I walked down the path to White Clay Creek trying to allow my body to absorb some sunlight

while being aware of the loose rocks lining the path so I did not roll my ankle, my attention was more on the latter. The trail eventually was cleared of stones and replaced with sand, dirt, and dead grass. I was able to then take in my surroundings. No one was around so I was able to take in my first maskless deep breath in what has seemed like ages. In the air, spring and winter battled with the forces of the warm sun against the nip in the air, and it will be a couple of weeks before spring wins the battle. And even though the air dried my mouth and was sharp against my lungs, that breath felt better than using a new pack of Bic colored pens or finally smoothing out that stubborn wrinkling in my duvet cover.

I looked around to take in my wooded surroundings and everything reminded me of home. With White Clay Creek looking exactly like the Rocky River, only the water much more clear, and the branches bare of leaves but beginning to bud at the end, transport me to the Cleveland Metroparks with how identical it looks to the scenery back home. There, I decided I wanted to spend a bit more time listening to the stream in the creek and getting some sunlight. I walked back to my car and grabbed Clean and White so I could both do my homework while enjoying the outdoors. As I reached the street, I could hear multiple croaks and volume continued to grow as I made my way towards the parking spaces. I traced the noise to a small puddle, probably formed by the rain water and in it there were three small frogs. So needless to say, that was the highlight of my day.

Book in tow, for a second time attempted not to roll my ankle and happily, I succeeded. I went back to the same area I was before, and tried to find a tree trunk I could sit on that I could get to without being poked and scratched by a thousand little thorns and twigs. I carefully made my way to a fallen tree, taking the long route. I took too many pictures of the surroundings and sent them to people who, rightfully so, did not care that I was outside. I was amazed at just how clear the water was and sent a picture of it to my best friend commenting on it only to receive the response “ok grandpa”.

My gaze followed the water as it moved down the creek. I followed each little ripple with my

eyes periodically until something caught my eye. There, in the dirt, off to my right, was the tread of my left platform van, staring back at me. It then hit me about how many other footprints, both physical and environmentally I have left over my 20 years. Most of them I have probably been unaware of.

After I felt like it was time to return home, I gathered my things and left. Even though I was back in Sharp Hall, the checkered pattern of the sole of my shoe still remained embedded in the dirt.

My existence is filled with shoe prints, the empty plastic Sabra hummus container sitting beside me that I will recycle but it is only delaying the inevitable; the fire roasted salsa sitting in my fridge that I tried once and hated and will probably throw out at the end of May when I back up my dorm. I produce a lot of waste but because of my race, class, ethnicity, I will never experience the full repercussions of it.

About 5 miles away from the Cleveland Metroparks lies Cleveland, a city once controlled by the auto industry, now left abandoned and destitute partly because of the departure of General Motors. Although very close in distance, the Metroparks and Downtown Cleveland, look like two completely parts of the country. The Downtown has been ripped of trees, clean air, and clean water. Through the practices of redlining, and just overall racism, black people are “lawfully” segregated to Downtown. The effects of environmental racism are not felt by the whites in the suburbs today, nor were they felt by those in rural areas. Many of these problems are no better than the conditions immigrants in the tenement houses faced during the second Industrial Revolution. “On cold days when home use of coal was heavy, Pittsburg skies appeared black at noon” (141). With the natural air filtering system of trees plowed down and replaced with skyscrapers, the polluted air could not be clean then and continues to remain dirty in urban environments.

I live off heat and food and clothing whose waste I will never see the effects of. Just like the

tread of my van in the dirt, my actions do not affect me as much as those who live in the area

where my waste will go. This problem has been going on for far too long, but there seems to beno end in sight because the problems of waste and the effect that come from it are only felt by the poor and people of color, not the rich and in power.

The weather at the farm this week was saddening. As the sun melted the snow that was

present at the start of the week, more rain came in full force. Normally I find rain relaxing to

listen to, but when I’m working outside four days a week, it gets old fast. Inside the barn was

busy this week, as usual. The normal hustle and bustle of thirty-five horses moving from place to

place and pasture to pasture gives you a little bit of a whiplash but I am starting to get the hang

of working at such a fast pace. I took a horse named Vera on some walks this week for twenty

five minutes a day. She has a torn suspensory ligament and as part of her healing process I give

her daily walks. Usually I call someone and talk on the phone to pass the time, but this week I

decided to walk outside and take a listen to my surroundings. As the weather has warmed up, I

noticed a huge flock of canadian geese has taken up residency at the pond near the barn and they

are quite loud. They were taking baths in the water, probably just as happy as I was that the

weather was up to the forties. As the snow melted, the ground became soft and quite muddy. If

the horses aren’t careful when galloping through the fields, they may just find themselves

slipping and falling. The barn swallows have been making so much noise flying from tree to tree,

chasing each other almost as if they are playing tag. Other people in the barn have been

complaining about how loud they are, but I find them quite enjoyable to watch.

While on one of our walks, I was thinking about trauma. Partially because we were

discussing it in class and partially because the night before I had a really bad dream flashing

back to a traumatic experience in my own life. I don’t usually have dreams like that often, but

when I get really stressed about work or school, I feel like these dreams are my body’s way of

telling me to slow down and take care of myself.

A couple years ago I was driving down the road and came upon a woman begging for

help as her house was on fire. There were two people in the house when it started, this woman

and her eighteen year old daughter. When I came upon the accident by chance, the mother had

jumped out the window to save herself and had no choice but to leave her daughter behind in the

flames. She was bleeding and in obvious shock and as I held towels from my car trunk on her

wounds to try to stop the bleeding I couldn’t do anything but watch the house go up in flames

knowing her daughter was inside. There was absolutely nothing I could have done, but for a

while I couldn’t help but feel partially responsible for her death. After months of trying to just

forget this whole thing happened, I finally went to therapy to talk about it and I have been doing

much better since.

While reading about how the indigenous people were removed from their homes and as

they looked back they saw their own houses in flames, I felt a pang in my chest. It hit close to

home and although, thankfully, I have never seen this happen to my own house, I have seen it

happen to someone else’s right before my eyes. Although this specific part of the book struck a

chord with me, another person may have read it and felt nothing. There is a level of compassion

and understanding necessary to feel grief. It’s so much easier to just forget something happened,

to turn a blind eye, to not have uncomfortable conversations, but those responses aren’t helpful

towards forward progress. When reading about people’s homes being burned down, it’s easy for

me to feel for them because of my own experiences. It is important for people to read books like

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States so we have a better understanding of what

happened to indigenous communities and the ways that our country was founded. Not only just

reading books like this is important, but also discussing them with others. We can then use this

information to help better understand why there are lasting impacts on groups of people today

and help us understand the steps needed to be taken to sympathize with those groups and

reconcile the present effects of those lasting issues.

I enjoyed looking up at the grand sky, getting lost in thought as the blue color continues to intensify. The sound of the river walking by, as it follows a limitless road. I feel less connected to my earthly attachments and I begin to wonder why I had the dream to own a big house. For a long time, I always thought that a house would provide me shelter but it would still feel congested regardless of the size.

The worst of tight living conditions as told by Clean and White such as the large European and American cities in the eighteenth century were a breeding ground for poverty and filth. The lack of sanitary infrastructure came with a great cost, where there was an increased risk of yellow fever, typhoid, and other diseases. Despite this history, we continue to have growing cities such as New York City that take more from the land than give back. White Clay Creek could have been unlucky and had a city built over it. It is sad that in our lifetimes, we may never get see the original beautiful nature of the New York City area before settler intervention.

Taking a step back, I was feeling intimidated by the amount of space in the forest. From my perspective, I have always prioritized my feelings of safety over spaciousness of an enclosed building. Growing up I have lived in the white man’s house, never thinking that other communities would see the same house as a cage. The pictures from the National Geographic article show the broken and crowded living conditions of the Oglala residents. In the white man’s house and cars, there is limited space to make a home and it constantly reminds the residents of the barriers created by the White society. There is little wiggle room to live outside of these houses as White American society has this expectation of everyone living in a building and the appearance of a standard home. To show signs of fighting back, the Oglala residents continue to practice ceremonies and customs in order to break the white man’s cages.

The wind was petting my hair into a wild mess as usually. It was a friendly gesture, where the life of the forest was beginning to grow back as it transitioned to spring. The little plants were starting to germinate, even when the weather was slightly cold. Sometimes, nature can still find the will to live and move forward from the violence of humans. Such violence is found in events such as the Wounded Knee Massacre, which ensued a protest against the U.S. due to the horrid actions against vulnerable groups of people. Once again, the U.S. felt the need to stop the protest through the use of violence, which ended up in 130,000 shots fired and 1,200 arrests. The screams of terror, confusion, sadness, and mercy were all heard by mother nature but not by the U.S.

With everything stacked against Indigenous people, their sense of community did not fade, and they continued to keep their culture alive. As stated in the “Shadow of A Nation,” wealth was not from the individual but from the community according to customs in Indigenous reservations. Another sign of high community value was the ritual of being a hero. Instead of receiving gifts which is often portrayed in White American media, the hero would give gifts to the community as a way to say thanks for the endless support.

However, all these strengths from the community wouldn’t be enough to comfort or protect individuals from struggles present in their communities. Jonathan Takes Enemy used basketball and alcohol as an escape from reality. The constant running away from the heavy grip of doubt and negativity impacted many lives. In the boundless forest, no matter how much one runs away, the struggles come back and drag everyone down.

One day, there may be no more standard house trapping communities, no more screams of agony, and no more suffering of communal struggles. Maybe one day, we can all lose ourselves in the vast emptiness of space, to be free from the pressures created by internalized trauma.

When I was little, and even to this today, I loved to color, draw, and just make art. I found that making art was a fun way of expressing myself, allowing myself to convey feelings without having to say words or without having to formulate emotions into a cohesive thought. Furthermore, very early in life, I formed a habit of being eraser-happy. One misstep of my colored pencil and out the eraser would go, ready to cover my mistake in a layer of shed rubber. Even if the misstep was an improvement to my work, it was gone, forgotten, erased. A piece of the story to never be shared and to never be remembered.

As I walk around White Clay Creek I feel as though I see a similar behavior in the world. I walk in the snow and I leave footprints. These footprints will melt by the next time I return. I breath in the air and a cloud of smoke appears, yet quickly disappears. As I walk, I kick leaves and sticks around in all directions. However, even that is fleeting as the wind will surely move them back. Every action I have taken while at the park, erased. I tried to test this further. I made a ripple in the water. It eventually dissipated. Nothing I did was lasting, a phenomenon which in nature is relatively reassuring. My actions did not leave a permanent impact, allowing for others to experience as I have. However, the same phenomenon is also scary; it is terrifying to think that something could be so easily forgotten, so easily erased.

Thinking about this in the middle of a natural park makes it hard to ignore how the indigenous people seemed to suffer and be erased. The settlers came to North America with the goal of a fresh slate. Upon their arrival, they realized this clean slate “for them” could only be achieved with messy conflicts and bloodshed of others. The indigenous people were the ones to suffer the disappointment and the disappearing. They were treated as having no value: less wealthy, less deserving and generally worthless. Their lifestyle and lives were ignored. Their progresses trampled. Their villages and societies burned. Ultimately, they were brutally killed and mutilated, with only fractions of the initial populations left to remain. More than hundreds of thousands of Native American Lives, forgotten, ignored, erased.

Thinking about that is so crazy to me. It is inconceivable to think that anyone would be willing to cause such suffering in order to further themselves to a goal they conceived only a few years prior after facing societal injustices in their place of origin. What should be more important? Why were the settlers the ones who claimed the right to decide? They should not have had the ability to erase entire cultures as they had done. They erased populations of animals, they erased buildings, they erased most of entire societies without a drop, a speck, or even a thought of remorse.

I am not related to an indigenous person. I am a child of two families who immigrated here: one from Hungary and the other from Belarus &Ukraine. For me, my cultures have felt very distant from me in some respect, separated by borders and oceans. However, my parents and grandparents, and even my aunts and uncles, have taught about how they grew up. They have made family recipes passed down through generations and have even taught bits and pieces of their languages. They have told me stories about my grandparents when they were in Europe and about the struggles they faced to get to the United States. They have played songs, showed me pictures and helped me try to learn to feel connected to a culture that I do not live in, a generation removed. However, for the few indigenous individuals who survived and were able to live on in this country, covered with eraser shavings of their cultures, their experiences must have been very different.

For descendants of the indigenous people who survived, their connection to their culture must be hard and painful, as their very way of living is a reminder of what they lost in the past. While their parents and families are probably still present in their lives, their communities are likely small. I expect that their experience of trying to connect to their culture is more difficult, as many people were killed, or forcibly assimilated, in an effort to erase them from the slate of North America. Many traditions, family recipes, songs, and other cultural aspects of importance likely fell to the same fate.

In class we watched a video about chief Quiet Thunder, a direct descendant of an indigenous individual in the Leni Lenape tribe. In the video he talked about his culture and how his tribe thought of food and of the pipe and how they continue to plan to treat the earth to prepare for seven generations to follow. This video was informative, of course, but it also made me upset. These cultures should be one which we are all well informed about and familiar with. It shouldn’t take a video of a late chief to open our eyes to these cultures. There should not be only a few individuals who participate in these cultures that were here so long before the settlers. It is unfair and it is inconceivable that anyone considered it to be okay to try and erase a culture. It is worse that they succeeded for a large fraction of the populations that were here and are here no longer. While the indigenous populations were nearly erased, it is our responsibility now to make sure that they are not forgotten.  We should be doing everything in our power to help them prosper and grow and regain some of what was taken away, regain some of who they were and should be again.

As I return to Sugar Pond for my second visit, it saddens me to say that the ice from last week has not left: the pond still remains entirely frozen over, even more so than before. In the areas where motionless pools of meltwater once rested, small, elevated ridges of compacted snow have now taken shape, splitting what was once an entirely flat, frozen plain into an uneven array of jagged slopes and edges. Along the pond’s perimeter, rings of twigs and leaf litter assemble in the uniform depressions leftover from previously felled oak trees. Gauged out of the Earth by the sheer force of their collapses, each hole in the ground represents a grave − the pond, a graveyard − for natural beings that took centuries to grow, yet only seconds to topple over. I find it ironic that what once stood so high above the pond now rests for eternity submerged beneath the frozen surface, concealed from the view of even the most observant passersby.

As I begin to straddle the edge, hoping to spot a log or two suspended beneath the ice, my search carries me towards the pond’s steepest bank. Upon my arrival, I notice that the soles of my boots are no longer passing over thick swathes of snow and ice but rather an orderly assortment of cedar planks, anchored perfectly in between two sizable boulders. I had reached a bridge, the only point along the pond’s entire circumference where water is granted the chance to escape into a connecting stream. As I sit atop one of the railings, the torrents of water spewing out from the gap below the bridge create an intense reverberation, one that bounces between each of my ribs before plunging back into the frigid depths below. “Was I too becoming a part of nature’s cycle?” I thought to myself. The expression, “Now, our minds are one,” kept repeating in my head as I attempted to align my breathing with the cadence of the water droplets skittering off the rocks. Whether I succeeded or not was now the least of my concern. I was too focused on the fact that, for once during this pandemic, I truly felt at peace.

Or, at least that’s what I kept telling myself. As fast as the natural world instilled within me with a sense of newfound serenity, the continuous clatter of the non-natural world snatched it away twice as fast. In the span of the entire five minutes I spent attempting to listen to the water beneath me: a fire alarm had sounded (four repetitions meant a fire had broken out), an HVAC system behind a nearby home had whirred to life, and three deafening crashes (followed by the sounds of trucks reversing) indicated that construction down by the train tracks had just begun for the day. Yet, as much as I wanted to tune out these noises, I couldn’t. I didn’t have a choice.

Whenever I think about the goal of our journal assignments, to “[engage] with the noise[s] of the world,” I cannot help but also think about the noises that helped colonize this country. From the gunshots that tore through the flesh of innocent Indigenous men and women to the crackling of crop fields set ablaze by army troops, America represents a nation founded from the commotion caused by barbaric violence and total war. When a singular shot from a confiscated Worcester rifle misfired, the lives of 300 defenseless Lakota Sioux individuals were claimed as quickly as the soldiers who killed them could mount their machine guns into place.

The noise of the world had overcome them. Just like the great oak trees I had searched for earlier, their downfalls took with them centuries of Indigenous knowledge, growth, and wisdom, all erased within a matter of minutes. Yet, still today, we are rarely ever exposed to what truly happened at Wounded Knee, the massacre, the bloody mutilation of hundreds of innocent lives. We make up excuses. “It simply doesn’t align with the white American perspective,” we say.

As I begin my trek home, just a stone’s throw away, I think I’m finally starting to understand why the pond freezes over every winter. It’s not because of the frigid outside temperatures or some reaction that occurs between the air and the water. No, the pond freezes over in order to shield itself from the noises of the world. I often wish I could do the same.