Nature Assignment Reflection

So here's something I typed up for this blog and never posted. I found it in my files today--dunno why I never posted the thing:
--

September 8, 2011

            I was very much looking forward to this assignment, because I enjoy taking some time off to go explore whatever trails are around me, but had not really had the time to do so in quite a while. I had to push it off until Wednesday due to a rather nasty head cold, and at first I was upset that the heavy rain had come, but it actually slowed down and even stopped while I was there, so that’s good. I wish I owned a pair of rain boots though.

            Yes, I definitely agree that spending time alone in nature alone can help one experience happiness. I always like to have some alone time, away from everything, but I have not done it to this extreme in almost a year. It was very, very refreshing. The constant sound of water as it dripped from branch to branch (the aftermath of the heavy rain), the musty smell of the muddy grass (there were no actual trails where I went; pathways, yes, but they were only grass paths), and the squishing sound my shoes made as I walked through the woods were all pretty relaxing, particularly the water.

            I didn’t hear many animalistic sounds, which honestly let me down a bit, but I did hear lots of insects. I thought I even heard cicadas, but I don’t know if they come out at this time of the year still. That thick, buzzing sound they make. I passed a few crossroads but decided to take the straightest path, in an effort to make it easier to get back. Eventually the pathways became much thinner, and the grass got taller. Despite the cool air, I felt sweat trickling down my back—I had been walking for a decent amount of time.

            I remember finding a log to sit on, and even though it was wet I took the time to rest. I heard the lake nearby and, coupling the various dripping sounds with drops and splashes from the lake, that was easily the highlight of the experience. These are sounds that you can very easily miss going through here while listening to music, or even when talking to someone else. They are the kind of sounds that are so rare in this time period that hearing them always inspires me. It reminds me that even outside of our cities and roads, life is constantly flowing. There are billions of untold stories in the woods. Any of those sounds could be connected to a story of some kind.

            This is why happiness can be found in solitude in the wilderness: because you get to pick up on the stories. You are alone with just your thoughts, and even if you’re going through a hard time in your life I think hearing the sounds of the woods can help soothe your mind. To put it in terms one might understand better, it makes me think of rebooting a computer. It flushes out the excess thoughts and just leaves you with the bare minimums. It takes away all of the worries, though they may remain in the back of your mind until you start to leave, and then it’s back to the grind. I think I may try to do this more often; after all, a computer should be rebooted at least once a week to keep it from getting clustered. As I made my way back to the car, the worries began coming back to me—homework due, did anyone play me in Words with Friends, oh man is it gonna start raining again? Really? Really?—and I realized that they didn’t bother me as much anymore. I took a break away from everything, and it was much needed.  

--

This was originally going to be what I handed in for the assignment, but I came up with a better idea and scrapped this one to use for a blog. I noticed it today, and was like, "Oh hey, add one more to the blog count, sweet." 

I may try to squeeze one more in before class--just for good measure. In the meantime... peace out, readers and classmates. It's been a blast. :)

Next Time: Something not copied and pasted!

Rhetoric in Wall E

So we've been watching Wall E in class, a movie by Pixar that was released several years ago. A lot of people really like it--I am among them, though I feel like Up and Toy Story beat it. In any case, the message of the film is pretty obvious even from the get go: we are literally destroying the earth to the extent that if we don't leave it, we won't be able to survive. It's message also revolves around technology making everyone fat and lazy, and that technology we glue ourselves to often blinds us from the world (like how John is amazed with Wall E's appearance and even the fact that the ship has a pool).

Firstly, even from a simple narrative standpoint, this movie hits the nail on the head. We get our protagonist, who is just as lost and confused (but eager to learn) as we are, Wall E. He goes through some trials, grows, and enters in a conflict. The beauty of this movie is that the conflict seems so simple: Wall E doesn't want to be alone, and thus wants to make EVA his friend. Or his girlfriend, even. I dunno, robots. Anyway, the simple conflict is put front and center for us, but then there's this other, major conflict that overlaps the entire thing: people returning to earth. In a sense, you have two completely different stories going at the same time that are connected only in that Wall E and EVA interact with both of them in some meaningful way. The best part? The conflict that should apply to us more--saving the earth, etc.--is put in the backseat, and yet that seems to make it even more effective.

So how does Wall E drive it's message across? Simple: by showing you what could be. It's very obvious from the film that we are in the future and that this isn't some fantasy world: this IS Earth, and this COULD and WILL happen. While children may miss that point, the adults in the audience--the parents, that is--will catch it. Even so, children leave that movie remembering what it was about: a dystopian future that was saved by a tiny robot and his flying friend. A future that was saved by preserving plant life. Subconsciously, they make that connection. Or at least they should.

Of course, if the movie was just all "MESSAGE" and no substance, it would still fall flat. This is another reason why the relationship between Wall E and EVA take center stage: it gives us an emotional connection, and thus we want Wall E to "win" as it were. He's just like us, and he's all alone in this huge, desolate world; if you don't want that to happen to someone on earth--or to earth in general--then you better start cleaning up your act now.

Pixar has always been pretty brilliant (except with Cars, which in my opinion is mediocre at best), both with the messages they instill and with the level of entertainment and emotion they can invoke on their audience, all without dialogue. Sure, there's dialogue in the movies, but they never tell you what's really going on. You infer it yourself through cleverly concealed clues.

Next Time: Well, I'm sure I'll think of something.

Cell Phone Experiments

Cell phones are a part of every day life. They are imbedded in American culture, and I doubt they'll be going away any time soon. That's why, for my project, I researched proper cell phone disposal. If you just throw your cell phone away in the garbage, it could end up in a landfill where it could do some damage.

There are a lot of chemicals in your phone, some of them are hazardous, some are not. Before you start to debate how much you use your cell phone, don't worry; none of those hazardous materials will get to you unless you leave the phone sit in the sun for something like 5 entire months straight. It's not designed to leak out, but as the materials covering the phone break away, they will. This can take years, but it does happen, and materials such as cadmium--the main component of your phone's battery--leak into soil and water, which can cause health problems for those living nearby.

The three experiments I ran were simple. I went to various stores and: A. Asked if they recycled cell phones, B. Discovered if they brought it up when buying a new cell phone, and C. Asked random people on the street what they did with their previous phone. The results I got were pretty straight forward. For A, most places do, except for Wal-Mart of all things (even though it is listed as accepting old phones!). For B, the only place that bothered was Radio Shack, and I think that's because the employee just thought to do it--he was not trained to. For C, almost half the people I talked to simply threw old phones in the garbage. Yikes.

I won't get into the boring statistics (they are there, but I'll probably be going over them during the presentation anyway), but for the most part, only 1% of cell phones get recycled. The rest are either kept or thrown away. That is a lot of phones, and a lot of hazardous material.

So, next time you go to buy a cell phone, remember to donate your old one, or hell, even give it to an old friend. It's as simple as walking into the store and giving it back. Will you be compensated for it? Err...well, no. Not unless it's worth something (i.e., a recent smart phone). But you won't be damaging the earth, and plus the materials within the phone can be reused to make new ones instead of being wasted. Pretty good, right?

Next Time: Something about Wall-E. That adorable little scamp.

Trip to Hawk Mountain

So sometime in the middle of November a few buddies and I decided to go hiking up at Hawk Mountain. I figured it would be cool to write a blog about it (even two weeks after the fact jeez I am terrible at keeping up with this thing) since we talked about it a little in class and because it's something involving nature that I've never experienced before. It was a fun disaster that I won't soon forget and would eventually like to do again.

And yes, it was a disaster. I mean, nobody got hurt or anything--one of us fell but no real damage came as a result, thankfully--but .. oh man, where do I even begin? Coupling the fact that the girlfriend and I have never been hiking before with the fact that we brazenly chose to go the "Medium" difficulty route only to end it with one of the maximum difficulty paths, it's honestly a miracle we survived. That was not an exaggeration for humor purposes, mind you; I genuinely thought I was going to die at some point. But regardless, it was a fun experience.

The downhill part, you see, was easy. There were lots of rocks, sure, but they mostly acted as stepping stones to easily get down the hill. Oddly enough, there was very little wildlife, despite how nice it was (it felt more like an early October day), which disappointed me a little. Still, it just felt very real, you know? Surrounded by nothing but trees. Hell, trees as far as I could see, the only thing blocking the view of them was rocks. There were a few cabins and such here and there, but we were utterly alone. It seemed that everyone we encountered--about two other parties--were going the other direction. That didn't bode well, but hey, we were on an adventure.

I should probably clear something up: our party consisted of six people. Three couples, if you want to be a little more specific. The plan, see, was to go down to the old riverbed, eat lunch, then climb back up. I can't get over how quiet it was. It was really peaceful, climbing down. We got to the bottom and ate before the long trek back up. I felt pretty confident that everything was going swimmingly; I felt as though I still had most of my stamina, as did most of the others.

The way up was a nightmare. Not only was the path much rockier, but it was also much steeper than the way down, to the point where we had to physically climb rocks. I felt really nervous, but you know what? We pressed on. We kept going, and even though my legs started to feel like someone laid them out on concrete and played hopscotch on them for thirty-five straight days, I felt perfectly fine. I felt invigorated, even. I couldn't remember the last time I exerted my body in any way (I don't exercise very often), and it felt good to really push my muscles. So, whatever, I said. I laugh in the face of your challenge, world. You think a mountain named after a predatory bird can stop me?

Well, it almost did. See, we got to a crossroad. Now, the rest of the path was pretty long, and a few of us were drained to the extent that their lungs and other necessary-if-you-would-like-to-keep-living organs were starting to feel strained, so one of us noticed that one path exists as a sort of shortcut to get back to the main trail and get the hell out of dodge. Cool, we thought. The person either neglected to tell us that this was a maximum difficulty path or didn't know it was labelled as such on the map. So, completely oblivious to the daunting task ahead, we marched on.

Then we got to the first hill. I want to iterate that as much as possible: We were already climbing a mountain and we got to a hill. The path up to the shortcut trail was steep as hell, to the extent that even the rocky stepping stones were a trial in and of themselves to climb. Yeesh. But again, we persevered. After all, we just climbed quite a bit of altitude! We had to be back to the top by then, so the worst was probably over, right?

Now I don't really like to write a story unless it has at least a hint of irony in it, so here comes the best part. This path actually involves climbing over a large set of rocks. As in, it's beyond the main trail. As in, we had to climb back down to get back on the main trail. And I don't even think the trail was a trail anymore. We made a beeline for the main trail and I think ended up off course. We had to climb down a really steep rocky hill. The kind that would probably kill you if you slipped and fell.

Have I mentioned up to this point that I am afraid of heights? I don't mean the level of, "Oh man, we're pretty high up--that's pretty scary, you guys." I mean to the level of absolute, petrified fear when I am any higher than four feet off of stable ground. The next--and final--10 minutes of our journey were not pleasant for me. I had just thrown my walking stick away, too (it damaged during the uphill climb so I discarded it), so I had nothing to support myself with.

But I made it. We made it. And even though we were all irrevocably angry with the member of our group who suggested we take "THE SHORTCUT," we look back on the hike with enjoyable delight. Even the girlfriend, who I thought for sure would keel over from sheer exhaustion, forgave said member and admitted we had a good time and that she would like to go again if we picked a shorter path.

So what made it worth it in the end? The climb back up? Well, sometimes even I am at a loss for words, so instead, I'll put a thousand of them in a single image for you and leave it at that:

Next Time: I'm actually not sure. Maybe something about cats. I hear that's a surefire way to get more hits on your site.

ADDENDUM: 
For the record, this is where we started. See that little ridge in the center? We went around that.

The bold-dotted-line trail (river of rocks) is the main trail we took, all the way around the second rock-set-thing. I'm not sure if it was the "EXPRESS" or "ESCARPMENT" trail we took on the way out. "South Lookout Point" is where we started. Also, I know that it's a term also used for the larger birds of prey, but it makes me giggle every time I see the "Raptor Viewing Sites" caption.