D. Ryan Foster- A human nature

4-29-08

I was returning from class earlier this year from the Wingfield building and decided to take the slightly more scenic route involving the small patch of woods on campus between Wingfield and a vast parking lot to enjoy the sound of birds to avoid the large pack of people crammed onto the lawn. There was some kind of concert going and I wasn't in the mood. So I walked through, more aware of my feet crunching on the ground than the distant music and I sat down at the base of one tree and started to chuckle slightly over the serenity offered by this one last bastion of semiforest in the face of tons of brick. I understand that the buildings are necessary for a campus and I would actually be rather displeased if we didn't have them on extremely hot, cold, or wet days. But I was simply enjoying that there was somewhere I could go where if I blurred my eyes a little I'd only get to glimpse what could be a forest around me, at least every so often. Where I grew up, I had nearly 30 acres of woodlands behind my house, woodlands in the sense that the preservationists would want it, pristine, untouched, and extremely difficult to climb through. Even after moving to northern Virginia, my home was on the extreme edge of town and our property bordered a forested area with a small creek. All these things I contemplated and was made sad and nostalgically happy when I remembered they'd paved over that woods behind my house in NoVa and turned it into low rent housing. But as I had this creeping chill I tend to get in peaceful settings when happiness and sadness blend into simply being, the music from the concert whispered its way into my ears. It was the oddest thing that it blended so perfectly with how I was feeling; it didn't matter that I could not hear the words. The soft rhythm and the muffled voice over the microphone filtering through the trees just clicked and I stopped blurring my eyes and saw the forest for what it was, a small bit of trees allowed to stay on a piece of land that can't fit a building. I heard the electronically amplified music as humans and human creation, and at the same time I felt this last bit of nature on campus and God's creation. In that moment where they blended there was this ridiculous moment of happiness that I cannot describe where I understood and was comfortable with the concept of a natural human, and I was no longer sad for the forest lost behind my home, nor was I unwilling to accept this plot as hardly qualifying as forest. I understood that this patch of ground didn't have to fight and have others fight for it, instead it could work with humans to form a human integrated nature. Regardless the serenity and joy I found in this moment overflowed me to the point that I needed to share it with someone I loved and I immediately whipped out my human invented cell phone and used its digital signal to get in touch with those around me. The funny thing is, it no longer bothered me brining the cell out in the trees. I used to keep it away for fear that I might be violating something if not to the trees but to myself, yet now I see this creation of man to be another way to share the beauty in a creation of God.