Honestly the past week and few days mostly wasn't that good, but there's been some bright spots. I was walking around the stream thing across the road from campus, (which I'm not sure I'm supposed to but nobody's ever told me otherwise) and just decided to walk into the jungle. There's no trail, so I was only a few yards in there. I had sandals on. It was so amazing though, I'll probably go back with my hiking boots. I realized then what a jungle really was, damp, dark, & a little unnerving. It's really just hard to describe what that was like, even with pictures. Here's one.
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| I didn't go much farther in than this |
Every sound is a bit unsettling, not knowing what's in there. Especially the random twig snaps. Every step you get slapped by these plants with tiny barbs on them, they get to be about chest high. Lots of bugs. The ground is uneven and wet. Our normal power isn't here in the jungle, held instead by these millions of organisms. I'm reminded of a Thoreau quote I had squirreled away in notes.
“Nature has got him at disadvantage, caught him alone, and pilfers him of some of his divine faculty. She does not smile on him as in the plains*. She seems to say sternly, why came ye here before your time? This ground is not prepared for you. Is it not enough that I smile in the valleys? I have never made this soil for thy feet, this air for thy breathing, these rocks for thy neighbors. I cannot pity nor fondle thee here, but forever relentlessly drive thee hence to where I am kind. Why seek me where I have not called thee?”
I think he was talking about a mountain, but the same feeling was present in that jungle. I've been out in woods so many times, but not like that. Well, not often. I really should more.
Places like that are really important, they remind of the world before us, and after us. They make us feel small. I was thinking about that on the way back to the dorm & was reminded of yet another quote, this time from Gary Snyder. It might be one of my favorite things anyone's ever said.
“A person with a clear heart and open mind can experience the wilderness anywhere on earth. It is a quality of one’s own consciousness. The planet is a wild place and always will be.”
I don't really like the phrase "to go out in nature", even though I just used it earlier. We are always in nature, we never get away from it. The jungle is a powerful, unignorable reminder of wildness, the way the whole planet was before us. But the little tree planted in the yard deserves the same reverence as the jungle plants. It isn't any less natural, or wild.
It takes care of itself, it provides habitats & maybe food for all kinds of birds, & little things like mosses or fungi. The birds get eaten by mongooses, or cats, or hawks. The cycle cycles. These organisms are just doing their thing like they always have, & the neighborhood is a wilderness too.
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| Java sparrow! |
I'll get off my soapbox now, sorry. Sometimes it's fun to act all enlightened, but I'm really just a teenager spitting out words, mostly things I heard from somewhere else.
That area by the jungle is where I go to feel alone. There's a path thing that goes alongside a creekbed which is mostly dry now, but won't be in the winter. I mentioned it before & said I would talk about it more, but I just don't have a whole lot more to say. Here's 2 pictures.
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| The boundary between jungle and path |
Saturday me, Kalela, & our new friend Will went to the mall. We didn't really do anything, it was kind of boring. On the way home the bus stopped at the bus station downtown, and there's a pavilion pretty much right behind said station. In the pavilion was a church group handing out free plates of vegan food & there was a guitar guy singing some songs about Jesus. A cruise ship was in the bay too.
So we spontaneously stopped and picked up some free food. The people there were super nice and the food was incredible. It was basically just rice and beans in some sauce. I could taste a hint of pineapple in the sauce. The sides were the best part though.
There was was breadfruit in some kind of whitish creamy sauce, like a potato salad. Breadfruit is similar tasting to potato, but with a more bready texture (imagine that!) and a little bit of tanginess. There were oranges too, and these were maybe the best oranges I've ever had. They weren't actually orange, they were greenish yellow. Oranges grown in tropical climates are often greener because cooler temperatures make oranges oranger. The taste was like a normal orange, but with more sourness. A very pleasant little extra bit of sourness.
I feel like I talk about foods every single blog, but the new foods just really excite me. Especially that breadfruit, I don't think I'd ever seen a breadfruit before I came here.
In other miscellaneous news, I've gotten bored of oatmeal already, not happy about that. The geology department lounge has framed rocks, they're like integrated into the walls of the building though. It's kind of extreme. I scored a 97% on the 1st geology exam, pretty happy about that. I learned that on April 17th 1986, the 335 years war ended. There was a Kansas quarter among some change I got the other day. Maybe that’s some kind of omen.
*I'm fairly certain the plains Mr. Henry David Thoreau is talking about is something like the American coastal plains, like what most of Delaware is. He never really went to the great plains, which surely was much more obviously grand back in those days. He never met anyone afflicted by prairie madness. He never experienced the harsh bitter winters, the scorching summers, the big storms tearing their way through the land, the megafauna, or the way the land's sheer vastness engulfs & humiliates one. I wouldn't say nature smiles down on "him" in the great plains. Maybe she smirks.
