Blog 17

I was confused as to what to reflect on and I kept changing my mind. I’m used to reflecting on nature in a more poetic way and I didn’t know just how hard it was for me to put all that reflective/metaphorical thinking into plain English. I did it, but it was very short, and I’m not content at all. Also, I realized that I didn’t know what many of the trees were in the woods in that area. I did some research on that, but didn’t feel one hundred percent confident on what I found.

At the time of those runs through the woods, I always thought about Marannie, since when I got to the beach I would always look across the bay and wonder what she was doing. In my poetry I would always compare my feelings to the natural world…the sun, moon, water, fire, earth, air, etc. I’m used to only making these comparisons in very poetic, metaphorical ways, and I was getting stuck trying to put the feelings/comparisons into plain English. This made me want to change my reflection.

Professor Chandler told me that my essay/story wasn’t a nature essay. I didn’t seem to understand why. I was describing an experience I had with nature; I was describing what was around me…I was quite perplexed, which deterred me from even wanting to rework the essay, having no idea as to what to change or what direction to go in. I decided to research more about the New Jersey shore, and the Natives that lived there centuries ago (since I always thought about the Natives when I was in the woods.) But I still felt stuck because I couldn’t come up with a concrete ‘reflection’. I remember always thinking when I was in the woods, about all the people in past years, decades, centuries etc. who have been in these woods, touched the same ground as I was touching then, have walked on the same beach, looked at the same trees, watched the same sunrises. I researched the natives and found out that it was the Lenape Indians who resided in these woods. It always amazed me that I was in the same woods as they were back then.

I’m used to writing in more detail, but with less reflection and letting my reader take what they want from the piece…but for this writing (and all the essays in the class) I had to do more thinking, which only confused me and actually gave me writers’ block. I figured I’d use both my reflections- my love, and my curiosity/amazement of being in the same atmosphere of natives, but in my head, I still doubted that these two ‘ideas’ were even ‘reflections’ at all. I figured, oh well…and continued writing in that direction.