Choosing Pony Pasture as my reflection spot has special meaning because the significance of the location has greatly changed over time for me. When I first encountered the location, it was simply as a place to take recruits for the swim team. I never really got a chance to sit down and look at anything. Of course I knew that we were at the river, and that the river was pretty and the trees were big, but I never really saw it. I just knew in the back of my mind that it was there. I was completely engrossed in another activity and Pony Pasture simply served as a backdrop, but nothing more. My view of the river was like this for my entire freshman year. Even when we did not take recruits there, I went with my teammates and we would often sit on the rocks and talk about practice or school, but not once did we sit there in silence and take in our surroundings.
Now that I have been a part of Earth Lodge for a couple of months, I am beginning to see Pony Pasture in a new light. First of all, I never really realized how connected the University was to the river. Obviously I knew we had a lake, but I always felt for some reason that it was pretty contained to the limits of campus. I had learned about run off and pollution in middle school and in high school and I knew that all the water in the area was connected but I guess I had never really thought about it until this class. I had never payed attention to the little creek and I never payed attention to the trees along the banks of the lake. Again, they were things I just knew were there. But as I started to learn more, I began to see (arguably for the first time) what was going on on campus so that when I went back to Pony Pasture, I really saw that what we did at school impacted the river. Being part of the class has really opened my eyes because a lot of the information regarding pollution or the water cycle was information I had already learned about or had been at least minimally exposed to. But now I am more able to apply it and see it in action, making it more real for me, but also making me feel like I can make a difference too.