Hiking Assateague Island
Yesterday our group took a walk through the marshes. Along our hike, I noticed a couple of the giant trees along the path had fallen over, perhaps from old age or a storm. New vegetation began wrap around it like a snake; the reality of the forest is so simple; it’s stunning compared to the amount of stresses in the human experience. At another point in the hike, I remember seeing a bird’s tracks in some mud, and thinking at some point these tracks will be lost forever. This mystery bird was just surviving day to day, and could care less about the mark they left in the mud.
Yesterday our group took a walk through the marshes. Along our hike, I noticed a couple of the giant trees along the path had fallen over, perhaps from old age or a storm. New vegetation began wrap around it like a snake; the reality of the forest is so simple; it’s stunning compared to the amount of stresses in the human experience. At another point in the hike, I remember seeing a bird’s tracks in some mud, and thinking at some point these tracks will be lost forever. This mystery bird was just surviving day to day, and could care less about the mark they left in the mud.
In Rachel Carson’s The Edge of the Sea, she describes her experience in nature as, “The spectacle of life in all varied manifestations as it has appeared, evolved, and sometimes died out…and where the spectacle of living creatures faced by the cosmic realities of their world is crystal clear.” (Pg. 7) The bird that had left its tracks in the mud was not troubled about the meaning of their life because the “realities of their world is crystal clear.” It is a world of survival that the bird is living, and is a reality often forgotten in this modern era. If a tree falls over, new life will take over, and the “spectacle of life…appeared” before me as the nature of the forest “evolved, and sometimes died out.”
The abundance of birds that gathered in the marsh helped to put all I had learned on the hike into perspective. All of the birds formed a community, even though being quite different from one another. The years of evolution, and progression produced the “cosmic realities of their world.” Young birds were following their mother, others skimming the water for food, and in a flash they all took flight. Looking at these birds fly away together was poetic because whether or not all of these birds would survive was not contemplated. Instead the flock of birds, the fallen tree, and the tracks in the mud represented the “spectacle of life” and how it “appeared, evolved” and would eventually die out.
By Andy Dixon
By Andy Dixon
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