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.\u00a0 Last year, even last semester, I looked out across Westhampton Lake with indifference.\u00a0 To me, it was unnatural, man-made, so any aesthetic beauty it may have had was undermined by that fact in my mind.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t really natural, I thought, so it wasn\u2019t really beautiful.\u00a0 On top of that, I believed that it was somehow wholly disconnected from the surrounding ecosystem, being man-made.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Aside from that, I guess my perception of its \u201cunnaturalness\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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\u2019s importance in my mind.\u00a0 The fact that it was man-made no longer undermined the role it played as part of the surrounding ecosystem and community.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Considering the history of the James, especially, rivers have been the focal point of human settlement for thousands of years.\u00a0 Chapters from In River Time focused on this to a great extent.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Some were kayaking, some were sunbathing on the rocks, and others were enjoying the water itself.\u00a0 Here I got my first taste of the ways that people interacted with the James; I was one of them.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In the end, I concluded that these two cities, situated similarly in the geographic sense, nonetheless had inherently different relationships with their respective rivers.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 The James is a very appreciated and integral part of Richmond; at least, that\u2019s what it seems to me.<\/p>\n
And I was not the only one who was reminded of home when learning about the relationship between Richmond and the James.\u00a0 Many lodgers had posts about their home community\u2019s connection with the water around it, whether it was a large river or a small creek.\u00a0 It was really cool to read how they personally or their community was connected to the water \u2013 it just further solidified in my mind how important the relationship to water is for every human being on the planet.<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 \u201cUrban Myths.\u201d\u00a0 I had always believed, and thought I was right to believe, that cities were nothing but an ecological dead-zone.\u00a0 They were a monstrous example of what human beings were capable of doing to the earth.\u00a0 Cities were monumentally dirty; they expulsed unquantifiable amounts of waste \u2013 human, industrial or otherwise \u2013 right into the surrounding air or the nearest water source.\u00a0 In no way were they anything close to eco-friendly, so I thought.\u00a0 Then I read \u201cUrban Myths.\u201d\u00a0 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.\u00a0 After reading through it though, it actually made quite a bit of sense.\u00a0 Humans living in close proximity naturally use fewer resources and produce less waste.\u00a0 Even though the amount of waste is very large, it simply comes from the amount of people.<\/p>\n
The idea that cities are the most \u201cgreen\u201d of places also reinforces the importance of the relationship between a human population and the water around it.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 If only everyone were to share the appreciation of this relationship that I have come to have over these past few months.\u00a0 Surely, I think, people would do what they could to protect and continue such a relationship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 … Continue reading