Morgan's Nature Blog

 I wandered across the street to my outside spot in my pj's around 7 am. I had neglected to make time for it the week before as work and school seemed never ending. I was only even awake this morning because my roommate's boyfriend's dog spent the night with us and he is a morning pup. While he sniffed around, tail in full force, I stared blankly at the nature in front of me.  Nothing initially came to mind. I was running through my treacherous to-do list of the day and silently mourning my lack of free time. Bugsy (the pup) continued to frolic when something in the trash-filled water caught my eye. Two ducks swam lazily around one another. One nipped at the other and his playmate chaotically flew onto a tipped-over shopping cart in the water. The other duck tried unsuccessfully to reach it, in what quickly developed into a game of tag. They continued swimming in and around the cart for several minutes before moving on downstream.  I didn't bring my phone with me so I d...

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...