{"id":2491,"date":"2013-02-20T13:08:32","date_gmt":"2013-02-20T17:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/?p=2491"},"modified":"2013-02-21T13:14:43","modified_gmt":"2013-02-21T17:14:43","slug":"synthesis-1-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/2013\/02\/20\/synthesis-1-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Synthesis 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I began Earth Lodge, I didn\u2019t expect to love the class as much as I do. I was super excited about the camping, hiking, outdoors aspect of this Living Learning community, so that somewhat overshadowed the whole academic side.\u00a0 I assumed that I would enjoy the class, but I didn\u2019t realize that it not only helps our Earth Lodge community to grow even stronger, but I\u2019ve also learned so much about the James river and my hometown.\u00a0 Because we are learning about the city near where I grew up, this class has a very personal aspect for me as well.\u00a0 I feel that I\u2019ve grown not only as a member of Earth Lodge, but also as a Richmonder (Proud to be a Richmonder<\/a>).\u00a0 Every class, I learn something new about a place that I thought I knew so well.\u00a0 Over my past year and a half on campus, I never knew about the Gambles Mill Trail, how close the campus was to the river, or the beautiful creek that existed behind the Commons.\u00a0 Also, over my past fifteen years in Richmond, I had only been to the river a handful of times and didn\u2019t know anything about the city other that the history, the art, science, and children\u2019s museums, and that Maymont and Carytown were a popular places to go on a warm Saturday.<\/p>\n

This semester so far has been so full of great experiences and being in Earth Lodge simply amplifies them.\u00a0 For example, now that I have finally declared my International Studies major, I feel as though all my classes are interconnected, even with the Geography of the James River Watershed.\u00a0 I\u2019m taking one class as a prerequisite for my major called Human Geography which discusses demography and how humans relate to their environments.\u00a0 TLB was a guest speaker for this class and talked about perspectives of wilderness and how that can affect how people treat that wilderness (Wilderness<\/a>).\u00a0 Although I couldn\u2019t really identify specifically with one of the viewpoints that were discussed, I remember having the adventurous feeling of the frontiersman and the awestruck feeling of the romantic during our fall break trip when we were surrounded by nature.\u00a0 However I also am a firm believer in the fact that an element of wilderness is present in every living thing, and therefore agree with the \u201chomebody\u201d view.\u00a0 Seeing the beauty of the water in the creek leading to Westhampton lake, even with the styrofoam cup floating in it and other traces of human life surrounding it, showed me that nature is everywhere (Westhampton Ecosystem<\/a>).\u00a0 Although the lake is manmade, in that it was dug by humans, the water flowing through it, the sediment at the bottom, and the ducks swimming in it were not made by people.\u00a0 There is still wilderness even in the middle of our very paved and constructed campus.<\/p>\n

Since becoming a part of Earth Lodge, my view of nature has been drastically changed.\u00a0 I had always had a love of nature.\u00a0 When I was little, I loved exploring the woods surrounding my home, discovering animals in my backyard, and hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains with my family.\u00a0 However, I had not had many of these experiences of getting lost in nature since elementary school and my memory was foggy.\u00a0 Going on trips with Earth Lodge has sparked my love of the outdoors again and showed me again how wonderful it is to appreciate nature for what it is.\u00a0 The tubing trip on the James allowed me to take in my surroundings at a leisurely pace and see how beautiful the river was and how gentle it could be.\u00a0 I remember spotting some kind of huge bird flying over, feeling the thrill of how inherently wild and uncontrollable the river was as it took me over rocks, and seeing the dazzling colors of the dragonflies.\u00a0 The feeling I got when I made those observations was very similar to the one I felt when I stood at the top of Linville Gorge, marvelled over the transparency of the water in the swimming hole at one of our campsites, and hiked through a sea of green, moss-covered trees near the top of Mount Mitchell.\u00a0 The fact that I can\u2019t even fully describe what I was feeling at that moment makes me realize how amazing wilderness is.<\/p>\n

Even on campus, sitting in my reflection spot in the gazebo, I get these same feelings (The Gazebo<\/a>).\u00a0 I love the concept of a reflection spot because I like to reflect on my life a lot, and sometimes it can get overwhelming.\u00a0 When I have a place I can go to specifically to do that, it helps my reflection to be more thorough and fills me with a sense of calm, as I look at the beauty of the lake and the trees.\u00a0 I have had some of those awesome moments that I had at the top of mountains in that gazebo as well, when I saw my first shooting star, watched the sunset, and listened to nature with my fellow Lodgers.\u00a0 During that discussion of the wilderness surrounding us, I felt so connected with the people that live in my hall.\u00a0 Community is another huge part of living in Earth Lodge and since the class has started, I feel like we have connected so much more.\u00a0 We have explored nature together and learned together, and we are all getting excited about the James together.\u00a0 The relationships I\u2019ve built and am continuing to build within Earth Lodge have been so special to me, and I love that we all have that similar excitement about nature.\u00a0 Especially during the interviews for next year\u2019s Earth Lodge, and talking to the interviewees about what Earth Lodge is and \u00a0aspects of the program that we enjoy, I realized how close we all have become over the past semester and the beginning of this one.\u00a0 I\u2019m so thankful to be a part of this living learning community, and I can\u2019t wait for whatever this semester has in store.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I began Earth Lodge, I didn\u2019t expect to love the class as much as I do. I was super excited about the camping, hiking, outdoors aspect of this Living Learning community, so that somewhat overshadowed the whole academic side.\u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1869,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6248],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-synthesis"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1869"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}