Yesterday I went and sat on a bench by the Duck Pond for quite a while, entering into the richness of the site. Then I went and sat close to the water for a while, where there are strange hobbit-like things (that's how I feel about them) sticking up out the ground, which I think must be part of the root system of the larch trees. See picture below, if I ever manage to upload it!

 I had my phone with me, and a notebook and pen and pencil, but yesterday I did not use them. Today when I went back I took some photos and two videos of the pond ripples moving over the pond's stillness, mesmerizing. (Did you know that word comes from the name of a person, Mr. Mesmer, who invented hypnotism?). Just now I have spent nearly an hour trying without success to upload one of the videos. Can my words be worth a thousand pictures? I can't even seem to upload a still photo at the moment. YouTube does not seem to be on my side.

In this cold but sunny day, the bench has a mediocre temperature.

Just sitting or standing over my spot, I didn't realize anything related to gender and race, because everything was pure and peaceful. I didn't see any conflicts between either the biological or the cultural environment.

Still there were changes around me.

The wind was much stronger and colder than a week before, due to the left-over effect of harricane Sandy. I don't know if it's because my psycological effect or the environment really has changed, the whole scene in front of me appears to be a little sad, and chill.

Today, when I sat on my new branch on in the same tree that I've been sitting in this semester, the tree was still green. A couple of weeks ago, there were lots of yellow, orange, and brown leaves on the tree, waiting to fall off. Hurricane Sandy must have taken care of that. Now, from the outside, the tree looks green and happy, like it did at the beginning of the year. From the inside, though, there are a lot of totally bare branches. The branches above my old spot are so bare that the "tent" I have been talking about has turned into an amphitheater. The new spot is pretty covered up top, but there are a lot of barren places.

Sitting on tree branches has been made a lot more comfortable now that there's a wool coat providing a cushion. I got to snuggle into my scarf and wonder where the multitudes of squirrels had gone. In the next couple of weeks, I'm going to bring some cocoa along and make sitting in the tree even cozier. What happens in December, though? How long are we going to sit outside? I love the outdoors, but, at some point, sitting outside for a half an hour just isn't going to be that fun anymore.

Walked out onto the rock bridge again today, and spent a lot of time just kneeling on the rocks and staring out at the water. The ripples kept coming, but these are air ripples, not caused by what was going on underneath the water, but more by the heavy breeze that was blowing. It kept pushing the water in wave-like ripples toward the bridge I was sitting on. When I looked directly by the rocks, I noticed I could not see the continuous waves; I could only see the movement from afar, from up close, it looked as if the wave movement was blocked by the marshy grass and plant growth. Then I realized that you just needed wider perspective in orer to see, to actually stand up and look out at the larger body of water. The bigger picture. I found this fascinating, and kept changing my position to better see the waves. It was very very cold today, and sitting in the middle of the pond on the rocks was very exciting. I felt very awake and focused and aware. I also got to see how physically the breeze was affecting us all--the stemmed plants in the lake, the reeds, the water itself, and me. I had to pull on a puffy winter coat, gloves, and hood in order to sit outside. It was neat to feel mutually affected by the weather, and to, for once, be paying attention to these affects. I wore better shoes this time so I could spend more time walking around the area. I was, in this way, able to walk all the way to the dirt hill in the middle of the pond, and was thinking of going further, but the area was blocked by more reeds.

This week I decided to move my on campus site to the student garden. It is not the BMC Green Club gardening time, just a chilly Sunday afternoon. The weather was extremely cold. A big proportion of the mud ground is exposed, for only about one-third of the vegetation in the garden survived both the frosts and Sandy. I could neither sit on the cold bench nor stand like a scarecrow in the garden but keep walking in circles on the narrow aisles between the beds. I kept my feet off the bed in case the club already planted seeds and kept my body away from the cardboard fences because as a child I was injured by a metal-framed cardboard that fell on my leg on a windy day. I walked carefully because both the seeds and my body are fragile. Frugality - not only the frugality of human but also the frugality of the environment - creates the gap between human and the nature surroundings. It only takes a meteoroid to devastate the ecosystem of the earth and eliminate the dinosaurs. It also only takes the “intelligence” of one earth specie to irresistibly change the climate that determines the fate of millions of other species. Without seeing rows of trees being cut down, people just go on wasting paper every day without even thinking it is the flesh of the trees. Without reading the radical essays of the environmentalists, people will not hesitate to take the “usefuls”: water, wood, mineral from earth and toss back the “unusefuls” garbage, wastes, contaminates.

On Friday night, I went to see Gloria Steinem speak at Haverford (along with Rochelle), which happened to be very timely for the particular topics we are discussing in Eco Imaginings this week. One thing in particular that she spoke about which I connected with was her idea that there was no race, and that racism and feminism were one in the same. In th real world, it manifests itself as control over who births who. As a woman, historically, either you're exploited or suppressed sexually. 

As I sat in my spot today, my mind was racing. It jumped around to virtually all aspects of my life. Now, in reflection, I realize that everything I was thinking and feeling has something to do with expressing or recognizing feminsm in my own life. It is everywhere. And it is not dead. 

In other news of spot sitting: the weather outside is extremely cold. brr

The moment I walk out of Rhoads, the cold replaces the warm. The wind blows right into my face, ruffles my hair and freezes my hand. Morning chill seems to wake me up stronger than coffee can. Putting my hands in the pockets, I walk around trying to find comfort in the cold.

Leaves fall. The wind seems a bit cruel and bitter. It takes away an uncountable number of leaves from a tree. Trees turn out to be even more vulnerable to the wind than I am. I look down to see the grass now covered with shades of autumn. Yellow, brown and red coat the green lawn with a sense of sadness. And I look up to realize a tree with two distinctively separated halves: one with and another without leaves. The direction of the wind seems to have left behind some trace of favoritism. The half facing Rhoads gets the luck and is still covered with leaves. The other half has been robbed completely, revealing thin bare branches of lines and curves. Yet, these branches do not need leaves to know they are still beautiful...

I wonder if the tree misses the leaves, if it misses the green, if it misses Spring… But I also know that the other leaves will soon fall away and after winter comes spring again and the tree will soon get a new coat. Seasons come in cycle while I grow up each day. I cannot be gone like those leaves while there is too much to see and too much to learn.