Saint Fransisco of the Nature Preserve

San Felasco State Park is pretty awesome. After going on a hike last Sunday with my bio teacher and a few other students, I realized that going out into a forest in the morning is a very fulfilling thing. Not that I didn't know it, but...I guess just hadn't remembered.


Not too many animals on such a chilly day, but a lot of ground and a lot of green.


There was only five of us: four students and my teacher- and it was really a perfect number. Our teacher, with little fauna to point out, aside from giant banana spiders and the occassional bird, spoke to us about the different kinds of plant habitats that are extant in Northern Florida. It was interesting to look at the forest and understand that the trees that existed here, the shrubs, the entire ecosystem was not random or haphazard, but was uniquely tailored to the local environment (although, I now somewhat embarassingly admit that I don't remember many of the exact species or conditions Dr. Hapeman spoke of. I'm sure that a concrete knowledge of nature is only acquired through hearing those sorts of things over and over again...)


The whole excursion, in some odd way that only I might parallel, reminded me of going through museums in Italy with Dr. Westin, my art history teacher. In both museums and in nature, it is possible to walk around and look right at something--a painting or a tree--and miss so much information encoded in it.


For example, knowing a painting is from the late fifteenth century Florence and not mid-sixteenth century Venice can convey quite a lot about the context of the work. Likewise, to understand why there are decidiuous trees in Florida as was as coniferous can help better recognize the type of biome we live in.


It is this sort of "knowledge makes things richer" approach that I think has all but evaporated from the school system's methodology. Not necessarily from the school system, because, obviously, I'm a product of that system and I've apparently gotten the message. However, the current methodology certainly doesn't encourage students to connect learning with an enhanced view of our world. Right now, even in IB, it was often "Here is this fact--know it." Now, IB did have a lot of moments which related history, language, and literature to each other and to their greater place in the world. Yet, to convey a message so it's carried out of the classroom into the world with the student...that's a whole other monumental step.

Anyhow, as for San Felasco, I would definitely like to go back soon, perhaps when more fauna appear in the Floridian flora. Also, Dr. Hapeman seems to have a growing fan club of students who want to accompany him on various trips to Florida state parks, and I think I'd like to keep tagging along. Knowing more about the environment, how things have evolved and formed together, makes the outdoors seem even more beautiful and important to preserve.

I sometimes see myself in a role to express that importance to those who are too far from state parks to see it for themselves, perhaps those in the government and in private business. But that's whole other story.