Nature

I didn't have a lot of time to do this assignment, so I was going to sit on the benches on Wheeler Bailey lawn, right outside the administration building. Almost as soon as I sat down, my friend Natasha saw me and wanted to know what I was doing. When I told her, she gave me a look.
N: And you're sitting here?
K: Yeah.
N: This isn't nature. You need to go into nature. You're not going to get anything good here.
K: But...
N: Why don't you go to the beach?
There were a few reasons I didn't want to go to the beach. First of all, I had no spare time, I was due to be somewhere in an hour. Second of all, my parents have this rule that I'm not allowed to go off-campus without informing them, and I certainly am not allowed to go alone. And honestly, I wasn't sure I wanted to. What was wrong with where I was? "The stars at night stoop down over the brownest homeliest common with all the spiritual magnificence which they shed on the Campagna, or on the marble deserts of Egypt" (367). Who was Natasha to define nature for me, especially in my circumstances? Granted, she is far wiser than I in these matters (Emerson would urge me to be self-reliant, but I chose to trust Natasha), and the Bishop's campus is thriving with human life. It could indeed be called a "hanging garden [created to] back faulty personality" (366), false nature, in a sense. But then again, I couldn't find true nature in a city. "Cities give not the human senses room enough" (365).
I listened to Natasha and convinced my father to escort me to the beach so that I could be in nature, but I came out of the encounter feeling dissatisfied with all three of the parties involved (Dad, Natasha, and myself). "The stars at night stoop down over the brownest homeliest common with all the spiritual magnificence which they shed on the Campagna, or on the marble deserts of Egypt...the difference between landscape and landscape is small, but there is great difference in the beholders" (367). Just because Natasha did not consider TBS nature doesn't mean I didn't. I have had some moving moments sitting on that Wheeler Bailey lawn, trying to learn how to grow up (sorry if that sounds cheesy). We have one of the most elegant, aesthetic campuses in the city, if not in a wider radius. The buildings add to the majesty of the nature that we have. I know that we are "taught the poorness of our invention, the ugliness of towns and palaces" (366) as compared to nature, and in many ways that is true. There is an incredible godliness in nature that there is nowhere else. It takes your breath away. "From whatever cause, as soon as men begin to write on nature, they fall into euphuism" (368). I am man; I am guilty of man's sin, if sin it is. Back in Colorado (I know I keep writing about it, but it really influenced me, in many ways), I would turn the corner, and my face would literally break out into a grin, no matter how tired I was, because of the view. There was something wonderful about it, and I truly mean "wonderful", as in "full of wonders"."To the intelligent, nature converts itself into a vast promise and will not be rashly explained" (376). It did for me. I couldn't stop looking. It arrested my spirit. But back to my original point. "The difference between landscape and landscape is small, but there is great difference in the beholders. There is nothing so wonderful in any particular landscape as the necessity of being beautiful under which every landscape lies. Nature cannot be surprised in undress. Beauty breaks in everywhere" (367 - 368). My spirit feels a kinship with the Wheeler Bailey lawn (all of this entry sounds so cheesy, but I'm being honest. There are no other ways of putting it). I believe that Wheeler Bailey could be counted as nature. Natasha had a point, though; there were too many people around. So I went to the beach.
The beach was certainly "better", so to speak, than TBS, but it wasn't perfect. "It is an odd jealousy, but the poet finds himself not near enough to his object. The pine-tree, the river, the bank of flowers before him does not seem to be nature. Nature is still elsewhere" (375). That was certainly true for the beach. It wasn't perfect. There was a couple several feet away from me talking, and some swimmers acting up below me (I was on a cliff, overlooking the sea). But it was enough. I was alone. "Here no history or church or state is interpolated on the divine sky and the immortal year" (365). I could just sit and think.
At first I wished desperately that I had brought my notebook. I felt such an urge to be doing something - to write, specifically. Complete sentences fit for this blog kept forming in my head. But after a while, I felt a sense of calm. I stared at the waves pretty much the whole time, and thought. Nothing abnormally profound, just thinking. Living. Being. I didn't stop thinking in complete sentences, though. A few times I felt like singing, and I did, softly enough so no one would hear me, but loudly enough that I could hear my voice making words and tunes. I barely looked at my watch. I just existed and did so naturally.
"It seems as if the day was not wholly profane in which we have given heed to some natural object" (365). Just having that time to sit and think made me feel...honestly, just human, but a human with honesty and pride. "If, instead of identifying ourselves with the work, we feel that the soul of the Workman streams through us, we shall find the peace of the morning dwelling first in our hearts, and the fathomless powers of...life, preexisting within us in our highest form" (376). After just sitting still, I felt as though if I had some way to look myself in the eye, I would be recognizing a creature that has the right to just exist as herself, no apologies made. "Let us be men instead of woodchucks and the oak and the elm shall gladly serve us, though we sit in chairs of ivory on carpets of silk" (371). Nature gives us the inner strength to be proud of ourselves, so that we may be...wait for it...self-reliant.