I joined Earth Lodge for a very specific reason. It wasn’t really academic, since I have no idea what I’m doing with my life just yet (i.e. I’m not an Environmental Studies major). It wasn’t to learn about my impact and the importance of sustainability. It wasn’t about learning about the James in all its glory. It wasn’t for the trips. It wasn’t because I made so many friends in Quidditch last year who were a part of Earth Lodge. It wasn’t for Tuesday tea at ten. It wasn’t for Atlantic House, or my single. Or even the kitchen we never got. These are all reasons I love Earth Lodge now, and great rationalities for joining (save the far walk and the absent kitchen).
The real reason I joined Earth was the topic of my first even blog post for the class: The community. I talked about it before, how significant a role community played in my intellectual and personal development. I went to a Quaker boarding school, in which community was one of the six core values. Our lives were often dictated by community. We went to meeting for worship twice a week, where you sit in a room with everyone else in the high school in silence for 4 minutes to an hour, and listen to what God moves people to say. One room. Every person in your school, including faculty and staff. We lived on halls with all the boys/girls in our grade. One hallway. 70 girls. With teachers as dorm parents, living at the ends of the halls in apartments. We ate every meal family style at an 8 person square table. The entirety of the school (except for science and language classes) was contained in one building. Everyone there was your friend, whether you knew them or not. Everyone was looking out for you. You could sit down at any lunch table and have a wonderful conversation. People sat outside to do homework and hang out when it was nice out.
It was a community like this, what some people would call ‘toucy-feely” or “granola” that I missed so much last year. And its that same kind of community, or the potential for it, that made me stay in Earth Lodge when I considered leaving. It was the first class, where TLB taught us what it means to be in a watershed, that made we want to keep learning more about how the Earth an geography brings humans together.
Since then, my hopes for community have been met, and where they haven’t I see potential for growth. Tea time on Tuesday in our secluded little house strengthens our bonds (even though I’ve had to miss a bunch….sorry), and I’m sure the fall break trip will serve to strengthen them even more. I’ve randomly hung out and chatted or watched movies on a Saturday night with several people in this house, which is exactly the type of event I missed from high school. the required service and the field trips where we learn and hang out and even eat together our molding us into the group Earth Lodge has always been (or so I’ve been told).
Besides our own Earth Lodge community, we learn every day about how all living creatures, and all decisions we make, effect each other and future generations. Urbanization effects riparian zones, which effect rivers, which flow into greater watersheds and effect more riparian zones which effect more towns and cities and people. The talk with Ikal Ang’gelei, and the similarities of the Omo River and Lake Turkana with geography and even social issues in our own locality really drove home the point that there is a global community present than no one seems to notice anymore.
I realize thus far this has been a reiteration of my first blog post, but class readings, In River Time readings, the science, even the trees have all contributed to this main theme of Earth Lodge in my mind. The required service that connected us, or me at least, with both the community and the river. The sheer awesomeness of the James and all it has to offer. The history of the James river and how it has shaped and changed us and we have shaped and changed it. My reflection spot at the University community garden place. It makes me feel both large and small, if that makes sense. Small in that it is such a large world out there, even if you’re just looking and the James and Richmond. There are so many people and creatures and places and things. And large in that I might actually be able to make a difference to these people and creatures and places and things.
More than knowing what I’m doing with my life, because I still don’t, I have a sense now of how I want to go about it. How I want to live, things I want to do, or keep doing, ways to maybe make a difference, or even find out how to make a difference. For instance, I’d love to organize my own 5k, like the slash and dash. I think that was an excellent way to raise awareness of environmental issues, raise funds, encourage health and wellness, and encourage community. Maybe not necessarily centered around a river. But I would like to spend more time at the rivers in my home area. I’m attaching a picture of what I said was the Delaware, but I think may be the Brandywine, which I sometimes go tubing on over the summer with my family. That was what I was doing the day I took the picture. I’d like to encourage my community to plant more hydrological gardens around the rivers, and to quit it with the fertilizer. I might actually go out and pick up litter around the woods in the park behind my house, which I’ve been meaning to do for years. Because now I feel that I might actually be able to have an impact. Earth lodge last year did, so why cant we?
I’m attaching some pictures of the various trips I’ve been on, with various people. Including Maymont, JRA Splash and Dash, the field trip to the Richmond Flood Wall and the art we saw there, and the James on the day we had class there, and the picture of a sunset on the river back home. These trips have really been the formative experiences of Earth Lodge for me, and are where I think I’ve done the most learning.
**PS: It took me a three separate uploading attempts but I finally got it! YES.