Kayla Delaguila- experience of a natural setting:Noland Trail

I had one quick thought after reading the excerpt from Lane, “[reciprocity] involved in touching and being touched by its particular array of rocks, trees, animals and geographical features,” I thought… the only animal that I touched and was touched by this afternoon was those silly mosquitoes. Meaningful and deep? No, but I thought I would share that thought before getting into the meat of my walk.
So, I have taken my fair share of nature walks, mostly to clear my head and done so mostly alone. I will admit I did find it hard to truly connect with anything being surrounded by my classmates and being on a time limit. One thing really stuck with me though, at the beginning of class Dr. Redick was talking about the vine and the tree. The relationship between them and such. It brought me back to when I was a little girl, I live in a very woodsy area and I used to run through the forest pulling the vines off the trees because I thought the vines were slowly killing the them. In hindsight it hardly seems fair of me to pick the tree’s life over the vine’s, but I just thought of the vine as this parasite that did no good to my mighty tree. I haven’t thought about this since I was little, but it was the first thing that came to mind when I thought of the tree and the vine. I then thought about Buber’s I and Thou excerpt, “ relation is reciprocity,” What reciprocal relationship does this vine have with this tree? It is like a penniless post-grad who lives in their parent’s basement. Then again I’m still thinking of the vine as a parasite. Perhaps the tree looks to the vine as its child. Then it could be related to an infant in his mother’s womb. Is that baby doing anything for the mom? Not particularly, but the mother is doing everything for that child. So what is a relationship of reciprocity? Are you saying that the mother and child don’t have a solid relationship because that baby is not directly doing anything positive for its mother? I thought I agreed that relationships need reciprocity, but I guess now I am on the fence. I think it more depends on the nature of the relationship. Mother and child, tree and vine, both do not share reciprocal relationships, but there is nothing wrong with that.
Yes, I spent most of my walk looking at the trees and the vines, thinking about eight-year-old me, and the advanced relationships we have and seek. It was a good time.