Arrenvy Bilinski- Experience of a Natural Setting: Noland Trail

Easily one of my favorite days of class, I set out on my bike towards the Noland trail where our class observed many things occurring in nature all around us that normally we would have ignored, had we not been led by an expert. I was genuinely intrigued by all of the varieties of plants, and the something new that I would learn around every corner. Utilizing the rose berries for war paint, Devil’s Walking Stick as well…you guessed it, and bay leaf for herbs all became very apparent at once, that wow, most of everything we use started from natural elements. I had always known how much we depended on the environment, but to be able to find such simple things we use daily just by its pure properties, no factories, or sweatshops involved. Once we were released from the big group, Mary and I walked in silence as we took in as much as we could about the environment around us. Walking further I felt a bit silly and cumbersome. Everything that I was just trying to observe objectively, kept reminding me of elements within our society. I would look at a stretch of trees and see scaffolding for construction. I would look at the little whispy white seed puffs and see Q-Tips. The prickly plant became an unshaven face. I looked at a cluster of orange leaves on a patch of trunk of a large tree, and I saw a ruffly collared shirt. I couldn’t remove the society from me. Martin Buber defines the difference between experience versus encounter, saying that “those who experience do not participate in the world. For the experience is ‘in them’ and not between them and the world.” Basically Buber is saying that everything I thought about this nature, what I was experiencing was my perception that I was giving it, because “the world does not participate in experience….it contributes nothing and nothing happens to it.” Stepping back and looking at the entire picture, I felt like I was watching a young toddler play. The water would dance, leaves would fall off the trees in big sections, the light would bounce around, and the whole of the wilderness seemed to have an never-ending bob or sway. I accepted that the world was not participating in my experience, but it was participating in relation to all of the other elements to form the overall picture of wilderness.