Catherine Mai

1 Hour in Mediated Environment

I enjoy reading the news- especially news related to science and the environment. I am subscribed to email newsletters from The New York Times, Nautilus, Futurism, National Geographic, WRI, and several others including outlet sources for articles. As much as I enjoy reading the news, however, I also find it rather difficult to keep up with the sheer amount of information and content that is available. From simply reading some of my email newsletters today I’ve discovered quite a lot. A few things I’ve learned from the New York Times: Trump’s impeachment trial continues, Coronavirus outbreak intensifies in China, US political polarization is related to moral grand- standing and mob dynamics, and the book American Dirt by J. Cummins sparks a controversy. Information from the website Futurism (and whatever it links) is up next. Astronomers have detected repeating fast radio bursts for the second time in a galaxy 500 million light years away, ten times closer than the previous and one of the closest yet. Scientists have discovered that the Earth’s core has been leaking into its outer layers for 2.5 billion years, but don’t know why yet. The wildfires occurring (still now) in Australia are so bad that they can be seen from space, turning the continent red when visible from the cloudy  smoke. The ocean’s average temperature has warmed by 0.075 degrees Celsius, or the equivalent of 3.6 billion Hiroshima atom bombs since the 1975-2010 average. All this news tends to make me rather anxious at the state of our planet. I hope that I will be able to do something about it, one day, even if just a little. Staying informed is important!

1 Hour in Naturalistic Outdoors Environment (w/o Media)

It had been sunny today until around noon or so, when the sky became how it is now: mostly overcast. I’ve decided that winter is not exactly the most ideal season to be spending time in the suburban outdoors without any internet or media available. It’s definitely not ideal for just wandering around- unless maybe you are at a park or some other relatively undisturbed natural setting. That’s how I felt as I walked through the Innovation Food Forest on the GMU Fairfax Campus. In warmer seasons, the food forest is normally a beautiful, verdant place. But it is winter now, and most life is dormant or hibernating- like my mood recently. As I walked down the paths in the food forest, I identified a few plants that weren’t dormant: wild onion grass, daffodils that were just sprouting, hairy bittercress, deadnettle, and a couple others. I couldn’t help but feel disappointed in how dreary the world seemed at the moment, and longed for spring, when the plants would start to thrive again. Everything felt overcast like the weather and I couldn’t muster up enough energy in me to become interested in my surroundings. Usually I am able to enjoy being outdoors to some extent, but recently I noticed that I haven’t had the strength to do so. I suppose this is all reflective of my mood and condition at the moment. After observing the food forest for a while, I walked around the premise of the area. I couldn’t help but feel critical of the landscaping on the campus and wished that there would be more pollinator gardens and green infrastructure incorporated. I despised the empty, vacant lawn spaces that were meant to grow grass but were rather patchy- mostly dirt and some weeds. Aside from that I also noticed that there were a lot of quartz (I think?) rock around the soil. That is about all for my observations.

Conclusion

Admittedly, reading all this news takes quite a bit of time and sometimes I skim over the information. Yet I find myself preferring it over scrolling through Instagram or Facebook (which I rarely use) for various reasons. From this experience, I don’t really think that the age of information is truly a bad things- I think it’s more about how we consume the information made available to us and how we let it affect our lives. As someone who has always appreciated nature and paid attention to it, I don’t think the presence of media has affected me as strongly as implied. However, I realize that the suburban outdoors environment can be a bit hard for even me to truly appreciate in the midst of winter, especially if I am feeling down. I think I would enjoy being in nature much more if I was doing something, such as gardening, rather than just walking around. In order to fully benefit from nature, I think we have to be occupied with interacting with it instead of just walking around and observing, which was what I was doing. If I was in a park or more natural/undisturbed setting, I think walking around would’ve been fine. But I was still on campus, in the suburbs, so I’m not sure this experience is as valid.