This past Thursday was the first meeting of our Earth Lodge class! And in true Earth Lodge fashion, we ventured outside to the Gambles Mill Trail. The trail is located in-between the golf course and the intramural fields at the University of Richmond and connects the campus to the intersection of Huguenot and River Road. Charged with the task of writing our first blog entries we all hurried up the path, eyes peeled for something interesting to write about. However, this did not last long for me, as I soon found myself focusing on one tree, bush, stream, etc., and searching my brain for something interesting to say about it, while missing out on the rest of the trail. So instead I decided to put my pen down and just walk. At the opening of the trail I noticed a tall tree, cleanly severed at about 40 feet up. I began thinking to myself, “What happened to the rest of the tree? Why was it cut so cleanly? And why so high up? Oh well, don’t want to miss out on the rest of the trail, I guess I’ll just continue on.” Next, I noticed the golf course to my left. Although brown, it was perfectly manicured and blocked off from intruders by barbed wire. I could not help thinking about how much more time and effort must go into maintaining the course than does for the corridor that I was walking along, which was littered with candy bar wrappers and plastic bottles. Next, I came across some dead leaves on the side of the path spray painted bright blue. I thought perhaps this was to mark the trail, but could not see why this was necessary as the path was paved and pretty hard to miss. Finally, the last thing that caught my eye was a series of tire tracks through the mud on the side of the trail. That’s when it hit me. Unfortunately, all of the things I had been noticing were not natural, but rather due to the uninvited influence of man. Then I began thinking specifically about the tire tracks. Just as the tracks of any animal would, they told me that something had been there and left its mark. However, I realized that unlike other animals, our tracks aren’t necessarily left by our feet. Rather, we have a different kind of footprint – one of tire tracks, severed trees, manicured hills, and barbed wire. This got me thinking about how we leave our mark. Do we leave places the same way we find them, or in a much worse condition? I know these are quite philosophical musings for just our first walk down the trail, but I couldn’t help but let my mind wander. Maybe I should escape from the structure of college life and get outside just to wander and think more often. Maybe we all should.
The human footprint
Wow what a cool blog! Haha just kidding. Me again- and now having had the opportunity to revisit the Gambles Mill Trail this past class I have some revisions to make to my original take on this rather obscure part of campus. This time we were fortunate enough to head down the trail with an expert – the great TLB (our professor Dr. Lookingbill). His explanation of the trail and the university’s plans to make it a bigger part of campus really opened my eyes to a more realistic view of the human impact on this path. He informed us that the university is currently working on plans to update and expand the trail to allow students greater access to the area around the intersection of Huguenot and River Road, and even further to Pony Pasture, the popular river-side recreational site just over the Huguenot bridge. So now looking back at the tire tracks, painted leaves, and severed trees that I noticed before, I have a completely different view of what they might mean. Perhaps all of these things that I observed are just indications of work already being done to update and maintain the trail. I know that the line between actively maintaining and negatively impacting the natural world can be thin, but still, maybe I did not give the university enough credit. I cannot say for sure what work has or will be done on the trail, as TLB was sure to say that the plans are still being negotiated, but I can certainly admit that my first impression of the trail and the human impact on it may have been rash and inaccurate. Perhaps the tracks I saw were not a destructive human footprint, but rather the signs of a helping hand.