Walk in the Park.

I spent my time in the park looking at my surroundings through the lens of my major (environmental studies) and one totally outside my area of expertise, art. From both perspectives, relative observations were abounding.
While in the park I started thinking about the environmental irony of the park's existence at all. It is an area of land in an urban area, preserved to give us the opportunity to experience nature without ever leaving the city. I myself have taken advantage of this many times, and have thoroughly enjoyed it, but now I recognize the paradox. We have taken wild land, cleared it, brought in non native species that require high powered and environmentally dangerous chemicals to survive in our climate, all to create an illusion of nature preservation that we still seem unable to resist dumping our trash on. Although I think a paradoxical park is better than no park at all, I think it's time that we think more closely about the kind of environment we are creating and giving to people as a shining example of the environment as it should be. Perhaps it's time we start seeing parks as educational as well as recreational tools and take the opportunity to give people a small reminder of what used to stand on this land before we did.
(I also drew an insignificant picture of a beautiful live oak tree and glued spanish moss to it, artsy right?)