Morgan's Nature Blog

1.  Once people are liberated from the confines of automobiles there will be a greatly increased interest in hiking, exploring, and back-country packtrips. Fortunately the parks, by the mere elimination of motor traffic, will come to seem far bigger than they are now — there will be more room for more persons, an astonishing expansion of space. This follows from the interesting fact that a motorized vehicle, when not at rest, requires a volume of space far out of proportion to its size. To illustrate: imagine a lake approximately ten miles long and on the average one mile wide. A single motorboat could easily circumnavigate the lake in an hour; ten motorboats would begin to crowd it; twenty or thirty, all in operation, would dominate the lake to the exclusion of any other form of activity; and fifty would create the hazards, confusion, and turmoil that makes pleasure impossible. Suppose we banned motorboats and allowed only canoes and rowboats; we would see at once that the lake se...

There are many things that bring people together and I feel that the outdoors is one of them. Some of my best and most genuine memories have been made simply by going outside. The flow of conversation on a walk, the thoughtful pauses on a difficult portion of a hike, or the childlike joy from jumping in any body of water is unifying and life-giving.  I got the opportunity to pack up a couple cars with friends recently and go for a hike this past week and it was so wonderful. We set a slow and meandering place to take in all that Eagle Mountain Lake had to show us on our 5 mile loop. We laughed lots and paused often to catch our breath in the Texas heat.  I find it easy to enjoy the outdoors with others. It is just another extroverted way to spend time. What I have a harder time with is being content on my own in nature. Being able to marvel at the natural world without having someone else validate my observations. I have spent very little time working on this and it is somethi...

MY NATURE SPOT I live near campus, about two blocks away, so there is not an abundance of natural scenery nearby. There is a small park caddy corner to my house with a creek and a picnic table. I walked over after class this week to check it out through the lens of using it as my "spot" for this course. It is dirty and littered, but also has some really nice trees and other plants. I'm hoping spending time there will make me more aware of other hidden nature spots in my day to day life and inspire me to take better care of the natural areas I frequent.