This was a semester of two “firsts” for me. I decided to take a philosophy class and an ecology class for the first time in my college career. I came in with an open mind about both and was pleasantly surprised by both of them and the overlaps they created. Being in this Black Ecology class has helped me understand what environmental racism is and how black people have always been so closely tied with the lands they live on. It has also taught me what nature should mean for everyone and how to better engage with it.

In my philosophy class I learned about a philosopher named Shusterman who believed in this idea called the somesthetic where the everyday is considered beauty. This means that there is no need to take something ordinary and morph it into something abstract in order to call it art and beauty. He also describes the three elements in the method for attaining a waking state. He says we need to slow down and think, be simplistic, and live more fully in the moment. One of the key examples we talked about in class was the Japanese emersion forest where people would go on tours there with someone who would encourage being emersed in the nature and not worry about how fast paced the rest of the world might be living. I thought that this philosopher tied in perfectly with my Black Ecology class because here we learn how to appreciate nature and the healing that people can get from it.

Both classes have taught me just how much we depend on the land we live on and how it can provide us with so much as long as we are wiling to treat it with respect. I really appreciate when there can be applied overlaps amongst my classes because it allows me to explore ideas from different angles. These were two classes that I did not expect to find similarities in and therefore I was very excited to see how the healing effects of nature are taught in different subjects.