Mapping

Yesterday afternoon I went for a lovely walk with one of my friends through Schmeekle Reserve. I kept track of the trails that I took and wrote them down as we were going.

We started out at the corner of Minnesota Ave. and Maria Dr. Then we took a left and followed the Lake Loop until we branched off and made our way to the Trail of Reflections. For a while we just sat and enjoyed the beautiful day. After leaving the Trail of Reflections we followed the Green trail until we reached the Green Circle trailhead, and were able to see a full map of the Green Trail. I was surprised to find that it surrounds almost all of Stevens Point. The friend I went with said it would be fun to bike the whole green trail and make a day of it. I must admit I found this idea to be a little intimidating at first, but I'm liking the idea more and more. We ended our walk by following Business 51, getting back onto Maria Dr, and then heading home. Overall, I had a very nice walk.

Art-Based Entry

Over the weekend I visited some friends in Superior. We went to Pattison State park, which is one of my favorite places to visit.

My favorite part is getting as close to the water as I can, climbing over rocks and walking through the woods.

Literary Response to a Quote or Excerpt.

O happy living things! No tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.

The selfsame moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea. 

This excerpt is from one of my favorite poems, entitled "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". The poem is about a man, an old and experienced mariner who is asked to lead a crew of men across the sea. He is cocky and sure of himself and his talents, and views this as an easy run, even though it is known to be dangerous. He is also self centered and views the sea and the life within as despicable and disposable. While on the sea there appears an albatross in the sky, and all the crew members and happy at this, as the albatross was seen as a good omen for sailors. However, the crew comes upon hard times when a thick fog appears and they can no longer see there way. The mariner decides to take matters into his own hands and shoots down the albatross with an arrow. The fog immediately lifts and the whole crew applauds the mariners actions. Unfortunately the mariner and the crew become lost and sea, and run out of food and water. As a result the crew turns on the mariner and blame him for there situation and hang the dead albatross around his neck as punishment and reminder. Eventually every single crew member, with the exception of the mariner, dies a slow death. The mariner is forced to suffer, unable to live, unable to die, and unable to pray for salvation, alone on the sea until death decides to take him.

The excerpt that I chose is the point at which the mariner is finally released from his torment. It is the point where he finally realizes that the sea and the nature around him is not just full of disgusting creatures that are disposable. He seas the beauty in the world and loves and appreciates the same creatures of the sea that he had previously found disgusting. As a result, he is released from his torment, the dead albatross falls from his neck, and the mariner is rescued by another boat.

I chose this excerpt, not only because it is one of my favorite poems, but because it expresses a love and passion for the environment. The author himself viewed the environment as very inspiring and important, as do I. I  feel very strongly about this poem because it expresses how I feel about nature as well, that it can release you from stress and bring you closer to God.

Story Telling of an Experience in Nature.

Growing up, I was always very close to nature. The house that I grew up in, and the house that my parents still live in today, is very well removed from town. We (my sisters and I) didn't grow up hearing the noises of the city out our window. Our nighttime lullaby didn't consist of traffic sounds and sirens. Instead we fell asleep to the chirping of the crickets and the croaking of frogs in the pond next to our house. Looking back I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm pretty sure my whole family feels the same way as well. I prefer the melody of birds in the trees to the voices of nosy neighbors. And instead of neighbor dogs roaming their way into our backyard, we had deer. They still make their way to the apple trees in the backyard in the early hours of the morning. It was a peaceful childhood, and we were always learning about the nature around us.

One of the places that I grew to appreciate nature, aside from our backyard, was at my family's hunting cabin. We used to spend our weekends out there, in any season. Winter was probably my favorite season to be at the cabin. The weather could be raging in any way you could think of, but our sturdy cabin wouldn't budge an inch. It was incredibly peaceful sitting in that little building, watching wildlife walking just outside the windows, with nothing but the wood stove to keep us warm.

My dad used to take my sisters and I on nature walks while we were at the cabin. We would leave out the front door and walk straight into the woods, in any season. While on the walks my dad would point out different things that we saw, and teach us about them. I learned to determine which animals had crossed through by the size of their trails (as animals frequently use the same trails to travel through the woods) and by the scat that they left behind. He point out the different trees, and how to tell them apart. I learned the difference between aspen and birch, oak and maple, as well as a variety of different conifers. He would even show us what the ground looked like where a deer had slept the night before. The best part of every nature walk with my dad was when it was done. Not because I disliked them, on the contrary they were one of my favorite childhood memories. The end was my favorite because my dad would lead us to the nearest road, and let us lead the way back to the cabin, without retracing our steps. It was a test of whether or not we had payed attention to the direction we were going. I am proud to say that we always made it back to the cabin.

Scientific Observation

I went for a walk with a friend the other day, in Schmeekle forest, and noticed a few interesting things. I am not sure if this counts as scientific observation, but I certainly found it worth noting. 

Anyway, we were walking along one of the trails that everybody uses, and came to an area where a bunch of trees had fallen. It was about four trees, maybe as many as six. There were no large storms that I remembered during the summer, or before that, at least not something violent enough to take down that many trees, especially since one of them was about three feet in diameter. Which by the way is a pretty large tree for that particular forest. I went off the trail, since that is how I prefer to go for walks in the woods, and went over by the area with the fallen trees. I noticed that they were near a dried up stream. I could tell because it was an area that had nothing growing and the rocks were washed clean of any dirt and had no moss growing on it. Also the dirt in the dried stream was a reddish color, like clay. I found this interesting, that the same area that had fallen trees, also had a recently dried clay stream. 

Another thing to note is that the summer was kind of a weird one. We had a really dry period, with no rain at all, then a week or two where it rained everyday, then it went back to dry.

I went home and looked up some of the reasons that trees collapse or fall, especially since I didn't think it was from a storm. Nothing really came up. I then looked up the effects of drought on trees, since it had been a particularly dry summer. What I found was pretty interesting. On this page (http://txforestservice.tamu.edu/main/popup.aspx?id=1283) I found some information about areas that have soil with a lot of clay in it. On the page it said "Soils with a high clay content will hold water much better than sandy soils. Trees growing in clay soils tend to be shallow rooted and may be more severely impacted by prolonged drought than trees growing on loamy or sandy soils where roots will grow deeper. Most of a tree's feeder roots that absorb moisture and nutrients are located in the upper 12-14 inches of the soil. When a clay soil dries out, the impact on the tree can be great since the tree is not "accustomed" to sending roots deep into the soil for moisture and nutrients."

I found this to be very interesting, and developed a theory of what caused the trees to fall (although I am not sure that I am right.) What I think happened is that the trees, since they were growing in clay, had very shallow roots. They suffered quite a bit during the dry period in early summer, because there roots did not go down far enough to pull out moisture. Then when the rainy period came, the soil and clay surrounding their roots might have partially washed away and caused the trees to become unstable and fall. Finally the weather returned to dry and the stream dried up. 

Again, I am not sure if this is what happened, but the facts seem to fit.

I think that this would be something that I could teach to students as well. Seeing the fallen trees made me think more about how much the weather effects what grows around us, and how plants adapt to their surroundings. Talking about the fallen trees could be a good lesson to teach to students.

Self Assessment for Teaching Environmental Education

Prompt?: Write a self-assessment of your content knowledge, confidence, and abilities to teach the EE standards for the grade that you plan to teach.

In the future I will be teaching special education. I am fairly confident in my ability, and am sure that I will succeed in this field. Regarding this specific topic, however, I am less confident about. While I have always had a passion for nature and a concern for environmental issues, I don't feel that I currently have the knowledge to teach it successfully at this point in time. That being said, I am also confident that I will learn the necessary  information relatively easily. I am also unsure of how I will teach the information appropriately. In my field, I will be working with a variety of students, with and even larger variety of abilities and disabilities, so I will have to differentiate quite a bit. Furthermore, there will be other students that I have contact with that I will not be the primary teacher of, so there environmental education will be the responsibility of someone else. This is mainly what I am worried about. How will I convey my passion and knowledge  to my students in a way that they will understand. Also, what do I do if I encounter students that really do not care about the environment, and no matter what I say or do, will never care? Of course, these concerns of mine will probably go away as I learn more in not only my specific field, but the field of environmental education.

Another specific concern that I have is more directly related to the class itself, and the information we will learn in the class. It is not that I fear that it will be too difficult, but more that I do not know what is coming. Environmental Education seems rather vague to me, and I am also not sure how to transfer my knowledge to a way that is easy for students to understand.

Oh well. So far the class is going well, and I have done well in all of my classes so far, so this is probably another one of my un-warranted stress-freakout episodes. All will be fine.

So I guess this is a "Nature Journal"

Here goes my first entry into my nature journal. Well sort of my first entry, the first being one that we had to turn into class. And also considering that I am transferring my original nature journal, which I had in a tattered notebook that used to house some long-forgotten notes from an English class, into blog form. So with some re-wording, here goes the first entry in my transference of notebook to blog. After a while it will all pan out.

Anyway, it is currently raining, so there won't be much observation today.

And this is more of an introduction than an entry.