Quinn's Treks & Texts

“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...

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...