When I was a kid, I use to spend all of my free time outside whether it was playing with the goats on my small urban farm, riding my bike around the neighborhood with the breeze through my hair, looking for bugs at recess, or exploring the forested area down the street. Whatever it was, I didn’t care about getting dirty or that there may have been spiders crawling through my knotted hair. I saw the outdoors as a place to enjoy and explore.
Somewhere along the lines of this point and high school graduation, there was a shift in my mentality. I like to blame the fact that middle and high schoolers don’t have the opportunity to explore the outdoors because they have been stripped of the luxury that is known as recess. The many years of indoor schooling and indoor afterschool activities may be at fault. Or maybe it was due to the bulldozing and housing development of the forested area down the street that I loved to explore and call my own.
Although all of these factors may contribute to my loss of outdoor exploration over the years, I can’t help but blame myself for all the times I decided that watching the latest episodes on television would be more enriching than running through a field with my goats. Whatever the causes may be, I am determined to break down these cultural barriers of indoor confinement and safety to gain back the wild nature I once had as a child. However, I want to mix this with an academic background so I can explore wilderness with awareness of the processes and species I observe. I am currently in the process of my reconnection with nature and it has been successful so far!
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