I believe I am intimately apart of, and inseparable from, the natural world, in the sense that I believe the natural world is the only world that exists. To me, everything is natural because it is a product of nature; myself, a cell phone, or a book included. But nature, in the sense of what is divorced from human creation, is something I wish I was more connected with. Each time I spend time in an environment free from much human intervention, I feel calmer, happier, and humbler. It allows me to step back from the nitty-gritty stresses of everyday life and witness systems of earth that have been functioning for millions of years. As cliche as it sounds, it is so easy to lose sight of what really matters when you are stuck in the same cycle of life. Being outdoors, to a greater or lesser extent, puts life in a different perspective and often jars one’s sense of what they value. Camping, for instance, can shed light on things often taken for granted such as food, water, shelter, and going to the bathroom. And hiking, or any outdoor activity really, can leave one awe-inspired to the beauty and complexity of nature. This is why spending time in nature is so important; because it re-calibrates your values and your emotions. It allows one to reside in an habitat where our bodies were selected to live through hundreds of thousands of years of evolution by natural selection.

As a child, I spent innumerable hours rolling in the sand, rinsing in the ocean, and drying in the sun. In other words, I loved the beach and being out in the sun, I still do. I used to go home, rummage around around the woods, and make lean-to forts on the trees. This sort of childhood primed me for a livelong fondness of the outdoors. For obvious reasons, things have changed a little since my childhood and I haven’t been able to get outside as much as I’d like. In turn, I decided to do something about it and join the College of Charleston Outdoors club. And though I still don’t get outside as much as I’d like, the club has provided me with amazing experiences. Our most recent trip was to north Florida in Osceola National Forest. Simply being out in the woods with nothing else to do but converse and sit by the campfire was a feeling that assuaged all my petty stresses and worries. It was a wonderful trip consisting of pitcher plant sightings, hikes through the palm fronds, and cooking over an open fire. One of the things I noticed though was while we were driving to the National Forest the surrounding towns were very poor by American standards. Dilapidated houses, abandoned stores, and fast food chains lined most of their streets. It was a reminder of how millions of people in this country, and billions around the world, live in poverty. It’s easy to forget about the inequality facing our country going to such a privileged school and living in downtown Charleston.