ARCHIVE - Visualizing Ecology - Last Child in the Woods http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/taxonomy/term/5/0 en ARCHIVE - JackMcGeeTrailthroughtheleaves http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/jackmcgeetrailthroughtheleaves <p>A Trail Through Leaves leaves a woman’s tales to the mind. Hannah Hinchman intimately shares her portrait of a connection with nature; the synchronized and beautiful world. It is the reason for this novel which deconstructs anything solely human and brings about the reunion of inner-personal thought with natural landscape. Hinchman began writing journals, as noted in the beginning of the book, to define herself in the world as sole and single object. As time progressed this lonely and egotistical view faded as she began to incorporate nature into her thought process as shown through her journal. Rather than creating, erasing and recreating herself in notebook pages, she created and destroyed relationships with nature. This book is almost revolutionary in American modern press for it strains to include landscape as something irremovable from the self. A Trail Through the Leaves is written as an example of how to redirect the spirit to living within the natural world. </p> <p><a href="http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/jackmcgeetrailthroughtheleaves">read more</a></p> http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/jackmcgeetrailthroughtheleaves#comment Last Child in the Woods Sun, 08 Oct 2006 17:45:47 -0700 mcgjoh23 230 at http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall ARCHIVE - Harmony Lawrence http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/harmony-lawrence-1 <p>A moment to late I realized that I have picked up the wrong book for this discussion, but a book that has on the other hand a very simular theme.  The book is called &quot;keeping a Nature Journal; discovering a whole new way of seeing the world around you&quot; by Clare Walker Leslie and Charles E. Roth.  I found the advice given by these two experienced journalists refreshing and inspiring as they shared adice on starting and maintaining a journal or journals and the different ways of journaling, such as project journaling where one works on learning something or answering a question of theirs through observations.  There is also experience journaling where one pays closer attention to the natural experiences they have on a daily basis and explore how those experiences effect them.  They mentioned all the basics of journaling such as what types of paper one should use based on how they plan to use the journal and they even gave a chapter on artistic expression for beginner artists.</p> <p><a href="http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/harmony-lawrence-1">read more</a></p> http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/harmony-lawrence-1#comment Last Child in the Woods Sun, 08 Oct 2006 16:13:02 -0700 lawhar17 203 at http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall ARCHIVE - Elisa Otter http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/elisa-otter <p class="MsoNormal">One of the main things that resonated with me while reading <em>A Trail Through Leaves, </em>was again, this idea of the Beginner’s Mind. Hinchmen writes, “Some of the moments are repeated regularly, so regularly that they fade into the background and out of awareness, the way city people cease to hear traffic noise. Your task is to bring them back into awareness, and acknowledge them as the gift they are” (79). By allowing my established prejudices to subside and actually observing my surroundings, detail by detail, as Hinchmen suggests, would really help me notice the everyday miracles that I take for granted. I like the idea of taking time to go on a nature walk, or anywhere really, (actually, an everyday setting would be the most interesting I think, to really scrutinize and examine a setting taken so easily) and observe and record in detail all the nuances that I overlook. These detailed exercises would certainly heighten my awareness and help train my Beginner’s Eye. </p> <p><a href="http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/elisa-otter">read more</a></p> http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/elisa-otter#comment Last Child in the Woods Sun, 08 Oct 2006 16:09:53 -0700 otteli23 202 at http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall ARCHIVE - Levi Ponce http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/levi-ponce-0 <p><font size="2"> <p>Hannah Hinchman is Obviously dedicated to her journals, specifically nature journals. With so much experience comes knowledge of the craft and she is definitely knowledgeable. I found so much great advice in this book in regards to journaling and even some good advice about life itself. Its apparent to me that she is a journal writer when i read some of the chapters, especially when she gets exited and starts to ramble with long descriptions. I was never annoyed or turn off by this, however. It was nice to read something by a person who has such an active imagination.</p> <p>Throughout A Trail Through Leaves Hinchman offers all sorts of advice both on journaling and life. Of this advice one of the most touching came from chapter 4, The power of the ordinary. She explains how the most ordinary tasks, when truly thought about can make time go just a little slower and bring a whole new meaning to them.&quot;Its antidote is to do things that alter time. Drawing always does this to me. So do the puttering tasks involved with gardening. Even shaping words with a favorite pen is sufficient...but simply stopping to look at the sky...to smell and savor the coffee while its brewing - so ordinary as to be beneath notice and yet containing the seeds of hardy perennial joy - those are the joys that knit the world together.&quot; If we can just slow down in our busy lives and look around us to truly see how privileged we are and how beautiful life is then all of our moments of boredom are far from dull at all, in fact quit the opposite.</p> </font></p><p><a href="http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/levi-ponce-0">read more</a></p> http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/levi-ponce-0#comment Last Child in the Woods Sun, 08 Oct 2006 16:08:12 -0700 ponlev14 201 at http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall ARCHIVE - R.J. Jensen A Trail Through Leaves http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/r-j-jensen-a-trail-through-leaves <p>    A Trail Through Leaves was intriguing in the fact that it told you what a good nature journal is comprised of.  I thought that Hannah Hinchman was a little dry in some places but I also found it interesting to see and hear her thoughts manifesting them self.  This really gives you more insight in to her little isolated world filled with cats.  I thought she was a little quirky running around in the snow having a snowball fight with her cats, but it really shows her personality and her discipline come from her sunny disposition.     Hannah seems to have this way of being organized a</p> <p><a href="http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/r-j-jensen-a-trail-through-leaves">read more</a></p> http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/r-j-jensen-a-trail-through-leaves#comment Last Child in the Woods Sun, 08 Oct 2006 15:32:30 -0700 jenrob16 193 at http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall ARCHIVE - JackMcGee http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/jackmcgee <p>Nature for the urban culture is mostly unnatural, compacted, specifically placed and maintained. When this culture reads Richard Louv’s arguments against these places they tend to think. A lot. And get angry sometimes. Feeling all their actions and memories of the natural world slip slowly away into the unnatural.-- Upon opening Louv’s novel Last Child in the Woods, and reading the first line of the book, “If, when we were young...” one can’t help but thinking of his father or even grandfather beginning a story of the past: Nostalgic memories from generational gaps. Louv begins by creating and defining the gap between his generation and ours. RealIy I should say mine; growing up in the great urban environment. I found the natural world as something rare and untouchable. Matching Louv’s thesis exactly. Though I did, however, feel, as a child, the same freedom to explore and create as a child does in the woods. My backyard, instead of being the idolized garden leading into an unkempt world, was an alleyway leading into the maintained and chaotic world of purely human interaction. My places of solitude and rest, of creation and friendship, the place where I never inhibited Louv’s ‘bored syndrome’, were places uninhibited by the human populace or by social pressure. It was in these places I felt the comfort and freedom to do as I please. But in all honesty a parking lot or an empty trash can only serve for half his argument. These are places of escape, and solely that. The child that is surrounded by nature has an escape and beyond that; a place to grow. I agree with the author though it tends to be hard for it chastises my own relationship to the natural world. </p> <p><a href="http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/jackmcgee">read more</a></p> http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/jackmcgee#comment Last Child in the Woods Sun, 01 Oct 2006 18:45:32 -0700 mcgjoh23 168 at http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall ARCHIVE - Levi Ponce http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/levi-ponce <p><font size="3"> <p>Louv&#39;s Idea that nature is essential in human development throughout ones entire life is one that has crossed my mind several times. The most obvious point he tries to convey in Last Child in the Woods is that in order to live an optimally healthy life we need nature. Although the reading seemed a bit repetative in certain places of the book, (this is a problem and this is evidence of why children and/or all of us need nature) It was this repetition that drove the point home. While reading this book I noticed that many of the stories contain advice and information that can be applied to my life right now.</p> </font></p><p><a href="http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/levi-ponce">read more</a></p> http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/levi-ponce#comment Last Child in the Woods Sun, 01 Oct 2006 16:14:54 -0700 ponlev14 140 at http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall ARCHIVE - Harmony Lawrence http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/harmony-lawrence-0 <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">In the book “Last child in the woods”, Richard Louv argues the importance of natural setting’s and natural play in the lives of people and especially children.<span>  </span>He argues the point that mental and physical development is being hindered due to the lack of nature experience among the newest generations in America, through a number of studies and reviews of personal experience.</font></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Through research that included studying adults and children Louv came up with the interesting theory that a lack of interaction with nature may be the cause for many mental “disorders” including A.D.H.D. and A.D.D.<span>  </span>Two very commonly diagnosed “disorders” in the American society.<span>  </span>How this lack of nature creates such symptoms is an unclean theory due to the mystery of the human mind in relation to thought and memory.<span>  </span>It is understood that in some form the present of nature and the outdoors in an individuals life is calming and reviving.<span>  </span>Through interviews and experiments with many people Louv found often that people where more able to focus and live happily with more nature in their lives than those who experienced less.<span>  </span>In turn those who experienced less nature and more indoor activities such as TV have in theory a higher chance at getting such disorders as A.D.H.D. and A.D.D.</font></p> <p><a href="http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/harmony-lawrence-0">read more</a></p> http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/harmony-lawrence-0#comment Last Child in the Woods Sun, 01 Oct 2006 15:31:25 -0700 lawhar17 132 at http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall ARCHIVE - Last Child in the Woods http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/last-child-in-the-woods <p>     Last Child in the woods made some really good points, but I think that instead of Louv repeating himself and making the same point again and again, he could maybe come up with a solution.  His point about the tree houses and how for the most part they get torn down nowadays was good point, but you also need to take in to account that in his era it was easier to go out in the woods and build a tree fort.  For my generation we have to be more creative and find was to get around the sprawl of society.  He also is also saying how the era in which he and most of our parents grew up in was a better time.  Which may be true but I grew up probably doing similar things as he was doing as a child.  I believe that he has a valid point when he mentions that most children who grow up in an extremely urban community would rather be shut up in their damp dark decrepit rooms playing video games than actually be outside.</p> <p><a href="http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/last-child-in-the-woods">read more</a></p> http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/last-child-in-the-woods#comment Last Child in the Woods Sun, 01 Oct 2006 15:05:39 -0700 jenrob16 128 at http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall ARCHIVE - Commentary http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/commentary <p>Reading Last Child in the Woods made me think of two main things: how glad I am for having grown up encouraged to explore nature, and the causes of why our society has distanced itself from nature and living a sustainable life.<br />I think one thing Louv didn’t mention directly, and what I feel really powers this disconnect, is the way in which our society views time. We live in an extremely future-based conception of time. So many things we do are for the future and financial security that seldom do we actually live for the present moment. In order to get back to a sustainable life, where the connection between nature and survival is made, our whole American, consumer life has to slow way down and our conception of time has to change. Louv makes a scary example of this when asking a fourth grade class if they worried about getting into college and getting a good job. More than half the class raised their hands (118). These are kids! I don’t need any scientific research to convince me that that state of mind and attitude is not healthy. </p> <p><a href="http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/commentary">read more</a></p> http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall/commentary#comment Last Child in the Woods Sun, 01 Oct 2006 14:16:18 -0700 otteli23 125 at http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall