Muddy Connections

The Sunday before Thanksgiving break, I found myself thinking about mud.

On our geological biological tour, we did not exactly follow the directions to the letter.  The instructions were to spend time talking about the class, then proceed with either the geological or biological tour, and after that one was finished, go on to the next part.  Our group started by talking about the class, which was interesting.  It was like seeing a parallel universe Ecological Imaginings.  Small things like the places we have class and the majors within the groups are different, but we are really getting the same things out of the class, a better understanding of our ecology.

After that portion of our time together, we decided to walk across campus (from Erdman where we started to Mill Creek) and whenever we saw something that was incorporated into our respective tours, stop and talk about it.  I liked this.  In a way it was very ecological.  We didn't separate geology and botany into distinct group, but addressed them as they came in the natural flow of our sauntering.  

When we went to Morris Woods I thought about how these two seemingly separate fields intersect.  While we were in Morris Woods it was evident that there was some construction being done.  As a result, we had to step through mountains of muddy dirt.  The thought clicked in my head that this is where geology and plant life intersect.  This broken down rock is so saturated with life, from the visible to the microbial, that it supports.  In return, the life changes it.  

So, I liken our tour to mud, the solid connection between the geological, us the ESEMers, and the botanical, the 300 levelers.