Rachel Hrovat~Noland Trail Incident

I think it strange that when John Gatta talks about “Making Nature Sacred”, one of the only kinds of wildlife not mentioned are bugs. He writes that the observer needs to be mindful of “rabbits, squirrels, domestic steers, mockingbirds, chickadees, starlings, carp, turtles, slugs, frogs and snakes” but says nothing of bugs. He says how authentic seeing is “a discipline requiring a lifetime of dedicated struggle” and I suppose that is what it will be for me. But when the class ventured to the Noland Trail in order to observe nature, all that I was able to observe were the mosquitoes. As I rode my bike to the river, I enjoyed the warming sun rays on my skin and was excited to be off campus and able to spend time within nature. However, once we got on the trail, tbhe bugs started biting. And they didn’t stop. All that I could focus on was the mosquitoes crawling all over me and the blood stains that were covering my legs from me squashing them. Gatta said that “nature runs wild because God, too, is an untamed lover of freedom”, but as these pests ran wild all over me, they caused me to do the same.