Campus Trail

I thought the campus trail was a fun trip. It would have been miserable any other time of year, but that's besides the point. For a wooded area on a college campus, the trail was surprisingly free of artificial debris. I personally think that the trail could be improved by either reseeding the wetland areas with melaleuca or building a raised platform similar to the one running through the Six Mile Cypress preserve.


I've lived in Florida for my entire life so I didn't see anything new. It was interesting to have a path cut through so I could walk from upland to wetland and see the change in vegetation without having to cut any down.

I'm curious as to what they are constructing on the east side of the campus. It's kind of ironic that on a field trip where we were supposed to be immersed in the University's ecological commitment we instead witnessed the clear-cutting of the forest. It made for a nice photo op though.

Sense of Place

This was a fun one. By chance the day I finally got around to walking around my neighborhood (1/25) it happened to be sunny and breezy, around seventy degrees. Basically the only time it's pleasant to go outside in Florida. I live in a massive condominium complex bordered on one side by College Parkway and by a 200 foot wide preserve and creek on the other. The preserve is actually nice, even though there's not enough space for any animals big enough to entertain me.

The complex itself is built around a naturally occurring lake which the developer conveniently bisected in order that I could drive right up to my front door without an outrageous thirty second detour. The developer was good enough to install aerators in the lake to keep the fish from dying. They work most of the time. There's not much that's actually "green" about the development. Every day there are landscapers here laying down fertilizer, poison, and chopping things down. You never know what the place will look like on a given day. On the upside, they've managed to cut down the local locust population, which in three days completely destroyed my front yard.

Incoming Reflection

My goal for this class is to earn an A and satisfy my service learning requirement. That this class also provides an open forum for me to discuss my twisted world view is just icing.

One of the major facets of this class seems to be its emphasis on global warming, a theory that is being presented in schools as fact. It is being taught to students as though the evidence behind it is incontrovertible, when, in fact, there is little impartial evidence in favor of it. In my opinion, global warming is the next big business. American industry is being transformed by a "green" revolution. Even Clorox has "all-natural" products on the market. The entire theory of global warming is an attempt to revitalize American industry by pushing overpriced products on the market so yuppies can feel justified in their conspicuous consumption lifestyle. Take solar and wind energy for example, which costs far more than any fossil fuel, both in land area and money. But it makes you feel like you're doing something positive for the environment. What about recycling? Picture this: a company obtains materials for zero cost to sell back to me as an inferior product and collects my tax dollars for the service. I could go on all day.

Contrary to my constant anti-wilderness rants, I do enjoy spending time in the wild. My two favorite vacations were to Nicaragua and Costa Rica, where I climbed volcanoes and irritated monkeys with my camera. But my least favorite thing is a hypocrite. These ivory tower scientists, politicians, and celebrities that are supposed proponents of ecology tell me I should conserve for future generations while they sit in their 15,000 square foot McMansions with the air conditioning on full blast. It's disgusting. No one deserves to talk about conservation while they reap the benefits of this slash-and-burn civilization we live in.

Now that I've gotten all this hate out of my system, I'm going to take the recycling to the curb and flip on the TV.