Final Synthesis

I have kept a journal since the beginning of my time at Richmond, and it has become an essential part of the way I process my experiences and observe my own growth. I had never thought to keep track of my development that way within one class—but my blogs for Geography of the James have become a sub-journal for me. Re-reading them now is an eye-opening indication of the impact the course has had on my conception of my ecological role, my sense of place, and my general understanding of the environmental movement. I notice two major trends in my blogs. The first is an expansion outward of my focus on human relationships with habitat, primarily addressing my own experience of my surroundings at first but developing an awareness and a curiosity about others’ involvement with nature as the semester went on. The second is the development of a fuller sense of what is necessary for environmental groups to achieve meaningful changes and for their leaders to work effectively.
In my first blog posts (http://blog.richmond.edu/james/?p=1765, http://blog.richmond.edu/james/?p=1858), I discussed the sense of welcomeness I experienced on a walk along Little Westham Creek and the pleasure I experience in my reflection spot on the Commons bridge. Thoughtful consideration of my place in my habitat was nothing new for me—I spend a great deal of time outside, and I try always to be aware of my impact and the fullness of my reliance on the life forms I’m observing. In retrospect, though, I neglected throughout this particular outdoor encounter to see beyond my own experience, to watch how my peers were interacting with their surroundings and to learn from them. I am most often outdoors alone, so maybe I was unaccustomed to the opportunity for thoughtful observation of not only my natural surroundings but my human surroundings as well. I recognize this inward focus now to have been a fault, to an extent, in my approach to thinking about nature.
Then I responded to a Collegian article expressing an ungrounded fear and a profound lack of understanding of the James and its critical role in our community (http://blog.richmond.edu/james/?p=1946). I was thoroughly incensed, so my first blog directed toward other community members’ experience of our habitat probably came off somewhat negatively. But the most significant factor I took away from the topic was that I consider it Earth Lodge’s responsibility to serve as an effective liason between our campus community and the watershed in which we reside. I am very proud of the ways I see Lodgers carry out this role, in conversations about outdoor activities with our peers, in sharing our enthusiasm for the projects we are working on in class, and in promoting the Lodge to next year’s class of ecological liasons. I look forward to watching the community continue to impact our campus’s relation to its habitat.
Other elements of our campus’s place in its ecology surfaced in later blogs about the campus’s somewhat empty “green” aesthetic and students’ destructive misunderstandings about plastic water bottles, recycling, and the significance of our impact on our watershed (http://blog.richmond.edu/james/?p=2553, http://blog.richmond.edu/james/?p=2782). This has been a common thread throughout my peers’ blogs, as well. “It’s strange,” Kenta wrote of UR’s approach to creating a campus, “that such an intentional development, one that has such unusually high intellectual and monetary resources, is still so environmentally irresponsible.” (http://blog.richmond.edu/james/2013/03/31/clean-campus-contaminated-creeks/) These outward approaches to blogging are distinctly different from my earlier posts in their focus on learning from my observations of other humans’ interactions with their place. I am so glad to notice this unconscious shift in my thinking and the development of a fuller curiosity about human impacts on hydrology. And these are both areas in which student voices will be critical in moving UR toward a more harmonious relationship with its habitat—this awareness will fundamentally impact my approach to the push for increased bike friendliness, for example, in addition to all of Green UR’s efforts. Observing other students’ interactions with their environment also continually heightens my awareness that I understand relatively little about my own impact on hydrology, and about hydrology itself. I expressed my excitement about the prospect of developing a fuller sense of place in that regard—and after taking the final exam and reflecting on what we have accomplished in class, I am very pleased to realize how much I have grown in my understanding of my habitat.
The other branch of the lessons that my blogs have illuminated for me took root in my community-based learning experiences. First I volunteered at the Sierra Club’s Environmental Film Festival, where I interacted with members of one of the nation’s largest environmental organizations (http://blog.richmond.edu/james/?p=2057). I learned about the Sierra Club’s hierarchical structure, which was almost an exact replica of the hydrologic unit model we had just learned about in class. I also discovered that the Club’s local chapter and Green UR had been facing similar challenges, and the dialogue that resulted from those shared experiences was constructive for both of us. It is essential, I realized, for environmental groups to focus not just on functioning well individually but on establishing cooperative relationships with other organizations, in order to have the most genuine impact possible.
My learning culminated, it seems, in my encounters with three dynamic leaders: Brenda and Dr. Mike in Louisiana (http://blog.richmond.edu/james/?p=2657), and Ralph White (http://blog.richmond.edu/james/?p=2553, http://blog.richmond.edu/james/wp-admin/post.php?post=2897&action=edit) here in Richmond. Brenda and Dr. Mike are hugely inspirational leaders within the Houma nation in the bayou region, but both of their efforts—Brenda’s for federal tribe recognition and Dr. Mike’s for a healthy community in the aftermath of the oil spill—center around the tribe’s relationship with its habitat. They spoke to us with passion, well-researched evidence, and experience, and they opened my eyes to the need for effective environmental leadership not just from environmentally-focused leaders, but also from political and other community leaders. Ralph White, as we have concluded in class, is a quintessential effective environmental leader—he knows the James and park management intimately, his motivation has stemmed from a deeply rooted passion for all the decades of his work, and he expresses that passion eloquently and convincingly. It was particularly his respect for the street art and the homeless communities that have sprung up in the James River Park System that struck me most about Ralph—behind all of the traits that make him a powerful leader is his profound sense of humanity, and his unwavering faith that given the knowledge and the support, humans genuinely desire to establish a positive relationship with their habitat.
I came into this course expecting to learn about water and land, but I have learned as much about human beings as about the places where they live. My blogs depict a clear trajectory toward a drive to understand not just the spaces I occupy, but how other people occupy those spaces. I also see in my blogs the development of a keener sense of what the environmental movement needs: connectedness, positivity, and collaboration between all kinds of groups. I am as excited as I expected I would be to understand my habitat itself more concretely, but these unexpected new understandings are perhaps even more invigorating. On the brink of our final project presentations, I look forward to seeing how we will make our student voices heard and how our collaborations will pay off. As the year comes to a close, then, I anticipate a continually positive and enriching experience for subsequent groups of Lodgers, and I hope to remain involved in the community that has impacted me so much more personally than I imagined it would. With our blogs as a valuable archive of our growth, we really have developed as a community that learns and lives together, and I know we will all continue to learn and live with a newfound sense of place always in mind.