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For my hour outside, I decided to make a day trip to one of my favorite places in the DMV, the Monocasy River in Maryland. I’ve spent the last two summers working as a camp counselor – not just any camp counselor, but a kayaking and hiking instructor – where I’ve been introduced to some of the most ethereal nature spots outside of the city and suburbs. As a Williamsburg native, I have always viewed Northern Virginia as somewhere different – enshrouded with tall buildings and bustling city streets, where seeing native wildlife is an anomaly. However, my job showed me that this is simply not true. There is a wide variety of parks, rivers, streams, or creeks hidden away from busy, suburban life just waiting to be explored.
Nonetheless, working outside full-time is enough to make anybody crave the indoors. As much as I adore paddling down the Shenandoah, observing native wildlife, or hiking to some of the best lookouts in the area, work is work. Being outside in the sun, heat, or rain all day every day undoubtedly changes the way one views the outdoors. Since finishing up with camp this summer, I’ve found it difficult to recover from this fatigue.
In an effort to reestablish my inherent passion for being outdoors, I make the hour-or-so drive to rural Frederick County. This place holds a lot of importance for me, as it’s somewhere I go to ponder – existential crises, big decisions, or just life itself.
Upon arriving, I park my car and walk down to the boat launch, which is covered in vibrantly colored, provocative graffiti. To my dismay, the area is littered with all kinds of waste – plastics, glass bottles, aluminum cans, even needles. I don’t remember it being this run down. I decided to pick up a plastic bag and fill it with trash – fishing line, bobbers, a needle, a beer can, a takeout box – and I find myself deeply bothered by how people view nature… disposable.
I spent some time picking up litter and pondering about human nature’s exploitative tendencies, until a splash distracts me. The water is a clear blue-green, spotted with smooth white rocks and overlayed by the shadow of a bridge above my head. Birds call to each other in the distance, while I unsuccessfully use my fading knowledge of native birdsong to identify the sources of the commotion. My eyes rest upon a hollowed, petrified oak tree which appeared to have fallen into the shallow end of the river. I walk over and have a seat, admiring the small minnows and crawfish that claimed the submerged end of the tree as their home. I spent the rest of the hour turning over stones – one of my favorite activities – where I find more crawfish, insect larvae, fishing spiders, and even a small Mad Tom, a type of freshwater catfish.
The hour goes by much more quickly than anticipated – so quickly that I forgot about the task at hand and became entranced by all the wildlife to see.
For my second hour of information, I decided to take a break from my schoolwork by playing some video games with my roommate. Lately, we’ve been enjoying our nights off with hours of various games: Super Smash Bros, Mariokart, Overcooked, Mario Party… whichever the choice of the night may be, it is quite the time commitment. We are both guilty of the infamous ‘just one more game!’, which will always turn into five more games. Or six, or seven. Or ten.
We decide to spend the hour playing Smash, alternating between our go-to characters: first Ness, then Ice Climbers, then Duck Hunt. Up A, right B, left A, down B. As we play, we mindlessly snack on chips and dip while hooting and hollering at the TV. We take turns winning and losing, as we are pretty evenly matched. Another common phrase is ‘we have to end on a good one!’. An hour of media consumption quickly turns into two hours, then two and a half. By the time we are done, our brains are fried – eyes burning from not blinking and thumbs sore from button-mashing.
In this day and age, we are force-fed a constant stream of information daily, making it very easy to get wrapped up in the wide selection of media available to us. Whatever that information may be – news, reality television, video games – anything in excess is harmful. However, it’s difficult to avoid that excess. It seems like everywhere we turn, there’s a new, different form of media to get sucked in to. Regardless of how much media is readily available to us, we must remember to stay grounded in what we know – the world around us.