Sydney Grogan - Natural Setting 1 - Entry 1

Environmental Interaction

Our class trip to the Nolan Trail impacted me in a way than I wouldn't have ever expected. 

My friend Audrey, who is in our class, drove us. When we first hopped out of the car, the sun was beating down on us, heavily. As we began to heat up, we stood together & waited for our professor to appear from (what I thought would be) the wilderness (heheh). In the span of only around ten minutes, our class became united as a whole with our professor, adjacent to the bridge. 

Okay, as a completely unrelated side note, I had an entirely different mental image of the second half of professor Redick's face. I'm not exactly sure why..

Anyhow, we began walking around, stopping occasionally to look into the water, at a large symbolic statue, magnolia fruits, & other numerous interesting & notable things around Lion's Bridge & on the trail. For some reason, that day, my mindset was extremely clouded. My muddled perception became unusually hyper-focused only on the minuscule details of things, opposed to the overarching subjects or ideas encompassed all around me. No matter how hard I tried to be present in the moment & truly experience my surroundings, I could not help but to continue looking at the world through a magnifying glass. 

When looking into the water, I focused on the multitude of shard-like minnows, all swimming together in unison, collectively fighting against the current with the sunlight gleaming off of their shiny silver scales. When looking up at the statue, I focused solely on the anguish lying behind the stone horse's eyes. When looking at the magnolia fruits, I focused on their deep grooves, & how the smallest, softest string pulled apart so gently & effortlessly, like a spider web, when removing its rich, red seeds. I also focused on the way the green magnolia fruits almost instantly turned brown wherever you dug your nails into them. 

Any time I would try to engage myself within the group, I would become distracted yet again by each & every little detail of all kinds of different things. My perspective was limited because of this, preventing me from being able to fully immerse myself in this experience. 

I could not escape this cycle of tunnel vision. That is, until I arrived back at CNU...

Take this for what you will, but I only became truly present the precise moment I arrived back on campus. Everything looked so much bigger now, & my perspective of the world grew wider. Honestly, it was like looking through the opposite of a fish eye lens. The buildings appeared larger, & more significant. The rhythmic swaying of the trees became more apparent to me. The wide & cloudless blue sky opened itself up to me. My world expanded. The colors intensified. The bricks became a more brilliant red, the trees a more vibrant green, & the sky a more vivid blue. It was unequivocally breathtaking. 

Looking back on it, I probably looked kinda crazy. Walking around all bug eyed, head turning in all directions, except for downward, eyes darting all about, just beholding our beautiful world & campus for all that it had to offer.. I was really taken aback by this new & contrasting perspective.

Out of this experience I developed a new outlook. I realized that the world really isn't so small, & I found a revitalized appreciation & gratitude for the blessing that it is to be able to attend a college as beautiful as ours, & honestly, even a college in general. I started thinking about God & how much he blessed me with such an outstanding opportunity as this. 

I became fully lucid at CNU. This is far from the same perspective I had while on the Nolan Trail. As a means to understand why this could've been the case, perhaps returning from an unfamiliar place (Nolan Trail) allowed for me to see a more familiar place (CNU) as if it were new to me again. 

I mean, they do say that absence makes the heart grow fonder.