Site Beta
Location: Harvard Campus near the glass wall of the Casperson Student Center
Date: 4/17/17
Time: 9:40 pm
Weather Conditions: Clear skies. Slight breeze. 54℉.
Site Beta is pretty and seems very intentionally cultivated. There are tall flowers with large white petals (most have 6 petals in total) and yellow centers. There are also light greenish brown clumps of vegetation that look sort of grassy and scrubby, but in an intentional and contained way.
There were also small bushes (rough estimate of 3 feet high) that looked like a tangle of twigs sticking up out of the same little patch of ground. They have small green buds starting maybe a foot or so up from the ground. There was no other vegetation crowding around the base of these shrubs. In some areas, there was actually a very clear circle within which only a single large plant was growing.
I enjoyed Emma Marris's TED talk, and I think she raises interesting questions. What Marris said about not having any real 'untouched nature' definitely rang true for me. Even when I was living in a nationally protected area of the high desert, a week's hike from the nearest highway, there were still signs of human life - train tracks, fences, and the occasional semi-deflated helium balloon. In Boulder, CO, the local parks and such were more groomed, and there were obvious trails and markers, but it was still relatively wild seeming compared to the nature within easy walking distance of my dorm.
All of that said, I have definitely felt a sense of loss and a longing for wild or ungroomed looking nature. To me, the green spaces I can easily access on any given afternoon in Cambridge feel hyper-intentional and even political. The distance between the trees is almost always too far for hammocks. The grass is an even height. There are minimal weeds and a great deal of mulch. Most trees are too small to bear weight. Larger trees have had any reachable branches cut off, so as to discourage climbing. Considering how difficult I find time management and multistep processes, I have needed to amend my definition of nature for the sake of these assignments. For both of my sites, I have picked areas that are fairly small and obviously maintained. My criteria was basically just spots where I already like to go when I get stressed out and need to be outside for a while. Marris's TED talk definitely validated that impulse toward accepting and embracing the snippets of nature I find nearby, even if they have human fingerprints all over them.
I also love what she said about nature that kids can interact with. Her fort theory is sort of weird but it hits on the kind of logic that makes a lot of sense to me. I think that much of what I miss is the sense that when I go to a park or a green space I am interacting with nature more than I am interacting with the person who planned the area or the people who maintain the area. While both of my sites are designed to be touched only by professionals, and there is a definite sense that it would be frowned upon to pick one of the pretty white flowers at Site Beta let alone build a fort, I think Marris is right not to discount them entirely.
Location: Harvard Campus near the glass wall of the Casperson Student Center
Date: 4/17/17
Time: 9:40 pm
Weather Conditions: Clear skies. Slight breeze. 54℉.
Site Beta is pretty and seems very intentionally cultivated. There are tall flowers with large white petals (most have 6 petals in total) and yellow centers. There are also light greenish brown clumps of vegetation that look sort of grassy and scrubby, but in an intentional and contained way.
I enjoyed Emma Marris's TED talk, and I think she raises interesting questions. What Marris said about not having any real 'untouched nature' definitely rang true for me. Even when I was living in a nationally protected area of the high desert, a week's hike from the nearest highway, there were still signs of human life - train tracks, fences, and the occasional semi-deflated helium balloon. In Boulder, CO, the local parks and such were more groomed, and there were obvious trails and markers, but it was still relatively wild seeming compared to the nature within easy walking distance of my dorm.
All of that said, I have definitely felt a sense of loss and a longing for wild or ungroomed looking nature. To me, the green spaces I can easily access on any given afternoon in Cambridge feel hyper-intentional and even political. The distance between the trees is almost always too far for hammocks. The grass is an even height. There are minimal weeds and a great deal of mulch. Most trees are too small to bear weight. Larger trees have had any reachable branches cut off, so as to discourage climbing. Considering how difficult I find time management and multistep processes, I have needed to amend my definition of nature for the sake of these assignments. For both of my sites, I have picked areas that are fairly small and obviously maintained. My criteria was basically just spots where I already like to go when I get stressed out and need to be outside for a while. Marris's TED talk definitely validated that impulse toward accepting and embracing the snippets of nature I find nearby, even if they have human fingerprints all over them.
I also love what she said about nature that kids can interact with. Her fort theory is sort of weird but it hits on the kind of logic that makes a lot of sense to me. I think that much of what I miss is the sense that when I go to a park or a green space I am interacting with nature more than I am interacting with the person who planned the area or the people who maintain the area. While both of my sites are designed to be touched only by professionals, and there is a definite sense that it would be frowned upon to pick one of the pretty white flowers at Site Beta let alone build a fort, I think Marris is right not to discount them entirely.
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