Quinn's Treks & Texts

This week has been full of encounters with the outdoors – exploring the Fort Worth Botanic Garden, working at the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge, and enjoying the rain and cooler, cozier Fall weather. On Sunday afternoon, my mom and I spent several hours walking around the grounds of the Botanic Garden, looking at the plants, flowers, trees, and animals of the garden. It was lightly raining as we made our way through gardens such as the Pollinator Pathway, the Forest Boardwalk, the Rose Gardens, and the Japanese Garden. We enjoyed the brightly colored flowers, listened to the swishing of the tall grasses, and patiently and observantly took the sights in. My favorite stop was at the Japanese Garden; I enjoyed the feeling of serenity and balance that was preserved inside its wooden gates. Stepping into the garden – with its lush green trees and winding pathways and bridges circling around a calm pond – felt like stepping into a different, almost magical world. I stopped many times t...

Yesterday, our class returned to the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge to continue our work cutting down and clearing away overgrown invasive plants like privet. As we set out, we separated into two groups: one group cutting down and one group clearing away. My group – Ciara, Anna, Cole, Bennett, and Dr. Wood – put on our glasses and gloves and vests, grabbed a pair of shears each, and waded into the overgrown forest to begin cutting down privet, bamboo, and other trees and vines. As we began to work, as I made my way through the forest stepping over branches and stumps, I hoped that there weren’t any snakes hiding anywhere. Eventually, I decided that I just had to go with it and hope that there wasn’t going to be anything to hurt me. At the beginning, as I figured out what to cut and how to cut it, it was a little bit touch-and-go. Once we got going, however, I grew more comfortable and confident in the work. Over the couple of hours that we worked, we fell into a rhythm and wordles...

“And you watch And you try But you simply can’t imagine How they do it With no articulated instruction, no pause, Only the silent confirmation That they are this notable thing, This wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin Over and over again, Full of gorgeous life. Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us.” “Starlings in the Winter” caught my attention because, interestingly, earlier in the semester, we connected starlings and starling murmurations to classical economic theory in my History of Economic Thought class. Throughout the semester, we’ve been discussing Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments – unpacking Smith’s arguments about specialization and trade, sympathy and interconnectedness; diving into his investigation into the architecture of the “all-wise Author of Nature” and contending with his observations about our judgment of self, our sense of duty, our love of praise, and our dread of blame. So, as I walked through Mary Oliver’s Devotions , i...

  Over Thanksgiving Break last year, my mom and I took the newest addition to our family – our black lab puppy, Gracie – to Harbor Point for the first time. Harbor Point is a quiet path winding along Richardson Bay, which leads out to the San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. Harbor Point has been a favorite spot for my family ever since my brother and I were little. On the weekends and after school, we would bring our bikes and ride along the path as my mom played fetch with our childhood dog, Bailey. We would play for hours while Bailey would go back and forth between the rocky beach and the cold water. I remember searching around the tide pools with my brother, Cole, and my childhood best friend, Elizabeth, for shells and treasures; I remember making small bouquets of honeysuckle and ceanothus (California lilac); I remember thinking that I saw a small stingray skimming underneath the surface but no one believed me. So, last November, it was an exciting morning for Grac...

This morning, I began my day with a walk along the Trinity River. While I wouldn’t call myself a morning person by nature, it was important to me to try to set some time aside for enjoying the stillness and the quietness as the world wakes up, watching the rising sun, and listening to the birds and the bugs. In the midst of a busy semester – where there always seems to be something else to do; some other class, meeting, or obligation that I’m running around to – it was a refreshing change of pace to slow down, shift my focus away from myself and out onto the natural world around me. As best as I could, I tried to center myself and focus on the present moment, paying attention to and admiring the details around me – the sight of the white birds nestled in the trees along the river, the sound of the cicadas in the tree outside of my house, the feeling of the rising sun against my back.  As I walked along the river in the quiet hours of the morning, I was able to reflect on things tha...