In our final book club meeting we needed to find a quote that encompassed the entirety of the course and our experiences. To my delight, I found this little but profound quote by Ovid, one of my favorite Roman poets:
“All things change, nothing is extinguished. There is nothing in the whole world, which is permanent. Everything flows onward; all things are brought into being with a changing nature; the ages themselves glide by in constant movement.”
The quote ties well into my idea of flow from my previous synthesis blog. I stated that flow is a part of everything from the water cycle to predator-prey interactions. When at Great Falls the Earth Lodgers could not stop the wall of snow that wound through the canyon, nor could we stop the flow of the river. I learned that nature is in constant motion and we were part of the cycles going on around us. Our presence connected us to the land, the sky, and the global cycles beyond any individual’s reach. I also learned to appreciate the snow for even just a few moments because “tempus fugit” or time flies, especially at the end of the semester. Within just twenty minutes the sounds, sights, and thoughts of snow were just a fleeting memory as we left Washington D.C. Thinking about the idea of flow has made me shift focus to a place closer to home at Richmond. The Gambles Mill Trail is a place in motion where there is a smooth flow between seconds, minutes, days, months, and seasons.
I am glad that I got to experience the changing nature of the Gambles Mill Trail and chose this location as my reflection spot. Shannon’s first post “I always fall in love after the rain” about the Gambles Mill Trail adventure helped me choose the trail as my reflection spot. She had an upbeat attitude about the trail as I did and helped me to hone into my special spot. Over the semester, I really came to appreciate the reflection spot blogs and just how “all things are brought into being with a changing nature.” My patch was where the Little Westham Creek and the relatively nutrient loaded Swale 2 met. Over the course of three visits to my spot, I learned that from just looking from looking from the trail nothing seemed to change. Only that the trees and brush that guarded the entrance to my path were once again green as spring arrived. In reality, my location everything was in constant motion. The songbirds swooped through the branches, vultures scavenged for food, new plants reached for sunlight, and water flowed down the stream. From visit to visit, new signs of life were always a treat and always left me wanting to see what more would change by the time of my next visit. Celeste also seemed to have noticed the changes to her reflection spot in “Itchy Eyes, Beautiful Dogwoods.” She said that the area became pretty as the semester waned. It goes well with the Ovid quote “as the ages glide by in a constant motion” because the spring meant the beginning of new life and the end of a school year. Many “ages” can coincide and have connections through seasons and time.
The ideas of the course such as connection have taken hold in regards to the Gambles Mill trail. All of the water from the residential areas, the University of Richmond, and the Country Club of Virginia is connected to the Gambles Mill Trail. It all flows directly into the Little Westham Creek via the Westhampton Lake spillway or one of the many golf course swales. The waters of the Little Westham Creek will eventually flow into the James River, passing by Pony Pasture Rapids, Belle Isle, and eventually the Chesapeake Bay. My suite’s final project has solidified the idea of the interconnectedness of people and watersheds. There are so many implications of nutrient loading the Little Westham Creek. The fish and the crawfish I found living in the waters from Swale 2 in my second reflection must deal with the nutrient runoff from the area. How were the nutrients affecting them? How many nutrients are entering the James from the creek and the multitude of streams that empty into the James River? Sampling showed that nutrient levels in Swale 2 spiked during rainstorm events and must had some effect on the creatures of the swale. It is funny just how attached someone can get to a spot and the creatures, like the fish within.
The nutrient sampling project on the Gambles Mill Trail also made me think about boundaries and scale. The boundaries of the Little Westham Creek were tiny and insignificant in comparison to the wide expanses of the James River and Chesapeake Bay. In many ways, Mike’s blog “The Ants Go Marching One by One…” reminds us that humans need to act as if they are in a wider society just like ants. He talks about how ants are symbiotes to many other creatures such as plants, caterpillars, and aphids. The ants work together with other species to obtain their goals. Humans have the capacity to live symbiotically with their environment and reduce nutrient pollution in the James River and Chesapeake Bay. It can lead to the reduction of eutrophication events, which can literally suffocate the aquatic life of an area. A healthy overall ecosystem can lead to many rewards for people. For some it would be clean water to play in, may be catch a glimpse of a bald eagle on the James at the Rice Center, or be one day able to sustainably harvest sturgeon caviar just as the settlers of Jamestown did 400 years ago.
Connectivity, boundaries, and scale are very important to the Gambles Mill Trail and in the larger process of the water cycle. People have the ability to live within their environment instead of trying to control it and do as they please. Nothing in the world is permanent as Ovid said. So nutrient pollution and not living within our environment mutually cannot be permanent as well. There will be natural flows of rivers and life cycles regardless of human intervention. Where humans fit into a constantly changing environment is a question that needs to be asked. Stopping excessive nutrient pollution on the Gambles Mill Trail may be just one way to start working and living within our environment.
