Thinking back on a little more than a month spent in Geography of the James, I came to realize the extent to which I failed to regard the body of water that is at the center of our campus with any importance. Last year, even last semester, I looked out across Westhampton Lake with indifference. To me, it was unnatural, man-made, so any aesthetic beauty it may have had was undermined by that fact in my mind. It wasn’t really natural, I thought, so it wasn’t really beautiful. On top of that, I believed that it was somehow wholly disconnected from the surrounding ecosystem, being man-made. Looking back, I realized I must have thought this way because I had never actually seen the creek that fed into the lake, and never really noticed the spillway that was hidden behind the commons. Aside from that, I guess my perception of its “unnaturalness” is what blinded me from seeing that Westhampton Lake is actually an important part of the Little Westham Creek watershed and the larger James River watershed.
The focus of our first couple classes, Westhampton Lake and its watershed, not only helped me take in an understanding of this specific body of water but also of water as a whole, and how important it is to the people who depend on it. Taking a walk around campus, around the lake, with the class and looking up close at this body of water and how it connected and flowed within the surrounding watershed got me to care about our lake that much more. On top of that, spending time alone looking closely at the lake, taking in whatever detail I could and writing about it in my reflective blog post further solidified this water’s importance in my mind. The fact that it was man-made no longer undermined the role it played as part of the surrounding ecosystem and community.
My changing feelings about Westhampton Lake, I think, illustrates the greater appreciation for water I have gained since that first Geography of the James class. Many of the readings for class have had to do with this, that water is not only a shaper of the physical land, carving out earth and cleaving stone, but also a shaper of human communities that find themselves forever attached to it, relying on it for their existence. Considering the history of the James, especially, rivers have been the focal point of human settlement for thousands of years. Chapters from In River Time focused on this to a great extent.
The connection between a human community and the body of water that serves as its figurative life-source has intrigued me even before class started. When Earth Lodge went down to the James to float lazily downriver on tubes, there were quite a few people other than us who were enjoying the river. Some were kayaking, some were sunbathing on the rocks, and others were enjoying the water itself. Here I got my first taste of the ways that people interacted with the James; I was one of them. Learning more about the history of human populations around the James from class, as well as the relationship between the modern city of Richmond and the James, got me thinking about the river that lies some fifteen miles or so from where I live in Minnesota; the Mississippi. In my third blog post, I compared the city of Minneapolis and its relationship to the Mississippi to the city of Richmond and its relationship to the James. In the end, I concluded that these two cities, situated similarly in the geographic sense, nonetheless had inherently different relationships with their respective rivers. Even though I have spent less time in Richmond, I felt that its relationship with its river was more human, more deep, than the relationship between Minneapolis and the Mississippi. For Richmond, the James is not just a landmark, and not something to be exploited for energy or easy waste disposal (although you could say it has had its fair share of abuse over the years). The James is a very appreciated and integral part of Richmond; at least, that’s what it seems to me.
And I was not the only one who was reminded of home when learning about the relationship between Richmond and the James. Many lodgers had posts about their home community’s connection with the water around it, whether it was a large river or a small creek. It was really cool to read how they personally or their community was connected to the water – it just further solidified in my mind how important the relationship to water is for every human being on the planet.
My most recent blog post as of now was about an article we read for class that intrigued me from the moment I looked at the title – “Urban Myths.” I had always believed, and thought I was right to believe, that cities were nothing but an ecological dead-zone. They were a monstrous example of what human beings were capable of doing to the earth. Cities were monumentally dirty; they expulsed unquantifiable amounts of waste – human, industrial or otherwise – right into the surrounding air or the nearest water source. In no way were they anything close to eco-friendly, so I thought. Then I read “Urban Myths.” This article had the nerve to argue the exact opposite of what I thought, what seemed like the logical truth of the matter: that cities were, in fact, the most eco-friendly of human settlements. After reading through it though, it actually made quite a bit of sense. Humans living in close proximity naturally use fewer resources and produce less waste. Even though the amount of waste is very large, it simply comes from the amount of people.
The idea that cities are the most “green” of places also reinforces the importance of the relationship between a human population and the water around it. Clearly, we still have a long way to go in the sense that more people need to become more aware of the water that is so important to them whether they realize it or not. If only everyone were to share the appreciation of this relationship that I have come to have over these past few months. Surely, I think, people would do what they could to protect and continue such a relationship.