Green Gal

I love it when the weather supports my plans to spend time outdoors by brightening the day with sun and a gentle breeze and clear skies. This weekend I felt very supported by the weather because I planned on being outside for a total of at least seven hours this weekend. Yesterday I participated in a women's nature connection hike that I co-organized with a fellow residential adviser, Sonja, and my friend Collette, who is a nature mentor . The, this morning and early afternoon, I participated in a bike ride to a local farm to volunteer. The sun shined down on me and my fellow community members both days, and it allowed us all to feel comfortable and engage with the activities we were doing together and develop connections and have fun! Nevermind that it's nearly finals week and I have work to do--the sun doesn't always shine like it did this weekend, and nighttime is for homework, right? That's why we have light bulbs (CFL of course). Yesterday's hi...

"Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money. By 'they' I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something actual  is to place it on the market. The time will come when they will sell you even your rain. At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and its meaninglessness. The rain I am in is not like the rain of cities. It fills the woods with an immense and confused sound. It covers the flat roof of the cabin and its porch with insistent and controlled rhythms. And I listen, because it reminds me again and again that the whole world runs by rhythms I have not yet learned to recognize, rhythms that are not those of the engineer. I came up here from the monastery last night, sloshing through the cornfield, said Vespers, and p...

Going to the woods is going home. ― John Muir Living at UCSC, this is certainly true. I'm unfortunately spending my day indoors today, writing a paper, but I just have to look out a window to remind myself that I'm in a forest. Perhaps later, I'll walk down to the Knoll to enjoy the sun and the view of the bay. Happy Sunday!

"After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked -- as I am surprisingly often -- why I bother to get up in the mornings." - Richard Dawkins Pinecrest Lake in Winter

At nine o'clock this morning, I put a pair of binoculars around my neck and stuffed a small red notebook into my pocket before setting off with a group of four other UCSC students led by UCSC Museum of Natural History curator Chris Lay. I had signed up for this Natural History of the UCSC Campus one-day class last quarter, but it had been cancelled due to rain. Today, even with the threat of snow, the class was still on. It was chilly but fortunately not raining as we set off from the UCSC Recreation Department toward the East Field. After introductions, Chris asked if there was anything we particularly wanted to see. An environmental studies major named Shannon, who I talked with throughout the hike, said "any mammals other than deer and ground squirrels." We all laughed because moments before we had seen about 25 ground squirrels on the hill by Stevenson College, and deer are ubiquitous throughout the campus. Chris said he hoped today's hike would take us places w...

I just returned from the dining hall after eating a delicious omelet scramble. My large brown bear mug is filled with the rich, suprisingly well-made coffee the dining hall serves, and it's sitting here on my desk, wafting wonderful scents into the room. When I got back to my house, I checked on the laundry I'd put in the wash right before leaving for breakfast, and my timing was perfect: the laundry was finished washing just as I walked in. Don't you just love when things work out like that? After I post this, I will return to my reading assignment that is supposed to be completed by noon today for my Native American studies lecture. We're reading Native Features: Indigenous Films from Around the World by Houston Wood. I have to read to chapter 9, and then I'll move on to Archaeology homework. This book on films is quite interesting, as it describes many of the central themes found in indigenous films, as well as analyzes the issues with stereotype found in films ...