I got my first tattoo over a year ago now. It is a quotation from Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself”, a lengthy piece musing about the notion of self. The full quotation is “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.” The ink on my skin simply says, “I contain multitudes.”

This is a phrase I have identified with for a long time. To me, it means a multiplicity of things. First and foremost, I am complex. There is more to understanding one’s self than meets the eye. Proper introspection is an important part of life, in my eyes anyway. Moving on from there it means so much more, too much to contain in a two page journal.

My next tattoo is going to be a mountain scene, with words from both John Muir and Aldo Leopold. “Anywhere wild” from Muir and “Think like a mountain” from Leopold. Cliché environmentalist tattoo if you ask me, but putting something on my skin is a way of holding myself accountable. I want to move forward in my life and continue to grow as an environmentalist and I hope putting their resonating words permanently on my body will help me do this.

This is what I was thinking about today on my run through White Clay. Why is it important to think like a mountain? What does that even mean? Personally, it means first to think not only from your perspective. If a hunter only thinks about what he wants (lots of deer) and not what the mountain fears (lots of deer), the larger picture is lost and eventually the hunter only ends up hurting himself. Secondly, it is important to remember that everything is connected. In nature, in literature, in life. Everything is connected. The mountain, the deer, the wolf. They are all connected in a complex web of living side by side, the same way that I am connected to my environment. Respect for this web of life is important to me.

In fact, this relates to an even bigger concept, an “I contain multitudes” kind of concept. Life is big and complex and truly we don’t really understand any of it. This is something that Leopold touches on frequently as well. Even as a professional naturalist, there are many things he himself does not understand about the farm he is living on. Despite this, Leopold knows that he is a part of the larger system of interconnectedness. He is large and contains multitudes, the multitudes of the environment surrounding him included. It takes more than thinking like a mountain sometimes, it must become part of oneself.

This is what I was thinking about as I paused for a break during my run through White Clay. I tried to be like Leopold and be able to notice all the different nuances of the environment that I was standing in. Instead, I noticed a few birds chirping, which I could not identify, and a fat squirrel scurrying up a tree. The typical natural occurrences I notice every day on this campus. Instead of becoming discouraged, I instead stood still and continued to listen. I listened to my environment instead of being constantly caught up in my own thoughts. I think that is a start.