The leaning tree and vine swinging

The botanical and geological exploration of Bryn Mawr campus I experienced with three “Sarahs”, Wanhong and Emily was quite interesting.

We started with a group of 5, Emily Tong, Sarah Macholdt, Sarah Cummingham and Wanghong  Zou. We talked about our experience of our two different Ecological Imaging classes so far. We went on the geological exploration first. We identifyied the rocks, went to the Mills creek… Fast forward, fast forward. And we met three other ecological imaginers basking in the sun in front of the English house, which was when the trip got more interesting.

The eight of us first argued about whether the leaning beech tree in front of the English house would fell down at any point. One of us tried to push the tree down, but didn’t succeed, of course. Finally, we looked up high in the sky and found out the top of the tree was more branches on the opposite side of the direction the tree was leaning to. So the tree was in fact in perfect balance! I wonder if the tree had known about the laws of physics that it decided to grown in such special “gesture”.

Then our interest shifted to the vines that were grown on the beech tree. One of us did “vine swinging”!! A dangerous thing to do, I must say. The vine broke, and fell down an inch beside her! Sarah Cummingham said the tree was expressing its anger. I say we don’t have the skills of Tashan to do vine swinging. We had overestimated the strength of the vine. Eventually Sarah decided to take the broken vine home and make an art creation out of it. (Have you finished it, Sarah?)

Then the trip was more peaceful, we went to the grave yard, found someone was growing beech trees in pots and observed a "bleeding" tree (see wanhong's post for pictures)… Fast forward to the end.