In our Backyard

The campus hike that we went on was very beneficial to me. Every day I pass by all these trees and never think to myself what kind are they or how did they get here or how they are kept so maintained?  But after visiting the nature trail it defiantly gave me a new perspective on things at FGCU.

Realizing that more than half of our land on Florida Gulf Coast is preserved and that we can never take it the trees away is a really interesting and neat fact. Not every school is like FGCU. I have been to other colleges and they look like little downtown areas. With the buildings so high and the concrete all around there is no trees in sight but at Florida Gulf Coast that is not the case.

We actually thrive on the fact that we do  have all this land and we have this special feature that can be offered to the students here. I have been at FGCU for 3 years now and never once have gone on the nature trail. I really was missing out. Seeing all the cypress trees and learning how they live and grow is something that was interesting to me.

Canopy fires was something new I have never heard of before. It is actually an uncontrolled fire that hops from tree to tree and burns everything in its way. It can’t be controlled because it spreads to fast because it can “hop” over from the top of  every tree. Millions of acres can be destroyed by this kind of fire.

Living next to the everglades where I use to live in Fort Lauderdale when there was a fire I didn’t think much of it. I thought of smoke and how smoking it would be in the morning or how all the bugs would be stuck to my car but I never really thought about the devastation that a fire can produce. If I can recall correctly we had a fire at FGCU  couple of years ago and it burnt down a lot of trees. Imagine FGCU without trees I really would not think of it has FGCU anymore because I feel FGCU is so eco-friendly if we did not have it we would lose our character.

I never realized how much I took the trees and the nature trail for granted. It is a beautiful trail and you can see some amazing things. Yes you might get a little muddy but what’s not fun about that? Anyways, just after taking that trail that was in our backyard it made me see how nice and pretty our campus really is.

Colloquium Run Down!!!

When first starting Colloquium in January I thought it was a “tree hugger” class. I figured I would read the information but wouldn’t learn anything. But as the weeks went on and I read more and more articles about different problems with the world it made me think a lot different. I found out that I was blind to what was going on and did not know much about our planet earth.

I had always heard of global warming but never paid any attention to it. But after watching the inconvenient  truth and reading articles I have learned that it is a big issue and if we don’t start changing our ways we will set ourselves up for disaster. Al Gore who was the one who narrated it, gave great detail about how we are so oil obsessed  we would kill and do anything of it. It is sad that within the past 100 years or so we have done more damage to our earth than any one else that has been here before us.

Taking a stand and teaching what you believe is something that more and more people need to do. For instance when watching Food inc. it showed where our food came from chickens and cows. It was disgusting how the living conditions were for these animals. They were all close together stepping in each other’s feces not being able to move and just living a terrible life. Before watching this I use to love Purdue chicken that you just pop in the oven and it would be ready in 10 minutes. However, after watching this I have not picked up any Purdue chicken. I find it ironic how some people say that the natural way of raising and killing these animals is inhuman but they are all for corporation plants that treat their animals like crap. I do not know about you but I rather have the chicken I eat come from a sanitary open farm not a closed dark warehouse.

One thing that I would have never learned unless I took this class is about how oil hungry we are. There are so many other resources we can use but we still keep coming back to fossil fuel. Burning fossil fuel is the big culprit for a lot of things that are going wrong. If we would get rid of the coal and focus on wind and solar power we could really make a difference. Solar and wind is unlimited we would never have to worry about running out. In addition, it would create thousands of thousands of jobs. I have realized that American’s don’t like change and that they rather dig themselves into a hole than change their way of living. Well congratulations we have!

The world is defiantly taking a turn for the worst and after reading all these articles and seeing all these documentary it defiantly has made me think what I have contributed to this downfall. I have a v6 engine, I do not even have a bike and I keep my television on 24/7. I know I am only one person but if I can realize that I am part of the problem why can’t anyone else. American in my opinion needs to stop being so hungry for oil and really focus on the important aspects of the world.  If we don’t we will not have a world to live on. This course has really taught me the value of energy and how wasting it is not only harming our generation but generations to come.

Fort Myers Cemetary

I mapped out the Fort Myers Cemetery for my service learning project. At first, I just thought of it as an easy assignment but soon I found out that I was wrong. I found out a lot about myself when doing this project. At the first entrance to the cemetery I was thinking about why I chose this particular place for my service learning.  The graveyard was not very pretty and it was located right behind public housing!  There were ant piles everywhere and in some spots the ground sunk in. The above ground caskets had cracks in them which made them very creepy. I finally realized, after time, that uniqueness of this cemetery gave it character.

The cemeteries I have been to have been maintained and well groomed.  Most of the plots had nice potted flowers and the grounds looked neat and tidy. The Fort Myers Cemetery was the opposite.  The ant hills, the disarray of the entire cemetery made me feel sad for the people buried there.   The Fort Myers Cemetery did have all different types of people that were laid to rest there. The tombstones were dated from the 1800’s to just a couple of years ago. Every single one of those people had a story to tell and somehow you could see it on the tombstone. As I walked up and down the cemetery roads taking pictures of all the tombstones and seeing a little piece of each person it got me thinking how they all ended up here. We look at life with such hate and discrimination and judgment but once we are put to rest you never know who will be laid to rest in front of you, next to you or across from you.

I saw people that were laid to rest with their whole families from their great great grandfather to their aunt. I also saw people that were laid to rest with no family member in sight. There were tombstones with a cross on it as well as tombstones with KKK engraved on it. I saw graves of people who were WW1 veterans and of teenagers that fought in WW2 and died for their country. Two brothers were both killed in the service and they were buried next to each other knowing what they did was right. There is such a diversity of people that are there it is really cool to see all the culture that was around Fort Myers 200 years ago and what is still their today.

I saw a tombstone that reflected a birthday two years after the civil war started. It got me thinking on how their life was and what they went through. I saw a lot of tombstones that were in the 1800’s that the children died before the parents. I kept asking Rebecca isn’t this weird how a lot of the younger children are dead before their parents. She then reminded me what you (Dr. Wilkinson) said on your trip to downtown Fort Myers. Children in that time died because of the flu and small pox. It was so weird to see in person, what you were talking about.

I saw all different types of tombstones some relating to religion, some relating to the personal characteristic of that person, but the one thing that really stood out to me was that some didn’t have dates of their death. The tombstone was there with the name and birth date but the death date wasn’t there. It wasn’t like they were still alive for the fact that it was in the 1800’s. What could of happen? Did they forget to get buried there? Was their body lost? My mind keeps racing with all of these questions on why the death date was not on the tombstone. I don’t think it would have been a big deal if it was only on one or two of the tombstones but at least 30 tombstones didn’t have death dates on it! I have never heard of that in my life. I still can’t understand why they don’t have one.

Another thing that I found was interesting was people that already had their plot and tombstone picked out but they were still alive. There was one in particular that had a picture of a woman on it born in 1964 with no date of death and apparently she is still living, and it was right next to her husband who had died.  I understand that she wanted to be next to her husband but why would you want your face on a tombstone that says “loving mother” when you’re not dead yet. There were a lot of things that I saw that I would never do.  However, to each their own, who am I to judge how they want to live their eternal life or the rest of their existing life.

The major thing that really made me realize that I really cared for children was the fact that some of the infants that died within the same day as their birth date didn’t have names. This really got to me.  Why in the world would a mother not want to name their child? They nurtured and carried that baby for 9 months and they couldn’t even name it? It just blew me away how some people could do that. This got me thinking and talking to Rebecca that was there with me. Her viewpoint was different.  She did not see the big deal that the baby didn’t have a name.  But I was really disturbed by this. Looking at a tombstone so small and knowing when going up to “heaven” that the baby would not have a name really unsettle me.

The tombstones would read baby and then the last name. The first one that I saw and really stuck with me was “baby funk”. That is what was on the baby’s tombstone. Another one read infant son of. I just feel that is not right. A baby should have a name and it should have its own identity. Now as these tombstones came around it really made me wonder why didn’t the mother name her child? Was it that she didn’t want to get close to it? I couldn’t tell you the answer. However, as I was walking around and really thinking about this it showed me that I have a passionate side for this and do not think it is right.

As I was talking to other people about this situation, I got all different types of answers. The usual answer was - why do you even care.  Other answers were: I don’t know, it was her decision, but then one person said well some of the baby’s are wards of the state. Now, I knew none of the tombstones of the babies that I came around were wards of the state for the fact that they all had last names or were buried next to their parents. But that very next day when I went back to the graveyard I found a baby that was a ward of the state. The tombstone read Infant 1938. It broke my heart. No one buried next to it just lying peacefully in the ground without a mother or a father or even a name. How could a mother or father throw a child away and not even care to name it.

As I walked and saw more and more it unsettled me more and more. I felt that it would help me deal with it if I gave them names. Obviously this will have no effect on anything but in my mind they should be buried with names. So I all gave them names from Frank, Tom, Brain they all had a name and a place in my heart.

Overall the service learning really made me think in ways that I have never before. Seeing people’s tombstone really makes you question what did they do in life? Where they a good person? Going back, I am very happy that I did this as my project as it opened my eyes and let me into a whole another world that I was not aware of. But just in case you are wondering after spending time in the Fort Myers Cemetery I will be happily buried in a mausoleum where no bugs, ants, rust or dirt can get on me. J

We're not in Kansas anymore...

When going to downtown Fort Myers I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had seen plenty of downtown areas before so I was trying to see what would be so different about Fort Myers. Well let me tell you, Downtown Fort Myers is not like any other downtown areas.

Of course there were a couple of skyscrapers but nothing like Miami or New York City. There were hotels and bars but it was a lot more intimate than any other downtown area I have ever been to. There wasn’t lot of traffic and the river flowed right through it all. It was very peaceful. Peaceful would not be a word I would use to describe any downtown areas that I have been to.

Our first stop downtown was to the railroad museum. It was old but had a lot of artifacts and a lot of history was in there. Starting off with a huge skeleton of a sloth. The sloth had to have been at lest 9 feet tall with big paws. When I think of a sloth I think of Sid on the Ice Age movie. The little sloth that was dumb. But obviously that was a movie and this was real life.

The next skeleton we saw was of the saber tooth tiger. It is the newest cat to die off. It is crazy about what kind of animals lived in Fort Myers thousands of years ago. It was crazy to see how big the animals were. They were all larger than life and I definitely wouldn’t want to see one of those animals walking down the street now.

The next section that we went into was the history about the Caloosa Indians. They would make hunting instruments out of sticks and put a seashell on the end and sharpen it so they could kill with it. They also used it them to dig out canoes and rivers. I definitely got the sense that these Indians were very driven people and fought for what they got.

The next stop was the history of Fort Myers. We saw a miniature model of how Fort Myers looked when the fort was right on the water. Now there are two streets in front of the fort. It was cool to see all the different phases Fort Myers has gone through and see how it has grown and has its own characteristics.

Once we got done with the museum it was time to park at Centennial Park and walk around. I enjoyed this a lot seeing the brick roads and the little restaurants and bar. It made me feel like I was in a little town not in downtown Fort Myers. There was that much traffic and the road were very clean. But seeing downtown from sky view had to be the best. Being on top of indigo’s roof at the restaurant and pool was such a lovely sight.

Looking over I could see everything and it made me think what was here before me. Was a saber tooth tiger walking this same ground that I was, or a dinosaur. Looking over and seeing so many small buildings and then just seeing forest isn’t what you usually see.

Downtown is a place that I will never forget mainly because out bus broke down and I had so much homework to do. But over seeing all the sights and really seeing what Fort Myers was about was a lot of fun.

Japan- Whats really going on.....

Japans earthquakes and tsunamis were devastating to the area in which it was in. Homes were torn down, buildings distorted, lives flipped upside down. Then on top of it all they have to worry about a nuclear power plant destroying everything.  Now after being in this colloquium class for this semester I have began to look at things differently. So instead of looking at all the physical damages I began to look at the damages that no one sees and is not displayed. What has this Nuclear leak done to the food, animals, or people. Nuclear waste is very toxic and if ingested is fatal. Thinking about how the wind moves and how so many contributing factors of how this nuclear waste could become transported really scares me. Think about it we already have a nuclear plume over the ocean coming our way. What if it comes and all the food and water in Washington and all the other western states gets contaminated? What would we do? Or what if the food from Japan that gets shipped here was contaminated and someone misses something and people die from it. Granted only 4 percent of food import comes from Japan. But still lives are at risk. Think about in Japan they are an island. All that toxic fumes will eventually end up in the ocean water or evaporated to them come down and contaminate all the plants. This is a very scary situation.  Japan might not be able to get rid of these toxic fumes for a while and all that leaking is getting evaporated and absorbed in the air. That will come down and affect us some way somehow. I know they can’t go and put a huge bubble over Japan. But I feel like more things should be done besides scanning things to see if there dial goes up for radiation or not. Also I have learned that America has learned from Japans mistakes. We in the states have thought about if something like this has happened what we would do. After September 11 they made sure there nuclear plants could handle a situation like this also to make sure not to put Nuclear power plants near populated cities. So that makes me think why didn’t Japan think about this and why didn’t Japans backup generators work. I feel people don’t think about situations like this until they happen which is not the way to go. Millions of people’s lives are at risk for something that could have been prevented. No matter what the government says I feel like a lot more things have been contaminated than what is being told. Japan along with a lot of other countries including the United States will be dealing with this issue for a long time. If it is with people dying from radiation, or plants from acidic rain, or animals from eating contaminated plants a lot of things are going to go wrong before they get better.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42184945

Food Inc. Who knew?

Would You Rather Have this?

                                                                     Or This?

Before watching Food Inc. I never really thought about how our food becomes food. Like I know they had to kill cows or chickens but I never really put a sense of meaning behind it. But once seeing this movie I can’t stop thinking about all the horrible things that people do to animals to get there meat.  I know I could never become a vegetarian but after that movie I defiantly went a different route when eating my chicken. Seeing how those chickens were kept was disgusting. All of them running around in their own fesses and not being able to move was horrible. Seeing thoes chickens locked up in thoes cages will stay with me forever. Seeing that when they had to go to the bathroom they would have to go right there and the chicken underneath them would then have their remains on thier feathers.It was such a distrubing sight. The same thing was happening to the cows they weren’t allowed to move and stayed in one spot most of the day. How they killed them was ten times worse. Still to this day I couldn’t figure out if the cows got squeezed to death or what. But no matter what that’s no way to kill an animal. After seeing all these dreadful things that are supposedly legal they showed us another way of treating animals. On one side you have the commercial side which is full of pesticides and cruelty but on the other side you have that country farmer down the street that’s letting his animals eat the right things, letting them roam around, and just plain out letting them live their lives. Commercialized farming for Tyson or any other chicken brand is like being there slave. You have to go by their rules and make sure you are doing what they want you to do. If that means being brutal to chickens so be, if that means killing cows in harmful ways then do it. However on the other hand this farmer lets his chickens and cows have a place to play and walk. He feeds his animals what they should eat not what’s cheap. He might not kill them in the most sympathetic way (slicing chickens necks) but it gets the job done and done right. It is not the nicest thing but He is someone with morals. Nevertheless, he is the one who is facing problems with the law. The law tries to make everything go one way and if someone tries to change that they will put it into a legal battle till the little man can’t afford going on. It is a bully type of situation that needs to be stopped. After watching this it really made me think what I was putting into my body. All these pesticides and fesses and just nasty stuff are just not healthy or smart to put into your body. It really opened my eyes to how natural preservatives are a really big thing and how hormones in the animal’s body are really bad for them. Ever since that movie I have looked at the chicken and meat in a totally different way. I make sure where meat comes from and see what exactly it has in it before I buy it.

Estero Bay

Thinking about how the earth can change in a day really doesn’t sound like much. But once you hear about how a certain place has changed over hundreds of years it defiantly starts to make you think. Fort Myers Beach has gone through so much stuff from hurricanes to different people in office a lot of stuff has happened. But one thing that has stayed the same is that little house off the beaten road. This is where we got to learn so much information about Fort Myers that usually you wouldn’t know. It got me thinking what if Fort Myers didn’t have the hurricanes or anything that it had happen to it would it be the same? Probably not! After we got a sight to what Fort Myers went through we went on a hike. This is where it really got me thinking on how people can make a difference and create something new. You look at something every day and you really can’t see the differences and changes but if you see something and then come back ten years later you will defiantly see something new. This is what I thought when going to the Estero Bay. I thought about this when I was hearing about how you (Professor Wilkinson) had grown up and done so much for this area. Creating the bridge way making the maps it really made me think about how people really cherish this land. When taking the hike I kept thinking back on how was this land 10, 15, 20 years ago? Was that tree there? Was that birds nest there? Was that pond there? There are so many great things that live in an area where you usually wouldn’t have thought to look. I never thought I would be able to see a waterfront view from the little house where we started off in, but sure enough a little bit into the mangrove trees and you could see the water. I think that’s amazing how in such an industrialized area you can still find a piece of serenity and really look and see something from a new perspective. Looking around and seeing all the different types of plants, trees, and animals really made me think how blind I have been. I go the same route to work every day but not once have I ever just looked outside my window and see what’s actually going on in the environment. Well after taking this trip I differently got a sense of reality put back into me. Did you know that there are three different types of mangroves all different but similar all in the same ways? It is crazy how we take mangroves and just our environment for granted. But wait until it’s all gone and then we will be missing it. What if instead of those gorgeous mangrove trees there were high rises and condos. Not so serine anymore. This field trip had an impact on me that I defiantly didn’t think it would have. I would love to go back 5 or even 3 years from now and see all the different things that have changed.

The Last child in the woods

When reading the last child in the woods it really got me thinking. Has our day-in-age surpassed being outside and enjoying the fresh air? The way I look at it and this section backs me up is yes, in fact we have. Kids are worried about what video game is out or what TV show is on they could care less if there is a big adventures waiting for them right on the other side of the door. The last child in the woods explains when the author was a little boy he would run around and build forts and climb orange trees. He could care less what Pokémon was out or what ninja was killing who. He was free and so was his mind. It really puts it in to perspective. More and more kids are becoming obese and being diagnosed with ADHD. And we wonder why? The answer to that is fairly simple kids don’t go outside. Children have energy in them that they need to burn off but if they are inside all day watching TV on the computer or on the game boy that energy is staying within them. They aren’t running around and expelling that energy which causes them to get ADHD. Obviously this is just my mind set but I think it can be backed up by the studies that the author has made. The children don’t go outside and they get diagnosed with a mental disease and become obese. If they would just go outside and see how much fun it could be maybe then they would realize electronics aren’t everything. Now I can’t be a hypocrite because I was one of those kids that sat inside and rather eat or watch TV than go outside and play. But now I am paying for it. I am over weight and have learning problems and getting tested for ADD. Now what does that tell you? My two sisters who did like to go outside and play and liked to play spots and adventure off are now in shape and with no learning disabilities. I defiantly think there is a lot of truth to what the author is saying in the last kid in the woods. But let me tell you now when I go outside I enjoy every minute. If it is just a walk around the neighborhood or going to get the mail. Those walks really help me out. Whenever I am stress I always take a walk around my neighborhood and once I get back inside it’s like I have started with a blank slate. Fresh and ready to go again! Kids need to be outside enjoying the weather getting their knees scratched up from falling out of tree, building forts. Plain in simple KIDS NEED TO BE KIDS not little electronical robots. I am afraid after our generation the outside world to kids will be a strange and unfamiliar place.

Hot Flat and Crowded

Hot flat and crowded are the words used to describe our earth today. Reading this chapter really opened my eyes to the things you usually don’t think about. Do you really think about how many people are in the world or why it so hot outside or why the world is “flat”? These questions don’t cross my mind on a regular base but they should. Reading this has really taught me something about our earth.  Hot, everyone complains how hot it is. But do we ever ask ourselves why it is so hot?  The main reasons to why our core temperature is on a raise are due to greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide and methane. These two greenhouse gasses do the most damage they are released by burning fossil fuels, burning trees and even cow belching. Would you have ever though cow belching would be bad for the atmosphere? But sure enough it is. “Cattle belching can be worse than a highway full of hummers”. The reason why cattle gasses is are high methane. Even the little bit of things end up adding up and causing a big effect on the earth’s temperature. Don’t get me wrong green house gasses are good but too much of them are when they start causing problems and that’s where we are at. When reading this I would have not learned any of this. Looking back and seeing that our core temperature has on average warmed .8 degrees Celsius is a really bad thing. Think about it when the temperature raises a lot of bad things happen. Ice melts, crops don’t grow and it is horrible to be outside in. I really see now how using my car instead of bike can really make a difference. If we all do our part it could really help our environment, our atmosphere and our future. The next half of this that I found interesting was the crowded part. I mean when am on the highway trying to get to school or work I think that’s crowded. But I have never actually thought how crowded our earth really is. As of right now there are 6.7 billion people on the world. That is a lot of people. Think about you waiting in line to eat at a restraunt and then seeing 6.7 billion people in front of you. You would feel like a needle in a hay pin. That’s how we all feel now but just don’t know it. The world is growing and things are just getting more and more crowded. They have averaged that the world will grow 2.5 billion people within the next 43 years. THAT IS INSANE!!!!  If none of us know what we are doing and we keep doing what we are doing to the environment we will run this planet into the ground. We are already doing serious damage to the universe imagine not teaching the 2.5 billion people that will be born in the next 43 years how to reuse, reduce, recycle or teach them all that we know now. With our planet getting bigger we need to teach everyone what we are doing to our atmosphere so we can put a stop to it and contain what has already happen. The last aspect was flat. When I think of flat I think there is no mountains, no hills just flat. But that is not what the author was saying. The author pertains “flat” as everyone becoming the same person. Not like clones but we are all technological and that we need to wind off of that. For the fact that we use fossil fuel to ruin America we need to stop that and become dependent on something else. The author says that we are all going into the Energy Climate Era and that we need energy to run anything. Well the energy that we need is coming from things that will hurt us. The fossil fuel that gets burned like I said before gets used by methane and carbon dioxide gets released into the air and hurts us in the atmosphere. Being flat is not a good thing neither is crowded or hot. If this has taught me anything it has taught me that we need to become a lot more cautious of what we are doing and really see what we are doing to this planet. Thinking about what I do I feel ashamed because I contribute to this hot, flat and crowded planet.  I use my car when I could walk or ride a bike. I could use a library computer instead of my own and when I have children if I don’t teach them everything I know I will just be another statics. I have really realized that the world is hurting and we are to blame for it.

Inconvenient Truth

When I heard we were going to watch a documentary I thought it was going to be boring and long but I was defiantly wrong. An Inconvenient Truth is about Al Gore and his research on global warming. It is a very intense and very “put it in your face” kind of movie. He really tells us that if we don’t start changing our ways we will not have a world to live on. The world has already started to change due to global warming from the polar bears drowning because the ice caps are melting to the increase hole in the ozone layer to the droughts to the floods. Mother Nature is telling us to stop what we are doing or even worse things are going to happen. If we don’t change things this will have a huge effect on not how we live but how our children live and their children live. He really told us that the time to change is now. He showed charts about China and how they are trying to stop this global warming and showed all these different ways we could at least slow down this aspect of global warming. One being lets use wind power instead of burning fossil fuel. Fossil fuel release green house gasses into the atmosphere that makes the hole in our ozone layer even bigger. This then makes it thicker and makes the green house gasses that use to be able to diminish in the atmosphere come back and be reflected back onto earth. When this effect happens the core of our earth hearts up. When an increase of 1 degree at the equator happens it makes an effect at the arctic of seven degrees. So what we think isn’t a big deal at the equator is actually a huge deal in the poles. With wind power we wouldn’t be releasing those toxic fumes into the atmosphere and would be able to control the temperature. We know what we need to do to stop this but we aren’t. Ale Gore in the Inconvenient Truth shows us all these stats and really shows how bad we are treating the environment. All these other countries are trying to do their best in trying to prevent pollution as much as  possible and it seems us Americans feel like we cannot be touched. We really need to look at what we are doing and try to find away to stop these entire greenhouse gasses. What are these green house gasses? They are carbon dioxide, methane and all the material that gets stuck up into the atmosphere that makes an impression on the temperature. Ale Gore is very passionate about global warming and made predictions on what has happen to what will happen if we keep it up. We have used more than double our natural resources in the past 50 years than we have in the past 500 years. This documentary has really shown me that America in general needs to own up for what we have done and try to fix it. Because in the end we are only hurting ourselves and we will end up paying for it.

ECHO-feild trip

                                

Semi arid

Tropical Highlands

Urban Gardening

ECHO was something that I was really looking forward in going to. I love their mission and love how they are taking something so serious such as global hunger and trying to make a difference. I love farms so when I was told that’s where we were going I was very excited. But once we pulled up I knew it wasn’t going to be the exact farm I was use to. Instead of lots of animals and livestock they had plants and trees and vegetables and fruits. Their mission was to see in different climates what food would grow so that they could send the seeds over sea so people that need it could have it and grow food so they could eat it. Some areas that they had were semi arid, hot and humid high lands and tropical forest. They mimic the weather with sprinklers and made the geographic identical to what other people would have to be farming on. So if they were trying to figure out what plants would grow on a hilly area they had a hilly area and tested out the different seeds. Where ever you went you saw something different. From plants, vegetables, tress, fruits, to some animals. They were all there for a purpose. You saw a goat and rabbits and they were a cash crop. You could use their milk, fur, and meat to sell, use and eat. You saw strawberries and cabbage that was used for their families so they could eat. But something that I wasn’t expecting was tires. You would think old tires wouldn’t be useful for anything but boy are you wrong. Old tires can be made for steps going up a hilly area or for urban gardening. Urban gardening is another thing we learned about. It is when people don’t have a lot of space to grow things so they use their roofs or old tires or anything that has space in it. They take old aluminum cans and line them around the old tire in socks and then put the soil and seeds in it. You wouldn’t have thought something like grocery bags or tires could do something but man it does. Then we looked around and they had us sit down and told us about this amazing seed call Maringa seeds. These seeds do wonders for people. For the fact that it gives off more calcium, vitamin a, potassium iron and protein than there competition it can really help people. They told us a story about how all these mothers that were pregnant being very poorly feed. But only a couple of weeks later after eating the leafs these mothers were healthy and so were their babies. It is amazing that something like that can make someone healthy. Not to mention that the Maringa trees are beautiful. They are huge kind of an off white color and their roots are amazing. I learned so much from there and defiantly would love to do volunteering there. They are taking their time and money and really helping out the world a little at a time. On another aspect of what they do at ECHO they try to see what different kind of planting works the best. So they will have different techniques for planting things, to see which one gives more products. ECHO is a place where there is so much to learn that you defiantly have to come back to really grasp what they are doing there. I feel honored that I had the privilege to see what they do and see how people are making a difference.

Corkscrew Santuary

Corkscrew sanctuary is something I was not expecting.  I didn’t even know it was there and had no idea what I was getting myself in to. But as I looked around and tried to get the sense of feeling of nature I became more and more interested. I learned so much from the different kinds of trees, to birds, and animals. All of it was very new to me. I was raised up in a not so much commercialized area but coming out here and seeing how Mother Nature works is amazing. At one glance you will see huge cypress trees, different types of plants and then in the next second a huge alligator. It was so interesting to see how everything works together. While there I learned things that I never knew before. Such as fires are sometimes a good thing and how we are trying to re-establish a bird colony and the living machine. The living machine was the one thing that caught my eye. I have never even heard of it before. Corkscrew Sanctuary has the first living machine in Florida. It is used to reuse the water in the restrooms. It takes what ever gets flushed down the toilet to these two big tanks underground to start initial anaerobic digestion. It then goes to 5 different takes where these tanks are full of bacteria, green pants such as trees all the way to algae, and small animals. This is where nitrates comes from and are converted from ammonia and organic nitrogen. Now the water gets pumped into a sixth tank and then pumped out for the next step. This is where all the little sediments that made it through all of that get pushed back to the anaerobic tanks again to be broken down again. The water then goes to two plastic lined with artificial marshes filled with crushed limestone. With all the marsh in there it removes the last bit of nitrogen and converts it to the harmless nitrogen gas. But they also have the water get disinfected with chlorine and put into a holding tank and then travels to a chamber to dechlorinate the water with sodium sulfite. That is when it goes back into the toilets as the clean water that we saw. I would have never believed it unless I saw it. The living machine isn’t this big contraption it is a 40 x 40 area and helps the sanctuary a lot. For the fact they have so many people visiting this living machine really helps and promotes what can be done to help reuse water. I learned so much about nature and just really how everything works together. I really enjoyed this field trip.