During the reading and discussions of Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, one idea from class kept coming up in my thoughts: the concept of bearing witness, or seeing something for one’s self or hearing a first-hand story instead of just reading or hearing a secondary source, and how that can make all the difference in how we view things.

I personally felt the power of bearing witness when I attended the protest rally against how the University of Delaware mishandled the recent sexual harassment incident and how they have been unable or neglected to bring justice to others who have committed sexual abuse on the UD campus. Before going to the event I knew sexual assault was a problem, but I was still shocked and saddened by hearing first-hand the numerous stories of the survivors who were assaulted on (and off) campus. I was then even further enraged and inspired to take action when I heard how few of their assaulters had been punished, even after the survivors had reported to the school and local police. Though I certainly had already felt that UD needed to do better and reform its policies, bearing witness to the accounts of the professor who help report the case and the survivors of other sexual abuse made the need for transparency and action exponentially more clear. So, as my friend and I once again set out for White Clay Creek with my mind on bearing witness and social justice, I thought about how directly experiencing nature is impacting how I view the environment.

When we went got the creek, I immediately noticed how the water level had seemed to have risen and was now rushing over the top of the dam much faster than it had before. Some of rocks that were there in our past visits seemed to have disappeared or been covered up, and the water was flowing places it hadn’t before. These factors seemed to have displaced the water bugs, who were congregating in a more shallow and slow moving spot off to the side. My attempt to put my feet in the water was short-lived, as, despite the fact that we came on a warm day, the water had become considerably colder. It is interesting how after only a few visits to place, one can notice so many differences about something seemingly so simple as water in a creek.

Once I got settled and down to observing, what really caught my attention was a small but noticeable group of small blue skimmer dragonflies with a few black stripes known as blue dashers. Perhaps these insects had been around on my other visits, but I had never really noticed them before. After at first admiring them for there color and unique shape and wings and the fact that they eat mosquitoes (I have always liked bugs, in elementary school I would often check out a book called All About Bugs that had lots of cool pictures), I noticed something weird was going with two of them. It looked like one of them was maybe attacking the other one that had a different color? … then I slowly realized … Ew! … They were mating! However, this process started to not go so well. The pair at some point fell into the water, and started to get pulled away by the current. The male one then abandoned his mate, who due her wings being soaked, could not fly away! Luckily, my friend scooped her out of the water and she managed to survive. However, the male dasher had the nerve to come back and try to forcefully mate with her again! This poor lady dasher needed some social justice of her own.

So, sitting next to my thicket of pickerelweed and aster having experienced something that I never would have found if I didn’t have to go into the woods, I thought about what effect being in nature has on how one views the environment. I remembered the quote from Aldo Leopold in The Sand County Almanac that “it is inconceivable to me that an ethical relation to land can exist without love, respect and admiration for land, and a high regard for its value… value in the philosophical sense” (223). To me, it seems the most effective way to for one to gain this respect and love of land and nature is to bear witness to it, to actually experience it. Hopefully if more people were to go out and be with nature instead of watching on the Discovery channel, they would be more inspired to make a difference and help the environment. I know it has had that effect on me.