Ben (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
openspace4life) wrote2006-05-19 04:37 pm
openspace4life) wrote2006-05-19 04:37 pm
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College essay 1
Well, I've graduated now and figured I should finally get around to posting some stuff I wrote for class that's also relevant to this LiveJournal. Here's the first entry, an autobiographical essay I wrote for a class called Classic Environmental Readings.
When I was young, almost the only part of nature that interested me was outer space. I liked going to the Japanese Garden and the Arboretum, but mostly because they gave you a complicated trail map and I could be the navigator, leading the family around on convoluted routes while rarely looking up from my map. I loved the climbing tree in our backyard, and it was the thing I missed most when we moved to a new house, but I saw it as little more than a jungle gym.
I don’t remember much about early camping trips. I do remember some details of my first trip to Yosemite, including a hike on a four-mile trail that switchbacked endlessly upward through trees, back and forth, back and forth, then made me miss the trees as it cut across an open rock face with the sun beating down, finally giving us a view of a waterfall from a vertiginous overlook. That may also have been the trail on which we saw a coiled rattlesnake. Repetitive, painful, and scary: those were my major impressions of hiking in the wilderness. No forks in the trail for miles on end, and when you did reach one you always had to choose between the better view and the shorter path – and you had to take exactly the same route back, covering all those switchbacks all over again. Nothing like the Arboretum.
Then again, I also remember the incredible views from the canyon floor. When asked to pick a word to describe the park, I could only say “Big.” I knew there was more to it than sheer scale, but scale is certainly an important aspect of the sense of wonder. Another example: in the Banff-Jasper area in Canada, we hiked to a point where my eyes could trace a continuous path from where we stood to the foot of an immense glacier. And of course bigger waterfalls are generally more impressive than smaller ones. I suspect that the feeling of being lost in immensity is part of what makes being in nature a religious experience for some. Of course, vastness is also a large part of the attraction of space exploration.
At the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry is a device perfectly suited for portraying immensity: an Omnimax theater, in which movies are projected onto a huge dome surrounding the audience. Even though there is a planetarium in the same building, the Omnimax has shown at least three different space-related shows in the ten years or so since OMSI’s current building was finished. But while it’s wonderful to be able to see an astronaut’s-eye view of the Earth, the Omnimax shots that really stand out in my memory are the ones with the camera attached to a plane flying among islands or through a canyon or over any natural landscape. The exhilaration of flight with no airplane walls around you combines with natural beauty and the vastness of the land to create a truly fantastic experience. To those who would argue that since it’s not real flight and you’re not really there, the experience is essentially valueless, I would say that since I can’t afford to travel around the world with a hang-glider, this is the next best thing.
I do enjoy the view from the window of an airplane – though not as much as I used to. It’s ironic that my recently increased awareness of the importance of the environment, while it helps to increase my appreciation of hiking, also draws my attention to the myriad clearcuts peppering the Oregon landscape whenever I fly over it. As far as I can remember, I never really saw them before last year, though of course they must have been there. Now I can only console myself that at least there are patches of clearcut rather than patches of forest in a largely treeless landscape.
Even hiking still isn’t nearly as euphoric for me as for most nature-lovers. I suppose I need to get in better shape and learn to enjoy exercise more – then maybe I won’t so commonly find myself more preoccupied with my aching legs than with the scenery.
However, I’ve definitely grown to appreciate the scenery here at the Claremont Colleges. People usually judge a college’s appearance mostly based on the architecture, but the landscaping is just as important – and so are the animals that live in the area. Coming from a neighborhood whose wildlife consisted of squirrels, small bugs, crows, and the occasional bluejay, as well as some songbirds that you hear but never see, I’m endlessly fascinated by the woodpeckers and hummingbirds and all the other birds that flit across the campus. I think I now understand the obsession that drives birdwatchers.
In fact, not long ago I came up with an idea that merges my main interests in the fields of computer science and environmentalism: a computer simulation game about flying creatures. The player could fly through various realistic environments, choosing from a wide variety of birds, bats, and insects. The game would combine the best features of Omnimax movies (not counting the giant screen) with interactivity and even education; players could learn about how birds find food and mates and how flocking really works. Again, it might be objected that being able to “visit” nature from the safety of a computer discourages people from actually going out and experiencing it firsthand, with all the muscular exertion, extremes of temperature, bug bites, and so on. This objection has some validity, but games like this can also give us greater respect for nature and the creatures that live there. My game could even include a message warning that if we don’t act quickly, the real versions of these creatures may soon vanish from the Earth.
In the future, I plan to participate in various forms of environmental activism, but I think that it is through entertainment that I can have the greatest impact. Our biggest problem is convincing enough people that we have a problem, and forms of entertainment such as computer games and movies have the advantage of being able to reach large numbers of people, who pay attention because they’re having fun. This is important despite the seriousness of the message we need to get across. The future ahead on our present course may be horrific, but if we want to recruit people to our cause, we need to emphasize the wonders of nature and the positive possibilities for change.
When I was young, almost the only part of nature that interested me was outer space. I liked going to the Japanese Garden and the Arboretum, but mostly because they gave you a complicated trail map and I could be the navigator, leading the family around on convoluted routes while rarely looking up from my map. I loved the climbing tree in our backyard, and it was the thing I missed most when we moved to a new house, but I saw it as little more than a jungle gym.
I don’t remember much about early camping trips. I do remember some details of my first trip to Yosemite, including a hike on a four-mile trail that switchbacked endlessly upward through trees, back and forth, back and forth, then made me miss the trees as it cut across an open rock face with the sun beating down, finally giving us a view of a waterfall from a vertiginous overlook. That may also have been the trail on which we saw a coiled rattlesnake. Repetitive, painful, and scary: those were my major impressions of hiking in the wilderness. No forks in the trail for miles on end, and when you did reach one you always had to choose between the better view and the shorter path – and you had to take exactly the same route back, covering all those switchbacks all over again. Nothing like the Arboretum.
Then again, I also remember the incredible views from the canyon floor. When asked to pick a word to describe the park, I could only say “Big.” I knew there was more to it than sheer scale, but scale is certainly an important aspect of the sense of wonder. Another example: in the Banff-Jasper area in Canada, we hiked to a point where my eyes could trace a continuous path from where we stood to the foot of an immense glacier. And of course bigger waterfalls are generally more impressive than smaller ones. I suspect that the feeling of being lost in immensity is part of what makes being in nature a religious experience for some. Of course, vastness is also a large part of the attraction of space exploration.
At the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry is a device perfectly suited for portraying immensity: an Omnimax theater, in which movies are projected onto a huge dome surrounding the audience. Even though there is a planetarium in the same building, the Omnimax has shown at least three different space-related shows in the ten years or so since OMSI’s current building was finished. But while it’s wonderful to be able to see an astronaut’s-eye view of the Earth, the Omnimax shots that really stand out in my memory are the ones with the camera attached to a plane flying among islands or through a canyon or over any natural landscape. The exhilaration of flight with no airplane walls around you combines with natural beauty and the vastness of the land to create a truly fantastic experience. To those who would argue that since it’s not real flight and you’re not really there, the experience is essentially valueless, I would say that since I can’t afford to travel around the world with a hang-glider, this is the next best thing.
I do enjoy the view from the window of an airplane – though not as much as I used to. It’s ironic that my recently increased awareness of the importance of the environment, while it helps to increase my appreciation of hiking, also draws my attention to the myriad clearcuts peppering the Oregon landscape whenever I fly over it. As far as I can remember, I never really saw them before last year, though of course they must have been there. Now I can only console myself that at least there are patches of clearcut rather than patches of forest in a largely treeless landscape.
Even hiking still isn’t nearly as euphoric for me as for most nature-lovers. I suppose I need to get in better shape and learn to enjoy exercise more – then maybe I won’t so commonly find myself more preoccupied with my aching legs than with the scenery.
However, I’ve definitely grown to appreciate the scenery here at the Claremont Colleges. People usually judge a college’s appearance mostly based on the architecture, but the landscaping is just as important – and so are the animals that live in the area. Coming from a neighborhood whose wildlife consisted of squirrels, small bugs, crows, and the occasional bluejay, as well as some songbirds that you hear but never see, I’m endlessly fascinated by the woodpeckers and hummingbirds and all the other birds that flit across the campus. I think I now understand the obsession that drives birdwatchers.
In fact, not long ago I came up with an idea that merges my main interests in the fields of computer science and environmentalism: a computer simulation game about flying creatures. The player could fly through various realistic environments, choosing from a wide variety of birds, bats, and insects. The game would combine the best features of Omnimax movies (not counting the giant screen) with interactivity and even education; players could learn about how birds find food and mates and how flocking really works. Again, it might be objected that being able to “visit” nature from the safety of a computer discourages people from actually going out and experiencing it firsthand, with all the muscular exertion, extremes of temperature, bug bites, and so on. This objection has some validity, but games like this can also give us greater respect for nature and the creatures that live there. My game could even include a message warning that if we don’t act quickly, the real versions of these creatures may soon vanish from the Earth.
In the future, I plan to participate in various forms of environmental activism, but I think that it is through entertainment that I can have the greatest impact. Our biggest problem is convincing enough people that we have a problem, and forms of entertainment such as computer games and movies have the advantage of being able to reach large numbers of people, who pay attention because they’re having fun. This is important despite the seriousness of the message we need to get across. The future ahead on our present course may be horrific, but if we want to recruit people to our cause, we need to emphasize the wonders of nature and the positive possibilities for change.