Yesterday, May fifth, I attended my last class as a freshman at the University of Vermont. This morning I woke up early and made my final trek of the semester to Salmon Hole.
My last visit to Salmon Hole was shortened by the ongoing chaos of college. While I was there I did not feel as though I slowed down enough to listen to the community around me. I was on autopilot, consumed by the “human world.”
Some days, my feelings for the rain don’t extend past blaming the water from preventing me to hammock, or wear a t-shirt outside. Unfortunately for me, it rains a lot in Burlington. Some days, I try to appreciate the rain. Some days, the rain shows me how to appreciate it. Today, was one of those days.
The moment I crossed the tree line the rain began, trickling here and there. It would pause from time to time, as if in order to take a breath. All of the trees were blooming, my eyes were picking up on shades of green I had never noticed before.
My favorite thing about coming back to Salmon Hole is the different pieces, community members and changes that I notice with each visit.
(Palmer, 2017)
In my time traveling to Salmon Hole I have gotten to know the communities here a little bit better. It’s taken a decent amount of time to even scratch the surface of the world of Salmon Hole. The same goes for my time at UVM. Showing up as a first year people are scrambling to make friends, to find their place within the UVM community. People are surrounded by people they don’t know, but desperately want to get to know. The thing is, the process of building friendships takes time, and it happens when most of us aren’t even paying attention. It’s a similar process building relationships outside of human communities.
My relationship with Salmon Hole has ebbed and flowed with the course of my semester, much like the ebb and flow of the relationships I have built on campus. When I first showed up at Salmon Hole I thought I had to know everything and everyone to be a part of the community there. I got discouraged when I forgot the name of a tree, or couldn’t identify the buds of a twig immediately. I got so wrapped up in my scramble to find my place in this community, I missed the moment I became a part of the ecosystem. I realize now, that the first time I stepped foot onto the rocks at Salmon Hole, looking out over the water and the city of Winooski, that was the moment I became a part of the community.
(Palmer, 2017)
I think people forget that even the pavement of the sidewalk came from materials harvested from other living things. People forget that even though pollutants flow along the pavement running off into the water, those pollutants are still a part of the system. People see themselves as sitting atop the ecosystems, as if we float only millimeters above the surface, separate from the other living things. But we aren’t. Existing requires a relationship with the living things around you, it’s unavoidable.
(Palmer, 2017)
So many of us spend so much time on the hunt, looking for our place in our human communities. We look for these connections by trying to “better ourselves”, we go to school to get good grades, we get good grades to get a job, we get a job to hopefully have a family and someday retire. All along just searching for connection.
(Palmer, 2017)
Something that the Rubinstein school has opened my eyes to, is that no matter where we go or who we spend time with, we are a part of a larger system. We are connected. Salmon Hole and the Orchards have allowed me a glimpse into the world that supports me, a world that I can become so blind to when I get caught up in my own hunt for connection. These places showed me that I am never alone.
It is so easy to get caught up in the “journey” of life. It’s easy to focus on grades, on school, on the little stressful bits of life. Salmon Hole gave me a chance to break away from that.
(Palmer, 2017)
“The physical universe is basically playful. There is no necessity for it whatsoever. It isn’t going anywhere. It doesn’t have a destination it ought to arrive at. But it is best understood by analogy with music. Because, music as an art form is essentially playful. We say you play the piano, you don’t “work” the piano. Music is different from travel. When you travel you are trying to get somewhere. In music, though, one does not make the point of the composition the end of the composition. If so, the best conductors would be those who played fastest. And there would be composers who only wrote finales… Same way with dancing! You don’t aim at a particular spot in the room, because that’s where you will arrive. The whole point of the dancing is the dance… We simply cheated ourselves the whole way down the line. We thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end. And the purpose was to get to that end… But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing, or to dance while the music was being played.”
~Alan Watts
I came across this quote in a youtube video. But it beautifully sums up what I feel about human culture and our connection to the environment.
(Palmer, 2017)
My whole life a part of me understood. I grew up dancing, singing and running in circles outside. My nature was basically playful. Somewhere along the way the dancing slowed. I stopped paying attention. I bought into the idea that I had to follow the typical American path, in constant search of success.
(Palmer, 2017)
But then, I found myself standing on the rocks of Salmon Hole; I found myself standing amongst the Robins and the sumac; I found myself amongst the chaos of the universe.
(Palmer, 2017)
Even when we don’t see it, even when we are caught up in the tasks of daily life, the rest of the world is there waiting. The ground supports the weight of our bodies, it supports our life, our culture. We are made up of the air, the water, and the earth. We spend our lives in search of some quantifiable success, some way to measure that we are enough, in hopes that other people will think we are enough. We think we are missing something, but the thing we are missing, is the thing we are trying to ignore. Everything is intricately connected, like a beautiful, playful composition. In order to find that thing we are in desperate need of, all we have to do is open our ears and feel the music.
(Palmer, 2017)
Throughout my visits to Salmon Hole and the Heald Street Orchards, I slowly began to notice the music. Some days I showed up to this place and forgot that I am living in music. I forgot that my life is not a journey. I forgot that this project is not a piece to this journey. Still, even when I couldn’t hear it, the music was there.
(Palmer, 2017)
I am so grateful for everything that Salmon Hole has taught me. I am grateful that my ears were open to listening. I came to UVM to study the environment. I wanted to fix what humans have “messed up.” That was the purpose of my journey. Today, that journey is coming to a close. Intentionally, I am ending it before I can allow it to begin.
Instead I hope to listen and enjoy the beauty, because the time I spent with Salmon Hole, have been some of the sweetest notes of my semester.