then, without me saying a word, she sat with me and looked. I slept outside that night right on that spot. I didn't want to leave something so beautiful. To me, it was a sign of hope. Although we have our systems and ways of doing things and norms, we are so small and insignificant that they don't matter. Those silly boys and all of the things bothering me didn't matter. Those things were so small in comparison. I can't help but to think how God or whoever you believe made the universe, just sits back and laughs at all of our stresses and our narrow mindedness. There's something so much greater, a much much larger picture than what any of us ever see. In the city, amongst the stress and chaos none of us ever have the time to see sights like that night. Most of us couldn't even if we tried, due to lights and pollution. Those who do see sights like that try to categorize them and catalog them into our systems, but they miss the bigger picture.
We are missing the larger picture! What is more important to us? Would you really want to live a life without such beauty and grandeur?? I ask myself these things virtually every day, but then I remember that most of us have never seen or experienced such beauty at all. So, how could it be missed? I have not seen the sky so clear nor so colorful since that night, not even when I went back a few years ago. There were too many lights around and a haze. We have evolved to a point where nothing is beyond our reasoning or systems. Thus, there is nothing to restore our humility. Once we loose the bigger picture forever, all we have left are our silly insignificant stresses and worries. Cutting down trees and inventing bigger cars may make us happy, according to our systems, or may help us sustain more people based on our systems, but all that beauty, everything that's nature/natural will be lost forever. The only meaning in our lives will be what we have invented. Even if we could survive as a species without nature, would we want to??? I can't see those sights anymore, but I know they're there, and it's hope that there's something bigger than me, something more meaningful and awe inspiring. Nature should be the most important concern for contemporary environmentalists, as once we loose the bigger picture, we loose our sense of humility, awe, and hope. What would be the point in living in a world without them?????

My favorite place in the world

I've been thinking about what to write in this blog for a few days now, and I haven't been able to come up with one defining moment in nature that was especially magical or thrilling or enchanting. What kept coming to my mind was my favorite place in the entire world - Big Twin Lake in Michigan.


I first went here with my family when I was in sixth grade. We stayed with another family who had a long history there. I fell in love instantly. I have been going there at least once a year ever since, and more frequently since our two families bought a house there a few years ago. It is a very special place to me because it's where I really learned to appreciate nature. I've always spent a lot of time outdoors, from summer camp when I was young to riding my bike around my neighborhood, but there was something completely different about being outside at Big Twin. Every season and every outdoor activity is special in its own way. I don't particularly enjoy helping my dad out in the yard at home, but in Michigan, it's fun. I help him with firewood, work on the deck, shoveling in the winter, pulling weeds on the beach, etc. We go on walks around the lake and we walk to the store to get milk and bread. We eat fresh fruit in the summer, and I've never tasted better cherries, strawberries, or blueberries in my life. No matter what we have to eat, meals always taste better up there because we've all worked up an appetite by being so active during the day. I can't imagine anything I'd like to do more during the summer than spend time up there. I love to throw on my bathing suit and be able to run out the door without shoes on and spend the entire day outside. We spend the day at the beach, go swimming, go boating, water ski, jet ski, tube, play frisbee and lawn darts, and more. It's such a great place to spend time with my family, and I also love taking my friends up there as well as spending time with the many people we have befriended who have houses up there, as well.


Going up to Michigan is like going to a whole new world. We have three stations on TV, no internet, and very limited cell phone service. I love this because it's the perfect excuse for me to fall of the map for a week or so at a time. We all slow down and are able to enjoy the simple pleasures in life, from walking around the lake and greeting everyone we see to playing euchre after a delicious dinner outdoors. I've also never seen more beautiful sunsets. One of our favorite things to do is to take the pontoon boat out to the middle of the lake at night and look at the stars. I can't begin to describe the stillness and the overwhelming amount of stars that we can see. The more we look, the more stars seem to appear. It's amazing to see shooting stars and the Milky Way and point out constellations that we recognize. It really put things in perspective, too, because it makes me think about how vast and awesome the universe is.


Spending time in Michigan has definitely fueled my desire to protect nature. I enjoy my time up there so much and I can't imagine how I would feel if Big Twin were destroyed. Therefore, I definitely think nature is worth working to save. If everyone had the same sort of love for a place in nature, I think so many more people would want to protect the environment. I don't see how environmentalism can exist without a desire to save nature. Of course there are huge issues to tackle such as alternative sources of energy, access to water, climate change, etc., but I believe that a respect and love of nature needs to be an underlying motivator for all of those aspects of environmentalism.

Over break, I had a conversation with a Kogod business major after I told him that I was very interested in environmental studies. The first thing he did was roll his eyes, laugh, and say, “Oh you’re one of those.” I refrained from getting offended and instead asked his opinion on things.
He said that government and saving the environment will never coincide. He felt that as long as business is for profit, the environment will come second. Businesses have no drive to save the earth. And, he explained, it is absurd for the government to enact legislation because there is no mode of regulation to back it up.
My response began with the acknowledgment that business is for profit, and I doubt that will ever change. But, I said, the environment does not have to come second. I feel that businesses can take responsibility for the environment, AND make a profit. In fact, the environmental factor can enhance a businesses appeal. I agreed with his assertion that the government cannot impose rules if they go unregulated. Because then, some will follow and others just won’t.

Complex conversations

I went home for a few days over spring break, so I talked to my family a bit about some environmental issues. A lot of my values concerning the environment were inspired by my family, such as reducing consumption, not being wasteful, and just a love for the outdoors. However, we still disagree on many topics concerning the environment. I remember over winter break, my dad told me that he thought that the warming of the planet was just a part of its normal cycle. I brought the subject up again last week, and I think he's starting to change his mind because he said something like "I need to look into that more." My mom and sister also argued that scientists don't have enough information to prove that global warming is caused by humans, and that for every study that implicates humans as the cause, there is other information to refute it. I pushed my mom to back up her opinion with facts, but she couldn't do it. My dad has a copy of An Inconvenient Truth, so I told them that they should all watch it together.

It can be really frustrating talking to my family about the environment, because as I said before, they are part of the reason why I'm so interested in the environment and why I feel like it is so important to protect it. Therefore, it's hard for me to accept that they don't hold all of the same values that I do. I occasionally send them links to articles that I find interesting and encourage them to make small changes, such as buying more organic food, using reusable bags instead of plastic ones, using safer cleaner products, and using compact fluorescent light bulbs. My mom did buy a compact fluorescent light bulb, but then when we went to put it in my sister's bathroom, it didn't fit - so that was annoying! It's difficult to get them to change their habits, but I'm still working on it.

Agreeing to Disagree

Over break I had the opportunity to speak with my father about global warming. This is a topic that we have always disagreed about.  My father feels that it is mainly a natural phenomenon and that we don't know enough about the earth patterns to know the real effect of what we are having. He also feels that since it is economically impractical to change at this time that we should hold off until we know more, since it would be such a huge investment.  While I agree that we don't know much about the earth's cyclical patterns I feel that we know enough to realize that we are having some impact and that as our population and global economy get bigger and more fossil fuels dependent it will be more difficult to change in the future.  As many counties are just beginning heavy energy usage it would be better if they skipped the heavily polluting stage and began using alternative energy, except for the huge dam projects which have negative ecological and social impacts.  This is something that we have never agreed upon, and has been the source of many debates between us.  He does not dispute that the earth is warming, just that the earth's system is too complex to know the real causes.  There is a little bit of truth, but I feel that it is best to be safe than sorry, since by the time the problems really hit us it will be to late to change and its not fair to inflict the effects of our mistakes onto future generations.

So many questions!

Over spring break i have not had the chance to speak with anyone who disagrees with me.  However, one particular conversation has stuck in m mind for several years now.  When I was a senior in high school, a teacher of mine questioned the class and their views on the environmental issues that were so popular at the time.  I, to this day, am still unsure of his angle with this class.  Maybe, he just wanted us to think outside the box.  Maybe he actually believed what he said.  Perhaps, he wanted us to simply question authority.  I do not know.  But, the lesson has stayed with me ever since and has skewed my thoughts towards environmental scientists and the popular environmental issues everyone is talking about.

In this class, he asked us to look for proof in our science books that the whole in the ozone was an important catastrophic immediate problem and to also find proof that people were the cause of it.  He pointed to gas weights and said how the gasses scientists claim to have made the whole are simply too heavy to reach those altitudes and gave us a bunch of scientific arguments, none of which any of us understood, but this made me think about how scientists pushing the arguments my teacher was so against, could also say anything they wanted and have us believe them, as they were "scientists," and we were just students.  The teacher also went on to show how none of our books actually proved or even simply stated that humans were the direct problem and that several facts had been left out of them, such as how the whole gets larger and smaller during certain parts of the year, how there was a whole the same size before humans were around, how there is actually a thing as too much ozone, an so on.  His whole argument pointed to his belief that scientists were using us, filling our heads with worries so that they could keep making money.

I have struggled with his argument for a very long time now.  We tried arguing with him at first, but the more he told us about what we did not know, the more used and lied to I felt.  Not to mention, the ideas and final arguments he made made more sense than the graphs and scientific speeches in our books.  I, to this day, struggle with what I should think about the ozone. I cannot argue anyone on this, as I do not have certain facts either way.  I'm just trying to keep my mind open and formulate my own opinion.