It's been quite a long time since I last updated!
Sorry for that, I've been trying to adjust to my new school year.
Anyway, HELLO!
This post relates to an overnight biology trip I went on, to an Outdoor Education Centre in northern Ontario. If I had to summarize the trip using two words, I would only choose the following words with their complete and whole definitions in mind: knowledge, peace.
So, why those words?
Well, firstly, peace: When you first wake up, the middle of a forest of colour and frost and bare trees, the first and probably only thing you feel is inner peace. You forget any worries you carried with you back at home. Any burden is lost when you hike up those hills--it's like the fallen leaves scour (my new favourite word!) the hurt or pain or sadness right out of you. And you are left with an unnamed lovely feeling that aches with you, stays with you. Perhaps it may be because you are leaving in a couple days, and you are faced with that fact. Perhaps, though, it may be, because you are happy. You are happy, seeing the beauty of this natural phenomena--the protists hiding the nooks and crannies of bark and rotted leaves. You are happy, in this exclusive area with people you know and love. You are happy, hearing complete and thundering silence. You are happy, staying up in a perpetual sleepover with fantastic friends. That inner peace stayed with me for the length of the trip.
The second word, knowledge, was chosen for many reasons. I learned so much about my fellow classmates, my friends. With barely any time to ourselves, we had to let down our guards.
However, in another way, I also mean the word knowledge in the context of academia. There, we had workshops in which we could experience and live out these routines of wildlife biologists firsthand. We explored the woods and measured tree heights using equipment. We 'drilled' holes into the bark using a borer. We dug up 2 m deep holes into fens. We walked on boardwalks and stared in amazement at the water seeping through rotting wood in the marshes.
Very rarely do I ever get the chance to stray from the textbook-following, worksheet-completing routines of school. I am incredibly grateful of the chance to do. To learn by making, creating, doing. Putting words into action.
I experienced and explored and played and ran.
I gained both knowledge, and with luck, a little inner peace!
