I have noticed that everyone has chosen to talk about the class fieldtrip to the Lion's Gate Bridge for the required blog on an "encounter with a natural setting." I have been avoiding writing about this trip because embarassingly enough, I was not connecting with the Nolan Trail on this trip. It seemed almost contrived. I wanted to listen to nature and I have connected with this place on numerous occassions, but that particular day my soul and ears were not open. It is like in Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek when she mentions the moment you are conscious of your connection and presence in the moment, you lose the connection. This is how Dillard phrases it: "This is it, I think, this is it, right now, the present, this empty gas station, here, this western wind, this tang of coffee on the tongue, and I am patting the puppy, I am watching the mountain. And the second I verbalize this awareness in my brain, I cease to see the mountain or feel the puppy" (Dillard, 80). I believe this is why I was not connecting that day. I was too caught up in trying to connect, and converse with nature. Trying in a way that I blocked it from me. I would look too hard for things rather than letting things pop out at me and speak to me at their own will. I tried to force speech out of it all. Connecting with nature is just like trying to connect to God, you have to let things happen in his time, and keep an open heart. And of course, in my personal opinion, you can connect to God through nature. He created it afterall. All this extravagant beauty was created by some kind of powerful being. Listening to the creation is listening to the creator. So that is what I learned from the Nolan Trail that day. I can't force nature to speak to me. I have to let it speak on its own terms and just keep myself open for anything to happen.
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