{"id":849,"date":"2012-01-15T21:19:18","date_gmt":"2012-01-16T01:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/?p=849"},"modified":"2012-01-18T21:10:14","modified_gmt":"2012-01-19T01:10:14","slug":"falling-in-love-after-the-rain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/2012\/01\/15\/falling-in-love-after-the-rain\/","title":{"rendered":"Falling in Love After the Rain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/files\/2012\/01\/comiafsd6.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-865\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/files\/2012\/01\/comiafsd6-1024x1022.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"493\" height=\"501\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Time and time again, I fall in love with Virginia after a good rain.\u00a0 The earth is soaked and dark and when it&#8217;s warmed by the sun, the heavy scent\u00a0of layer upon layer of rock, sand, and soil, leaves, branches, trunks, and stems wafts up on waves of undulating humidity.\u00a0 This is not the type of landscape to stand in distant awe of, but one that draws you in to its teeming center.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">On Thursday we left the classroom to drift about the Gambles Mill Corridor.\u00a0 The Corridor is a small trail that&#8217;s tucked away along the boundary between the Virginia Country Club and the University of Richmond campus and, unlike its pristinely well-maintained neighbors, is refreshingly overgrown and boasts all the best of Virginia&#8217;s characteristic tangles of woody vegetation.\u00a0 As we walked, I came across a creek lined with pebbles and sand surrounded on both sides by tall\u00a0earthen walls.\u00a0 Standing ankle-deep in the cold water of yesterday&#8217;s rain, I fell in love again as I have before.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">When we fall in love, we seek to discover all that we can about the object of our affections.\u00a0 In order to properly care for who or what we love, we must know them and what it is they need to prosper.\u00a0 Falling in love with a biosphere is no different.\u00a0 Living in Virginia makes it easy to feel connected to the environment, but remembering to carry out the\u00a0obligations that\u00a0respecting this\u00a0connectivity necessitates\u00a0is\u00a0not as easy.\u00a0 As much as we love the Earth, the technologies and practices\u00a0that facilitate and accompany\u00a0human existence at the expense of our natural world are difficult to renounce, and we grow neglectful.\u00a0 It&#8217;s for this reason that the study of geography and environmental sciences is paramount because the more we learn about\u00a0our environment, the more mindful we can become and the more we&#8217;ll remember to respect the connection.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Check out the perfect <a title=\"soundtrack\" href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=w0o8JCxjjpM\" target=\"_blank\">soundtrack<\/a> for this day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Time and time again, I fall in love with Virginia after a good rain.\u00a0 The earth is soaked and dark and when it&#8217;s warmed by the sun, the heavy scent\u00a0of layer upon layer of rock, sand, and soil, leaves, branches, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/2012\/01\/15\/falling-in-love-after-the-rain\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6241],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gambles-mill-trail"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849","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\/1641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}