Environmental Awareness and Sports

http://ehsehplp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.114-a286

Spring Break: experienced absence of nature

For Spring Break, I went to New York City. I have never been there before, so when I arrived I was overwhelmed by the impression: “wow, there are so many buildings, so many skyscrapers.” This may sound a bit naive, but it is a different thing being amongst these buildings or seeing a picture of the skyline. Pictures can never replace the real experience. I also thought that the skyscrapers would make navigation easy. Misthought. There are so many high buildings that they hide each other. I felt very small compared to them, but small in a different way than I feel when I think of wilderness. Another aspect of the huge buildings: I could not see the sky when I was inside. Every morning, it seemed to be grey outside. I had to go to the window and look up straight to see a small fraction of the sky.

Even the river was rather part of the city than the city part of the surrounding landscape and nature. In fact, I experienced an almost complete absence of nature, not to mention wilderness. No balance between land and humans as Leopold suggests it.
Normally living at the edge of a small town, where the forest begins behind our garden, I sometimes sneered at the idea that some kids do not know where the milk comes from or that carrots grow in the earth. Now, I can understand this better. And this makes me sad. It makes me sad that there are (perhaps) places where a connection to nature is so enormously neglected that one can almost forget that something like Nature does even exist. New York is so much “City” and so little “Nature.” Though I was really impressed by New York, intrigued by the cultural opportunities, I missed nature. This sounds sentimental but is true.
Two things, however, have shown me that even the New Yorkers need some places of rest. First, there is Central Park, of course. I liked Central Park so much, I enjoyed that there was space, green space with plants and trees instead of the buildings which created some feeling of narrowness, despite their huge heights. But Central Park, though the “green lung” of the city, is completely artificial. Every tree stands where it is meant to be. Nothing is left to chance. Anyway, I was glad that there is some place as Central Park at all.

The second thing is Coney Island. In a small information center, there was this wall chart explaining the history of Coney Island. One sentence especially attracted my attention: “Coney Island’s greatest attraction: a magical, unspoiled natural environment of pine and juniper forest and pure white sand dunes, and glistening ocean.” Little is left from this natural attraction. It made me happy that they poetically stated nature to be the gorgeous main attraction; though again, it was sad to see how run-down this area is nowadays: a lonely Ferris wheel, fences, and constructions.

All this shows me: no matter how “city-ish” we live, we need some place where nature is visible, perceptible. Otherwise, the connection to nature can become completely unbalanced.

Spring Break Experience

A group of my friends and I decided to take a cruise to Progresso and Cozumel, Mexico this spring break. When we first boarded, I was extremely excited, and decided to explore every corner of the ship. Everything seemed to be exactly the way it was in any urban area—restaurants, shops, casinos, nightclubs, lounges, etc. However, there was one major detail that made the whole experience different from anything else I had experienced. Once I stepped out onto the deck and looked over the rails, all I could see was open ocean, no land in sight. I began to think about our discussions of wilderness in class; how wilderness is a vast area in which humans are unable to survive without the necessary skills. Based on this definition I concluded that what I was seeing was indeed wilderness, and that the only way I was experiencing this was by means of human technology. In other words, I was able to experience this beautiful “natural” world only by standing on the “synthetic” world—a cruise ship engineered and built by humans. This struck me, because although I was seeing wilderness, I was not exactly surrounded by or “in” wilderness. Instead, I was doing exactly what most people do everyday; I was completely surrounded by a synthetic, human world, only seeing a glimpse of what wilderness really is.
When we arrived at Cozumel, we had the opportunity to snorkel along the beach with tour guides. As we began to snorkel, I noticed an artificial (human made) reef, surrounded by hundreds of beautifully colored fish. Once again I recognized a paradigm between the two worlds—natural world and synthetic world. Here I was, along with about 75 other people, surrounded by the “natural” world—open water, fish, stingrays, sea urchins, and other marine organisms—but the “synthetic” world—the artificial reefs, the food the guides were feeding the fish, the fact that there were 100 people simultaneously snorkeling in the area—was unavoidable. The two worlds, as in the example above, were intermeshed; I was unable to experience the “natural” world without the interference of the “synthetic” world. This is a struggle I feel that humans have daily, we are unable to experience the true beauty and awe of nature because we are unable to escape the synthetic parts of our lives.

Down in the Bayou

Over the break I did the bayou immersion trip and it was definitely what it said it was. I immersed myself in the culture of the southern region of Louisiana down to the evidence of a trillion mosquito bites all over my body. But, the difference I found between the synthetic world and the natural world was definitely more profound on that trip than usual. By day I was in the fields planting and learning about the earth and its natural beauty disappearing, and at night I was popping movie theater butter popcorn watching Pirates of the Carribean. Such a drastic change from the normal land ethic of New Orleans where we do not respect and embrace the natural world and try to preserve it as much as southern Louisiana. I believe it is due to the fact that their land i.e. what they live on, is washing away directly in front of their eyes versus the neworleanians who are most likely thinking about how they’re going to get jazz fest tickets. It so much easier to immerse yourself when you’re right there in it than to embrace it back in the comfort of our air conditioned houses/dorms. What I took away from this trip is the knowledge to educate others on costal restoration and the fight we have against the disappearing coastline and barrier beaches.