Course Wrap Up

Today, I sit in the comfort of the house, covered in a blanket. Thick pellets of ice hit the roof and bounce off of the sliding glass door. It sounds like someone spilled an entire bowl full of marbles on the kitchen floor. I sit by my phone, waiting for a school cancellation call. Virginians are terrified of winter weather.

Someone once told me that in the entire state of Virginia there are only a few giant snow melters.  I’m not sure how valid that is, but it explains why everything shuts down at the first sign of snowflakes. Southerners are unprepared for “harsh” weather. In Western Pennsylvania, there are a few melters in every city. This time of year, you can see mountains of salt in storage facilities along the highway. A friend of mine even carries a snow shovel in her trunk, “just in case.”

Over the course of my nature writing class that spawned this blog, I have grown to be more observant while I’m in the natural world. By viewing the same place week after week, it becomes multifaceted. I was able to see the layers of the land. I pay more attention to the undergrowth, the trees, the wildlife, the smell that hangs in the air, even the way that the breeze flows through different patches of trees.

 It was still summer when I began writing and now It is December. The green leaves changed to yellow and orange and now the trees are bare. It has been so lovely to see how the land transforms over the course of just a few months. I am so thankful for the opportunity to cultivate lenses to view the world around me in a more critical way.

When I began writing this blog, I was extremely homesick. Unfortunately, this feeling hasn’t subsided over the course of the semester.  In fact, juxtaposing the Virginia landscape with the Pennsylvania landscape of my youth has only made me long to be back home. I have been able to appreciate aspects of the southern climate- thanks to insight offered by Lisa and Joseph. I wonder if I will continue to write from the same location, but I hope to maintain my blog in some facet.  

Until then, I’m going to make a cup of tea and accept that for today, I’m going to continue hoping for two inches of snow. While I would have been mocking myself just a few years ago, for being a snow-wimp, I’m going to fully embrace it.