Well, these last two field trips for the cypress dome wet walk and Corkscrew Sanctuary Swamp will never be forgotten, that's for sure. I'd been dreading the wet walk all semester and it turned out roughly like I expected: badly. Poor planning on my part + being trapped between two spiders at one point = need of Xanax for emergency anxiety relief. Though I can't appreciate it personally, I do appreciate the value students see in it and how much they care for it.
I emerged from both the wet walk and Corkscrew with very itchy bug bites and stress from close encounters with feared creatures, but the Corkscrew trip is a much more positive memory for me because of how much I enjoyed it. I'm used to the constant noise of campus life, so the white noise of wind in the trees and the occasional movement of water really impacted me. After so long in noisy places, you forget how wonderful quiet is, especially when you find that peace within natural settings. I could practically see and hear everything Marjory Stone Douglas was saying about the Everglades in her piece "The Nature of the Everglades" just looking around and listening to Corkscrew.
Other impactful things include all the spiders and snakes (admittedly negative because I wish it were possible and sustainable to remove them from the entire United States like Ireland removed snakes from its borders) and the vines choking some of the trees at Corkscrew. Looking up at a perfect view of this tall, tall tree being slowly choked was breathtaking. Were my camera/phone working on the trip, I absolutely would have taken a photograph. Technical difficulties explain the complete lack of pictures for this entry.
For me, a redesign of campus to encourage community engagement and sustainability would boil down to one thing: improved access to the cypress dome and the Food Forest. Both are fairly out of the way; before this class, I had no idea the cypress dome was even here and I've been a student here for over two years now. Now that I do know about it, it's still quite a walk out of the way and only "nature trails" is on the sign leading to it. The Food Forest way out by the Sugden Welcome Center requires students to leave the academic core through the entrance that's busiest of all. Students with no transportation have no chance of getting out to them and discovering their wonders.
Areas like ours put our money where our mouth is, so to speak; we say we're a college with a focus on the environment and spaces that educate our students to be more aware of how much the world around us needs our help prove that pillar of FGCU. Even as we take from the environment to build these places, we give back at the same time. The Food Forest is probably as good for the land as it is for the students.
The story of the plume birds being killed en masse in the name of fashion made me sad, but it didn't surprise me after reading The Orchid Thief. In a way, the plume birds are a lot like the orchids. People valued them for their economic worth over everything else and didn't see how they were impacting the ecosystems with their hunting. Without an environmentalist movement widespread and ready to defend them, the two groups suffered for a long, long time before help came.
Places like Corkscrew are so, so vitally important to the health of Southwest Florida's ecosystems. There are few places like it in the world where so many ecosystems coexist together in such a small area and it's all thanks to Florida's unique low elevation. One or two feet makes a lot of difference here. Because of its diversity of life, the loss of Corkscrew would have a major impact on the all the areas around it and the effects would keep rippling out from there.
CERP strikes me as a great plan that will do more than we could ever imagine to restore the Everglades and the surrounding areas once it really takes effect. It's a smart use of all the rivers and lakes in Florida, but I do wish politics hadn't weakened it. Still, it promises a future for our children where they'll be able to visit the Everglades and learn about its biodiversity hands-on, not read about what once was in textbooks. In an era where one can become cynical of politics' ability to get anything done, CERP remains a sign that Democrats and Republicans can cooperate even if the ones currently holding office in Washington want nothing to do with one another right now.
My favorite part of it all was going on the boardwalk tour in Corkscrew. Though the heat and bu bites were getting to me by the time we were halfway through, I still wish we'd had time to do the whole boardwalk tour and see what else the sanctuary had to offer. I'll never forget the sight of those trees being choked and all the different kinds of ferns you pointed out to us. If only we'd gotten to see an owl. Plus I swore I heard human scream at one point and even if it wasn't a human scream, it gave me a great idea for a short story I wrote frenziedly the next day.
That we have places like the Food Forest and Corkscrew really doesn't surprise me, especially after being a student here for two years. If a food forest hadn't already been in place when I got here, I'm certain one would have been proposed or put in place while I was. For a campus so concerned with environmental sustainability, it's a natural move to make especially since a class I took last semester took me there too. Florida is a state full of parks dedicated to the near-endless, unique varieties of ecosystems, so that we're (relatively) close to one like Corkscrew isn't anything surprising. It feels like you can drive 30 miles in any direction and run across at least a sign for a state or national park if you haven't already driven into or through one in that time.
I don't know what these particular field trips have changed about me. The "funny" answer is that the wet walk gave me a new setting my brain will soon plug into my nightmares, but that's probably not what you're looking for. Perhaps they've made me more charitable to spiders and snakes? As much as I hate them and would like to see every single species permanently expelled from the country, they are necessary in our ecosystems. Still, I could have gone without being trapped between two large spiders on the wet walk and being in danger of getting a snake to the head at Corkscrew.
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