Quinn's Treks & Texts

On Tuesday afternoon, our class began our volunteer work with the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge. Over the course of five weeks, we will be clearing away overgrown invasive plants like privet. On Tuesday afternoon – after a hectic morning of classes and the looming reality of an Intermediate Macroeconomics exam later in the week – I enjoyed the calmness and conversation of the drive to get there, the trees curving up and over the road in a green canopy, giving us some shade from the sun. When we arrived at the Nature and Refuge Center’s maintenance area for an introduction and safety training before heading out, we gathered to look at the collections of bones and shells and feathers and taxidermied creatures. We tried to guess what had been what. We headed to the work site, cramming ourselves into the bed of the truck. Once we arrived, we pulled on gloves and brightly colored vests, put on protective glasses, and put in earplugs; the woodchipper roared to life and we got to w...

The Kookaburras In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator. In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting to come out of its cloud and lift its wings. The kookaburras, kingfishers, pressed against the edge of their cage, they asked me to open the door. Years later I wake in the night and remember how I said to them, no, and walked away. They had the brown eyes of soft-hearted dogs. They didn't want to do anything so extraordinary, only to fly home to their river. By now I suppose the great darkness has covered them. As for myself, I am not yet a god of even the palest flowers. Nothing else has changed either. Someone tosses their white bones to the dung-heap. The sun shines on the latch of their cage. I lie in the dark, my heart pounding. As I walked through Devotions , “The Kookaburras” caught my attention because it was much darker than the two poems I’ve already looked at – heavy and haunted with guilt and regret. It felt almost like a confession. Oliver begi...

     “The little wrens have carried a hundred sticks into an old rusted pail and now they are singing in the curtains of leaves they are, fluttering down to the bog they are dipping their darling heads down to wet their whistles how happy they are to be diligent at last” (p. 46-47).      As she ventures out into the “wide gardens of wastefields blue glass clear glass and other rubbishes,” Oliver makes note of the little wrens gathering their sticks to build their houses, enjoying the refreshment of the bog, and singing a familiar tune. Amidst the wasteland of glass and rubbish, these little wrens – as she refers to them in the final line of the poem, these “foolish birds” – struggle on to provide for themselves and survive. As I was reading through the poem, I was reminded of the tranquility of my Grandma’s garden – the chickadees singing and the woodpecker pecking, the squirrels darting here and there, the purple pansies and hostas sprouting up, the bubbl...

In class this week, Anna, Ciara, and I led the class discussion about Edward Abbey’s The Best of Edward Abbey: “Selections from the Journals” and “Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National Parks.” As I read through the journal entries that Abbey shares and tried to reconcile this behind-the-curtain look into who he was with the argument he shares in “Polemic,” I wondered whether Abbey’s and his argument’s flaws were outweighed by his and his argument’s strengths.  Throughout “Selections from the Journals,” Abbey shares his inner thoughts, eccentricities, and outbursts of emotion with us in his assortment of journal entries. He is honest with himself and with us – often to the point of being crude; he is forthcoming about his fears, anxieties, and his life’s regrets. He shares freely his criticisms and resentments, he reflects on the fragility of life and the looming reality of death, and he chronicles all of the beautiful sights and phenomena of the natural world around him. Th...

Last night, our class gathered, carrying hats and water bottles and lifejackets and other tools, and climbed into the vans headed to Benbrook Lake. Behind us, we towed brightly colored canoes and kayaks: navy blue, red, yellow, green. As Anna and I paddled our canoe around the lake, I felt a rollercoaster of emotions. At first, when we first pushed off of the shore and started paddling out, I was excited and eager. I felt the sun and the wind on my skin, watched the windsurfer skimming over the white-capped waves in the distance, and laughed as we all tried to get the hang of paddling against the strong wind. I was eager to get to the other side of the lake, if possible – I wanted to get closer to a cliff-like collection of rocks that the water was crashing against. As we paddled and steered as directly as we could against the wind, we noticed someone pointing: a turtle! He bobbed his head up out of the water before disappearing below the surface. I wondered if he’d been watching us an...

     As Oliver watches, listens for, and reflects on the little owl who lives in the orchard, she speaks with great reverence about the “dear, dark dapple of plush” and goes into great detail about how he lives and how he makes her feel. As I read through the poem, I was struck by the level of detail she uses in telling us about the owl and the orchard – about the black-smocked crickets and dragonflies, the little aluminum ladder of the owl’s scream, the flurry of palpitations as cold as sleet that racketed across the marshlands of her heart.      One of my favorite lines of the poem places the little owl among the divine: “ Somewhere in the universe, in the gallery of important things, the babyish owl, ruffled and rakish, sits on its pedestal. ” Staring out at the world with his big yellow eyes full of wisdom and mystery, spreading his powerful wings like two black ferns, the little owl just might know something that we don't. Another line that held my at...

  In class last week, we discussed the poems “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by Williams Wordsworth and “Outside Lies Magic” by John R. Stilgoe – both of which reminded me of my relationship with Lake Okanagan in British Columbia, Canada. Every summer since my mom was 10 years old, my family has visited the Lake for a week-long vacation. To me, the Lake is and has always been magic – the first glimpse of the deep blue water as we make our final turn around “Shark Tooth” mountain, the long afternoons jumping off the dock and tubing behind the boat, the hours spent swimming in the Lake alongside my brother and cousins until our hands were pruney and it was time for dinner. The Lake is a place of family, joy, simplicity, and adventure. It’s a haven where I’ve been able to diligently follow Stilgoe’s instructions: “Take it, take it in, take in more every weekend, every day, and quickly it becomes the theater that intrigues, relaxes, fascinates, seduces, and about all expands any mind fo...