Just some assignment...or is it?

The place I chose is a small little park near my family’s land back home in Jasper County, Iowa. I went here instead of the woods at home for some different surroundings, surroundings that I didn’t have any memory of so that my records could be more nature oriented and less memory oriented.

I used to do things like this when I was younger, just wander out into nature and sit and bask in it and just think. My later years in high school and college changed that as I got caught up in the mundane everyday worries of adults. I had forgotten how refreshing this can be, how nature can cleanse the soul.

Sitting in a wooded area a little ways off the trail I slowly made my way through all the steps of the “homework”. I say homework in that way because a professor asking you to go and sit and enjoy nature isn’t exactly something I would consider work; it’s the equivalent of having a massage or a trip to a pool assigned.

I sat on a rotting log and just soaked it all in. I always found a sense of wonder, a sense of the supernatural in nature, when I was younger and now it all came flowing back. I heard birds chirping and realized that I hadn’t noticed that before. I had complained all winter about the lack of life around and how silent everything was, yet when nature did come back to life for the spring, I failed to appreciate it.

I grew up in a family that you wouldn’t exactly call religious. I mean, sure, we went through the motions of celebration on Christian holidays and we would occasionally attend church when I was younger but that never really counted for anything. Here in the woods is where I developed my sense that there is a God and God created a beautiful world for us; a magical world if we would just take the time to look around. Sitting in the park I thought about how far off base many people are who claim to be religious and yet fail to appreciate God’s work.

I got a lot of things out of this, it’s true. We are the caretakers of this world we have and we are failing miserably. Currently we are the species that has the most negative impact on the world; way more negative impact that flatulence in cattle destroying the ozone. Yet at the same time we have the greatest potential to have a positive impact. I want to have a positive impact with my life and I realize sacrifices are going to have to be made. I can’t continue living the wasteful way I have been. The price is one that I’m willing to pay though. If me giving up some of the luxuries of life helps; even as small of a part that I play, keep the environment clean and pure, then it is worth it. If animals and plants can be saved by making a change, then it is worth it. If future generations can sit in the woods and feel the same sense of awe that I do, then it is worth it.

This assignment, one for a class that I had and did not want to take, has reawakened me to some of that wonder I felt about nature when I was younger. I hope to never again let myself forget that wonder.