The hike into White Clay is pleasant this time. It is not too chilly, and the breeze carries the smell of fresh rain. The large creek has become swollen from last night’s rain and now it rages on, muddy brown from carrying the dirt and silt from run offs. I spend extra time on the root bridge, because it is still slick with moisture. When I crouch down, a decomposing bundle of sticks and fibers is right next to my head. I’ve noticed it before, but only because I didn’t want fall into precariously hanging nest. Today, I stand still, examining it carefully. It is a black mass, that is hanging by some odd grainy fiber. There is a small opening for a bird that is being stretched from gravity and disuse.  Carefully chose twigs are stacked at the bottom of the pouch-shaped nest. I get the sense that it could fall any moment. Even though my initial reaction at looking at the nest is disgust for the gray, webby concoction holding everything together, I still find appreciation in this little feat of architecture. I have no real idea what kind of bird could make this nest – my best guess is the Baltimore Oriole. Arriving at my little island, I look around for signs of change. The moss is a beautiful shade of green again, and it encompasses my tree from the base. I only notice tendrils of Japanese Honeysuckle and Oriental Bittersweet on every tree, that I had glazed over before. I notice the Multiflora Rose grow thicker and more impenetrable. I crouch at the edge the land, and watch the stream flow quickly underneath me. I find the rush soothing, and I can see the swoops of water where the stream flows over a tiny ridge. The tiny journal I bring with me is still opened to an empty page, and I can’t think of the metaphors and tiny observations I want to focus on. Instead, I just think about the past week, and how it has been more difficult than usual.

I started sleeping later and skipping meals. Working out regularly has become completely out of question. After all the growth I’ve done as a person, it’s discouraging that I’m regressing to an unhealthier version of me. There’s a lot of reasons to this weird state of exhaustion. But I think I’m starting to become disillusioned. I’ve been drafted into a system that doesn’t care for the planet it has been lived in. Now, it seems like everything I do also inadvertently harms the environment. I drive to school in my car and release carbon dioxide into the air. The jeans I wear probably needed thousands of gallons of water in the process of production. The cereal I eat from breakfast was from genetically modified plants treated with carcinogenic pesticides. The house I live in is in the middle of suburbia, in a fairly new neighborhood that used to be a lot of trees a decade ago. That same house was bought because my dad works at DuPont. Jenkins says that DuPont now has control of the world’s biggest proprietary seed bank, as well as a global seed sales force” (pg. 54). So my dad has helps with the transportation and storage of GM soybeans and pesticides, and the money he earns from that helps to pay for my college tuition.

I’ve had my heart set on medicine forever, and I have only good intentions for how I want to spend my career – by helping people. Moreso, I never wanted to be harm the ecosystem around me. But even good intentions have unforeseen consequences. Being more aware that everything I do could is adding to an urgent problem puts me in a state of mental paralysis. Haskell thinks we can find our way back to thoughtful management for the long-term well-being of both humans and forests. But finding this way will require some quiet and humility. Oases of contemplation can call us out disorder, restoring a semblance of clarity to our moral vision (pg. 67). Maybe he’s right. I feel better acknowledging the creeping cynicism of my usually optimistic view of life. I give my peninsula a glance of new thought, like a doctor to a patient – thinking of a cure. The stream underneath my feet is clear and so are my thoughts.