I have never felt so many emotions as I felt this week. My mind has been racing. I’ve been thinking a lot about everything from humanity to culture to family more than a busy student ought to. There has been something more anxious about the mix of classes, work, projects, and life in general lately. When I get overwhelmed I usually get homesick. Not because I physically miss home, but more because I miss the familiarity and comfort I find when going home during breaks, the freedom I get from this hectic life I have made for myself in the northeast.

At the reservoir this week, I let my thoughts run free, giving them the time to go in any direction they desired. But when I let release them, they cease, and I think nothing for a while. I just take in my surroundings – looking, hearing, feeling, but not thinking for once.

The grass on the hill has been cut recently leaving the clippings spread in concentric rings up the hill. Two paths straight up the middle of the hill become apparent. They are worn from bikers and joggers making a quick yet trying journey to the top. There is a sign by the path that says, “Please Use Alternate Path to Avoid Continuous Damage.” I am reminded of Wedell Berry’s essay about the importance and significance of a path like this to connect us with nature. He describes a path as a habit that comes from familiarity, from contact with the land. A path he says must flow with the surrounding and not be seen as out of place, but rather as a character of that place (Berry 12). This path, much like many others, shows the impact of man on a place. Although one of the more positive markings we have put on land, there were still efforts forcing us to conform and use the path to the top instead.

At the top, the water flows smoothly over the gray rocks and silky grass on the outer body of water. Dried shrubs of what may have been Miscanthus droop over the metal pipe as if they fainted from the heat and left their ends to flow gently in the water. The rocks on the edge have moss growing on them as they begin the small slope up to the asphalt path. The slope is an amalgamation of different rocks, some big some small and of every color from deep black to grays to reddish brown. Weeds spot the slope, trying to make their way through the rocks and moist, gravely soil. I notice the pipe is not smooth. Rather dents and specks cover its entire length. There are places where the water spews from it as if like miniature water fountains. I find a line of four or five holes which sounds like a water fountain and elicits from me the feel of tranquility.

I decide to close my now tired eyes from the numerous details around me. I let myself hear what’s happening. The crickets again, but this time I recognize the chirps of another insect. Four chirps are its rhythm with the occasional pause and a set of three. Another, I hear, is farther away but gives a loud shriek-like chirp, almost like it’s shouting at the crickets. I hear a police car in the distance, so faint that to hear it, you’d have to be listening for it. As I just listen, I realize the peace from the quietness I feel around me.

Then, the abrupt sound of the lawn mower startles me. I am suddenly reminded of my home in Arkansas where our flat five-acre lot is boxed in by pine trees. I am reminded of my days back in high school when, after a long tiring week at school, our gardener would mow our lawn at 6am on Saturday mornings. The deep silence would be interrupted by the loud moan of the mower as it would pass our windows and wake us each time. I have gone through many spouts of homesickness at college, some when I have missed physical things like my bed and living room, others when all I wish is to do the after dinner chores with my family, and even others when I want to escape from the college that it is so different that what I had imagined. When I think about home today, I can relate to Wendell Berry and his courageous move back to his home in Kentucky. He tells us about is home, how he can remember it so vividly from the position of rocks on the ground, the nature that he was immersed in, and how it had a sort of calling to him when he was away (Berry 5). I do not feel “Arkansas” is calling to me just as I am sure Berry did not feel “Kentucky” calling to him. Rather, I believe we both felt the pull of home on our hearts.

Wendell Berry didn’t just move back to Kentucky because of the land. There was his family, his house, his memories – his home (Berry 5). This feeling of safety, relaxation, and familiarity was happiness; it was peace.  I feel the same about Arkansas. I miss the simple and quiet feel of life there. The vibrating sound of a cow’s moo in the deep peacefulness of the countryside. The closeness of family of how we would squeeze five of us on a king size bed to watch the evening news and weather, our shoulders touching and our bodies as one entity. This is what I miss the most now, when I am on the east coast, my brother on the west coast, and my parents and younger brother smack in the middle of nowhere. We (my older brother and I) are working to make better lives for ourselves. Like Berry, we both moved away to surround ourselves with better opportunities, job offers, colleges, and educated people. But what I have found is we cannot shift from our minds the feeling of family and home from our lives before. Going home during breaks is extra special. It’s beyond the food, the late night movies, and family dinners. It almost feels like we are going back in time to a simple life where we had none of the worries or anxiety that we both feel now. No expectations. No stress. No need to push ourselves beyond our limits. I can surround myself with friends, roommates, classmates, new people, customers at work, but no one can dissolve my anxiety and stress like when I fly to see my family on that empty plot of land. It is home.

As a preteen growing up in the computer age, my pass-times were pleasantly narrowed down to a 36-inch array of pixels, a video game console, and a joystick. Everything else that entered by perception was tangental compared to the overriding desire to plop myself down for a few hours of mindless virtual entertainment. I was not alone. My peers and I viewed all developments outside our electronic bubble, including nature, with apathy. We drew down the curtains in the basement to shut out the sun, powered up the devices, and shot ourselves up with the heroine of our generation.

Experiences outside my pixelated box were unimportant. Information from a source other than the talking screen was inconsequential. I was hooked on my devices and could not imagine detaching myself from the virtual world for more than a day or two. That is, until my parents decided to truck me off to a three-week sleep-away camp the summer before seventh grade.

Indeed, my trepidation was palpable. All of the unbearable real-world experiences from which I had insulated myself, from human-to-human conversations to debates about ethical quandaries, were preparing to assail me. The only solace I had was the companionship of my best friend as we made the long drive to Brandon, Vermont, a rural town surrounding a large lake. As we pulled into the camp ground, my heart sank at the site of the small cabins by the lake stuffed with gangly boys . How would I possibly survive the burdens of the real world?

Well, I did survive, and ended my three-week stay feeling completely rejuvenated. My days were filled with long hikes through the woods, white-water rafting trips, voyages on ramshackle rowboats, and those deep reflections with cabin-mates that only come without the distraction of television. I learned how to pitch a tent, how to notch a bow and fire a rifle, and, perhaps most importantly, how to connect with nature. Suddenly video games seemed like paltry things compared to the wide, exciting world of which I was a part. I felt engaged with life for the first time.

Experiences such as these, which take place in nature apart from the distractions of technology, are becoming more rare as our lives become enslaved to the gadgets that surround us. For most people, it is hard to imagine spending whatever iota of free time we have on a non screen activity. The University of Washington reports that Americans spend more time watching television than the ten other most popular leisure activities combined. In fact, the amount of time spent watching television is beat out only by time spent sleeping. Sitting comatose on the sofa seems to be just as necessary as sleep for the continuation of our lives, and its physical toll is enormous.

However, there are other effects of electronic immersion that are more subtle yet exponentially more dangerous than physical or cognitive decline. We become complacent and apathetic when all outside information reaches us through a consumerist filter of self-assurance and entitlement. We feel secure and vastly superior to anything that runs contrary to the status quo.

Thus the tech-enslaved masses view nature as that inhuman force that knocks out the cable on a rainy day, rather than as the planet’s life source that is slowly fading away. Environmental destruction is not the only type of genocide that has resulted from such ignorance.

Detaching ourselves from the virtual world, then, is the answer to our predicament, and is quite simple if you know where to look. David Haskell says that “an act of the will” is all we need to wake up and really see what lies around us. He urges the reader to travel to a natural place devoid of all distractions, where one can “return the mind’s attention to the present moment” and “learn that nature is not a separate place”. Such sage advice is the bane of all ignorance, whether or not it concerns the nature. We must learn to see for ourselves, to question, to tune into our senses and acknowledge that we are all part of one society and one planet that are both in desperate need of saving.

I am pretty certain it’s a Delaware River Birch. Well, fairly certain. I am ignorant when it comes to most aspects of nature, so the best I can do is describe what I see. The tree’s leaves are long, oval-shaped teardrops. The edges of the leaves are rough and jagged. There is an almost-impossibly straight seam stretching down the middle of the leaf, which separates it into symmetrical halves. Cascading out from the middle seam are other tiny ones that extend toward the edge of the leaf, forming tight rows like slanted crayons in a box. According to both Google Images and the Delaware Urban and Community Forestry website, which I have spent a good portion of the afternoon perusing and playing “Try To Match Your Leaf Picture With a Tree That Exists in Delaware Using Absolutely No Prior Knowledge,” the Delaware River Birch (Betula nigra) lives near streams and displays an “oblong” leaf with “pointed, sharp-toothed edges” (Delaware Urban and Community Forestry Program). This has to be it.

The experience at my spot this week was unlike any thus far. The first primary difference was that I chose to go out on a rainy, muggy day. My spot wasn’t ugly – rather, sad and vulnerable. Stripped of the sunlight, dripping with the earthy fragrance of fresh rain and overcome by the sound of its repetitive pitter-patter, my spot seemed to say, “This is really me. Now that you are seeing me uncovered, will you still come again?” I was not disillusioned. Instead, I was more enamored. The second difference was that I had gone into the woods with a goal in mind: I wanted to exit having formulated an idea of how I can make changes in my daily life that would positively impact my body, the environment, and others. This is when the Delaware River Birch caught my eye.

Watching the raindrops slide down its leaves, the tree I had not yet identified was crying out to me. The metaphor could not have been any more literal. Though I was ignorant to the species, I am no longer ignorant to the way we are destroying our earth and the way in which my life has an impact. My initial thoughts focused on how I could incorporate this tree into my daily life. I thought about everything I use that is not made of plants – make-up, shampoo, conditioner, body wash, face wash, facial moisturizer, hand cream, hairspray, hair scrunching gel, deodorant, toothpaste, hand sanitizer, plastic water bottles, funny-tasting protein bars, and the list can continue. And then I began thinking about how I could replace all of these things I just named with a natural substitute. A few weeks ago, I ended my journal with the question, “How will I begin my change?” In Berry’s essay “Conservation and Local Economy,” he writes, “The true source and analogue of our economic life is the economy of plants, which never exceeds natural limits, never grows beyond the power of its place to support it, produces no waste, and enriches and preserves itself by death and decay” (Berry, 2002, p. 201). What a beautiful concept! Nature exists unselfishly all around us, taking no more than needed. An incredible, full-circle life is possible for us too, if we put our roots in plants and the land (Berry, 2002, p. 201-204).

I am finally taking action. The Delaware River Birch is modeling the way. I am turning myself over to plants. Starting with what I can afford right now, I have begun the process of converting to natural plant-based products and ingredients in my life. My first decision was to research my current products on the EWG database. My second was to eliminate most of them because I no longer hold smelling perpetually like a cupcake in high esteem. Paradoxically, I can’t throw the products away because the chemicals will go down the drain and into landfills and cause more destruction. For now, they are packed tightly in a plastic (ironic) bin. My next decision was to research and purchase all-natural, all-organic face wash, shampoo, and conditioner. I found a company based in Georgia called Face Naturals that caught my fancy and decided to order these three products from there (though now I am thinking about Monday’s class and just how much energy it will take for my products to be shipped and regretting the online ordering decision). My third decision was to switch out some of my food for all-natural, all-organic versions and begin reducing my consumption of processed snacks. After examining the ingredients in much of my food, I was not impressed. Why have I been taking gummy vitamins whose primary ingredient is glucose syrup? Though I currently cannot escape the chains of the university dining hall (the likes of which is a journal entry for another day), I am starting to research local and organic snacks like bars/nuts, fruits, and vegetables to keep in my room. And my fourth decision was to start telling people about this class and about what I am learning. It is no longer an option for me not to care. I can’t “un-learn” this. I am here now. I am on this journey now. There is no way I can revert to ignorance, and though scary, that feels really good. I can only be grateful that my eyes were opened at this point in my life. “We face a choice that is starkly simple: we must change or be changed” (Berry, 2002, p. 201).

Is ignorance bliss?  There are so many great inventions and products that make our day to day life so darn convenient, we should take advantage of every single one of them.  Bottled water, meals in a brick or smoothie, your own personal vehicles to enable your morning grumpiness during an hour commute, to a job you probably find unfulfilling.  If everything has been made so easy, why are we always so busy?  Our ancestors spent about four hours a day completing their life chores—today we are working more than ever and yet no one has any time.  Dinners can be made with the touch of a microwave button, laundry can be done in our own homes, and packed lunches are a thing of the past, yet so many children are deprived of many hours with their parents.  Schools are facing more severe cases of bullying, perhaps showing a general decrease in overall community and therefore inability to achieve the feeling of acceptance.  Where does the problem begin and where does the problem end?  Is ignorance the problem or the solution?

Perhaps ignorance is bliss in the short run, but we’re also missing out on so many beautiful things that we have turned a blind eye to; spectacular landscapes and fascinating cultures are absentmindedly being degraded.  Out of sight, out of mind.  If everyone know how environmentally horrific the coal mining industry is and how negatively the workers are being affected by a sense of brain washing, would we strive for energy conservation?  Instead we believe in the magic that occurs when we switch on our lights, our plethora of appliances and screens.  It is hard to believe that a legitimate and necessary homework assignment for a college course is to go outside for an hour every week.  We are plagued by ignorance of how much of the convenience of our day to day life affects entire communities and sabotages our ability to provide and take care of our spiritual selves.

Our bodies and mental health have become sacrifice zones, similar to those in Pine Ridge and Camden.  We are turning a blind eye to the chemicals we put inside and on our bodies, intoxicating our cells with addictions as the inhabitants of Pine Ridge are helplessly waiting outside of the liquor store anticipating the next chance at a buzz.  Taking time to breathe and enjoy the great outdoors has been outsourced to screen time, forcing our brain cells into encampments under a dark bridge in Camden.  We’ve forgotten what it means to live, we have forgotten what life really is.  Some of us go days without recognizing the miracles of life occurring around us—trees slowly providing for their leaves, growing taller and stronger, squirrels running across the green, trying to prepare for a long winter, and even ourselves.  We have become untouchable, hiding in our brick buildings, behind layers of glass.  We’ve removed ourselves from the community that can be found in the great outdoors.

As I look at the comradery between the leaves on the trees and bushes around me, the blades of grass beneath my feet, the rocks that the slight stream dances across, I wonder if the people subject to these sacrifice zones would feel so helpless if they too were to sit in nature for an hour a week.  We’ve turned a blind eye to these areas, created deserts, food deserts, real deserts, spiritual deserts.  They’ve lost the community within their social environments, but also those that can be found outdoors.  Can you be nihilistic when you’re watching a grasshoppers? When you see what you can grow in your garden? When you know how many miles birds fly every year just survive?  These people are otherwise abandoned, left to make the best of what they’ve been left with, in the middle of the desert with the buzzards poking at what little remains of their communities.  In a very similar sense, we have all created sacrifice zones within ourselves, sacrificing the essence of our being.

At first glance, a spot by the creek doesn’t look significant. Even to someone who is a return visitor, the first look is not too revealing. As my third visit to my tucked away clearing by White Clay creek, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Still, the fact that this was “my spot” was calming and I instantly felt my connection with it once I left the trail to take my place on the log. There was something so nice about how this place seemingly went unchanging while my world charged ahead. In the natural cool shade of what I think was a beech tree, the log made yet again a perfect bench to observe the creek from. This time, the log had a fresh, thin coating of moss, so sitting was a bit tricky. Another patch of small, white mushrooms had popped up with the moss. Thankfully, these mushrooms were on the far end so I didn’t have to worry about squishing them. A few birds darted over my head, seemingly oblivious (or indifferent) to my presence.

I began to think about how constant this place was, other than the fungi and moss that is. In our readings, there has been a constant theme of uncertainty, especially with the Hispanic immigrants working in Florida. At the dawn of each day, they do not know whether or not they will have a job to return to. They do not know whether or not they will be discovered and deported. They do not know whether or not they will be able to pay the rent at the end of the month. This instability is upsetting, especially when I do not have to worry about any of those problems. Sitting by the water and having these thoughts swirling around in my head was a good combination. It is easy, when these issues are being discussed in class, for me to get frantic and distressed. All throughout this section on “issues,” I couldn’t help but relate a lot of the stories from the books to my family.

I’m part Native American. When reading about the Pine Ridge reservation, I couldn’t help seeing some of my family members in the characters. The alcoholism is real in every respect. It’s obvious on any reservation, including the Tuscarora Reservation near Niagara Falls in New York, that drinking is a main past time. One of my older cousins and his family lives here, and I’ve visited a few times. When I hang out with him and his friends, it seems like the only thing that they can think to do is to go get drunk and play video games or go change how they look. Tattoos, piercings, and wild hair styles are big there. It’s not uncommon for someone to wake up with new ink.

Reading about Pine Ridge hit a few heart strings; my mind couldn’t help but jump back to my cousin. But reading about West Virginia was hard too. When I’m not at UD, I’m either in central Virginia, or I’m in an impoverished area of western Maine. Both places I can relate to West Virginia. Mining is such a prevailing force in the mountains that it just seemed like everyday life. A few months before I graduated high school, back in 2013, my hometown was informed that a uranium mine was being proposed in southwestern Virginia. Apparently, there was a huge area that had literal tons of the stuff just waiting to be used at the nuclear power plant on Lake Anna (also in Virginia). Protests and hot debates circulated through my school, as well as through the state. The costs seemed to outweigh the benefits, although the payout would have been phenomenal. The risk of contaminating water supplies was incredibly high. As we read about the coal mining towns in West Virginia, we read about how polluted their water and their lives became because of it. And that was coal. Uranium is a highly radioactive product that is dangerous at nearly every step throughout the process. So what effects would that have had on the thousands of people who live in the southwestern corner of the Virginian plateau?

This slow moving creek cannot fathom what other waterways are experiencing across the country. All it knows is how to continue downstream. I hope this creek never has to know the pollution that the water ways of West Virginia suffer through. Farm runoff, however, can wreak its own havoc on this fragile, yet complex, ecosystem. The places we read about all show the extremes. Once nature is thrown out of balance and humans lose control of what they created, all that is left are barren wastelands that the rest of the country ignores. It would be a shame if White Clay ever fell without a care, like the once great industrial power of Camden.

“I slept as never before, a stone on the riverbed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees” (Mary Oliver)

The sun is melting into the pinky evening clouds; I pull my sweater tighter and close my book. I think it’s time to head home for dinner. All around me it feels as though life in the creek is just beginning to stir, a wind weaves between the tall grass and the crickets buzz swells louder and louder. Today is the first time there has been a bite of chill in the air and all the birds are singing about it. Even the trees seem to be aware that a change is coming; no one pays too much attention to that anymore. I think about the way that a tree is aware of the world around it, how it will shed its leaves knowing that the cold is coming.

Of course there are other ways to explain this, but if you spend any time among the trees it is hard to deny their mindfulness. I am inclined to take the advice Alexandra Morton writes in Listening to Whales: “The inability to explain is no reason to forget, modify, or deny the extraordinary information that sometimes comes through our ordinary senses. The unbelievable is sacred knowledge that must be kept”.

Industrialization was the beginning of forgetting this sacred knowledge, when we tore down the trees and built factories. Here in Newark there remain a few relics to remind us how it all started: like an old mill that has been converted into a restaurant. When you step inside you feel a little nostalgic for a world that was very difficult but very hopeful. It is dark inside and the air is stale, up on the walls are pictures of the “old days” when the Industrial Revolution had just begun here in America. I wonder if that hope is still alive in my generation, if we are satisfied to kid ourselves a little bit longer. When I head out to the woods and sit next to a sturdy sycamore tree I find a different kind of nostalgia, like being reunited with an old friend that I’ve ignored for quite some time. I’m thinking about this as I slip into a dreamy sleep. I have dreams of being chased into woods that grow darker and colder. I run until I am out of breath. Suddenly, just as I am about to stop I am blinded with light, which burns my eyes and my skin. I look around and there is nothing: no one is chasing me and there are no more trees or rocks, just a dusty colorless ground. I lay down exhausted and melt into the dust. I jolt awake to the sound of a flock of Canadian geese above my house, flying south for the winter. A chill runs down my back.

Humans are so fragile in nature. But bring them out of nature and they lose all respect for that delicate balance they inhabit. It is a lost memory. Industrialization promised a better future, a way to stay dry when it rains, to fill your stomach even when there was a drought. It promised convenience and short-term solutions. But instead it has bought us a world of long-term problems, of things that we don’t need and can’t seem to get rid of. As long as we can keep pumping out these quick fixes, it will be difficult to wake up to the growing number of problems we are facing. Unless you look at the places and people that have really been exploited, as Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco do in Days of Destruction Days of Revolt. Pine Ridge, Camden, Welch, and Immokalee are not household terms. That is because they have nothing to sell you. These places are home to some of the poorest and most exploited people in our country today, and they are a window into the future. What was once a bustling city, fertile mountainside, or wild plain has become a kind of barren desert. The animals are gone, the food is gone, and nothing can grow here.  Industry has driven the wedge between rich and poor to the breaking point.

It is difficult to take this all in, and decide how I can change things. So many people before me have tried and been unsuccessful.

There is this term Bodhi that means, more than simply mindfulness, a supreme knowledge or enlightenment. I come across it while trying to describe the trees in the creek. It originates from the story of the Buddha who experienced enlightenment while sitting beneath a tree. So I grab my journal and head back to the woods.