This semester has been something else. When I think back to how it all started with a shy group of younger years (we aren’t all sophomores) meeting in the lounge one cold evening I remember being unsure in my desire to commit to the community. What made me make the final leap was the hope that I would meet people with diverse views on the environment and be able to discuss the complicated nuances with them. I was accepted but still apprehensive about the whole experience, very very excited, but apprehensive.
Then came beach camping, and the community showed me what it could be and introduced me to a whole multitude of people who had gone through the program already. This was the first point I was truly excited to join earth lodge.
Fast forward though a summer and the first few weeks of school and you get to this day. The day we went canoeing at Huguenot Flatwater. I’m going to be honest here and say that we were super awkward. None of use knew each other that well and it was a learning experience for all. This was also the first of our many trips around the James River Park System and one of my first experiences with the river while in the mindset of learning.
Nature along the James is fascinating to me. At the point of canoeing I had 0 idea about what the river held and what its major roles were in the city. Despite having a general knowledge of what a river city meant (I hail from a house where I could walk to the Potomac River), I felt then as if I knew nothing and was very much overwhelmed by it all.
We took plenty more trips to and along the James River, learned more about it in class, and I gradually felt as if I had formed some comprehension of what it meant to be part of the watershed. This blog post I made was really my summary of this idea and how I was feeling at the time. Earth Lodge had also grown more as a community, we were more open and more interested in what each other had to say but we still held back a bit when it came to discussions, we were only a month in after all.
This picture I think does a beautiful job of summing up what we are all about now. The fall break trip was definitely the single most amazing trip for education and bonding we have ever been on. For the 9 current lodgers and 1 previous lodger who went on the trip the experience was amazing and one we will not soon forget.
Bonding from the trip opened us up to full and true debate. We knew who each other were and what each other were passionate about and this lead to great discussion. Nature was, of course, a hot topic and though each of the different expeditions we had the privilage of going on.
Stating first with the day in Harper’s Ferry I learned more about the connectivity between a region and its river along with how a community could grow up with a river. I had visited Harper’s Ferry before for a tubing trip one day the summer before freshman year but I didn’t really take the time to appreciate the river and the community on its banks. Having taken the time with other now I felt like we were able to see what the community there was about. It was simple, just an agrarian society trying to do better, but it had so much influence on the river and treated it with respect.
Moving further down river on the Potomac to the downtown DC harbor area I learned more about parts of the river I had visited before. The more and more places were visited I kept revisiting this idea that I didn’t really know anything about rivers I had visited many times before.
These same ideas are echoed in many of my classmates posts along with comments on their increased knowledge about both rivers but still they feel as if they have so much more to learn, even if they don’t say that phrase outright.
My last reflection spot blog is really a reflection on how I’ve changed though the semester along with my spot but not as much as I might have initially thought I would have. Though my blog posts I transition from a lack of knowledge and understanding to somewhat more knowledge and what I began to believe was understanding only to come back to this idea that I didn’t really understand everything because I had so much more to learn. Sure I had spent my time studying and learning so many things about this topic but I have so much more to learn and a lifetime ahead of me to get there.
I guess looking forward I need to look up. People grow and discussions become more open, knowledge is shared and it is all for the better but at no point should I ever feel safe in my quantity of knowledge because there is always more to learn and more to be passionate about. Earth Lodge is going to take a break here and while I’m sad to see it go the next SSIR to take its place with still hold true the values that Earth Lodge has taught me and my fellow lodgers.
Now without a class to guide us next semester I hope we continue to grow and develope around the ideas we ahve learned and become community leaders and visionaries for the current generation as well as the previous.
I guess there are only two things left to say:
ELL and…
allons y!