Andrea Rowley - Thoughts on the Labyrinth

Ending our last day of class on the labyrinth on the Great Lawn was really neat. It was a way for us to try to connect with ourselves and our thoughts while working our way along the snake-like path. Doing so with a class of 20 people who were not entirely in the zone to really take it seriously was discouraging and made it hard to fully devote to. I could not get what I wanted out of it, and I wish I hadn't let some people's ways of making the labyrinth a joking matter get in the way of my state of mind. It could have been a great opportunity to allow ourselves to try something different, something we were not used to, but it was a failed attempt. If I could not get what I'd hoped out of it, I at least am glad Dr. Redick introduced us to the concept.

Andrea Rowley - Walking With Freedom

After writing about Lion King's documentary, I poked around on Trail Journals and came across his website - http://walkingwithfreedom.com/.

Just by reading his About Me, I have a whole different opinion about someone who I already thought positively of. Lion King, or Michael Daniel as his parents call him, has been hiking since 1998, and since then has hiked over 10,000 miles. 8,000 of those miles were thru-hikes on the AT. Not only has he hiked the AT, but he has thru-hiked the John Muir Trail in 2002 as well as The Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada in 2006. There is so much more to this man than we saw in his film, and it is admirable to me how dedicated he is to something he loves.

I am unsure of how dated this particular piece of information I found on his website is, but he is hiking/has hiked the American Discovery Trail which totals over 6,000 miles from coast to coast and will also be the first time ever a person has walked non-stop the entire length of the trail in one trip on foot. On top of that, he raised money for the American Heart Association over the course of nearly a year of walking.

Lion King has done so much for himself and for others just through hiking, and I just thought dedicating a journal entry to him was appropriate. For those of you who intend to start hiking - do it until you can't anymore. Nothing stopped Lion King.

Andrea Rowley - Cold Fever, Pt. 2

I've already blogged about Cold Fever, but I just want to revisit this film for a second.

I have been in love with Iceland for years. No, I have never been there, but the entire culture of that place fascinates me. I follow certain blogs based out of Iceland just to get a glimpse of the land and the people in pictures. Their language is uniquely beautiful and one I have been slowly teaching myself (emphasis on the slowly).

For those Sigur Rós fans reading, my wanderlust to travel to Iceland only grew exponentially upon watching the band's 2007 tour documentary titled Heima (view trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhLZP6Cz2dA). I mean... just LOOK at that place. It is, as we spoke of in class, awesome. The opening quote of said trailer ("I sometimes get this strange and sort of uncontrollable urge to want to go home.") is one I have always connected with in terms of my home, but I dream to someday visit their home to see exactly why he feels that way.

In short, when Dr. Redick said Cold Fever was an Icelandic film, by heart skipped a few beats. The land and the culture of the Icelandic people is simply beautiful.

Andrea Rowley - Lane's Cultural Approach

This particular post is somewhat of a cheers to John's post about the cultural approach with my own personal reflection of it pertaining to my life.

Aside from my first two years in Maryland, I have lived in various parts of Northern Virginia for the past 20 years of my life. As we all know, Northern Virginia has come to be one huge traffic jam all day every day, it seems. It is stressful and highly populated. It can take almost an hour to go 20 miles. It can be frustrating, and I know traffic in Hampton Roads is not the best either. BUT - I will go so far to say that I prefer NOVA/DC traffic to HRBT tunnel traffic any day, just because that place is home. It is all I have known, and I love every part of it. No matter how beautiful or different or calming someplace else can be, I have never connected with a place quite like Northern VA. I was literally the only person in my group of friends in high school who was sad to be leaving home for college. Everyone else went to Tech or UVA or someplace out of state, and while I am two hours from home, I still make it a point to go back whenever I have a free weekend. This place is who I have been for most of my life, and I cannot see myself feeling this exact way about any other culture or place.

Sitting in the comfort of my house right now, even if I am just here for the weekend, it is something I have been looking forward to.

Michael Pistininzi - Experience

This semester I went owl watching at the Great Dismal Swamp. It was very neat to sit and wait until dusk waiting with the ornithologist guide. He had pictures of different owls we might see and had their noises recorded on a tape to play to attract them. He also had a red light to shine on the owls to spot them. The owl was this unknown night creature that I knew nothing about and as the screech owl got closer their calls got louder and louder and I felt as if this was their home and I was a visitor. I knew that they saw me way before I saw them and it took patience, and quiet to get them to trust our group and get closer tree by tree. Eventually they came right up to us and observed us from above and occasionally swooped over us. It was an awesome experience.

Michael Pistininzi - Outside Reading

Yesterday my botany professor sent me an article about organic farming. There's some research going on about using nature's cycles to farm while reducing the impact of the farm on the surrounding ecosystem. I think this is so cool to use natural systems like composting and bio-diverse crop cycles to respect the area that you're using to farm. I think that land we use needs to be respected and anything we do to the land needs to be accounted for. I believe if more people saw the affects of their actions on the land, they would learn to respect and take care of it.

Michael Pistininzi - Outside Reading

I was reading an article about Natural Geographic photographers. It talked about how these photographers set up camp in these far off isolated places and they have to sit there for days waiting for the perfect lighting, situation, and moment to capture what their assignments are. They can be in the Sahara, Amazon, Artic, or in an African village. I think it takes such discipline to wait so long, but I feel like those photographers really connect with their subjects. I think it would be such an experience to even sit with one of these guys because they must have so much patience and the things they see while they're waiting must be so cool.