(no subject)

My first final is done with. It was Introduction to Geography, which is a survey level physical geography course. I'm much more interested in human geography, but I decided to get a GIS certificate, and that will put me one class away from a geography minor, so I figured I might as well do the minor and its pre-reqs.

Anyway, this class' exams have all been Scantron forms, and this was no exception. Since I've aced it all so far, I didn't bother going over my exam sheet a second time as I did with the first two tests. I didn't change anything then anyway, and my grade is fairly safe right now.

So there are three left! This morning I'm working on the take-home history final which is due Friday. This afternoon the take home for Environmental Anthropology gets posted, which is due Wednesday afternoon. Thursday is my other in-class final, the history one is due Friday, and that's the end!

I'm working on my plans for the winter break. I need to devote an hour a day to Spanish, a few hours to academic literature. There's a lot to learn out there.

(no subject)

As I work on the first part of my Environmental Anthropology final and reread Keith Basso's "Quoting the Ancestors," I'm struck again by how moving and powerful these observations are to me.

It makes me think deeply about places and their identities as well. What is it that makes me sad and nostalgic when I think about things that have changed? To take one of my favorite thoughts about living in the present, that there are no ordinary moments, and apply it to space and place, maybe one can say that there are no ordinary places. I believe that, to some extent. Yet when I think of a place that no longer is, or when I'm in a place that is in the process of unbecoming, I feel wistful. Mournful. Where is that attachment from? Part of it is being reminded of the loss of opportunity to experience.

I stood amidst mining ruins near Hubbell, Michigan, looking up at the towering concrete columns that once held steam-powered stamping engines that crushed the stones fed to them by trains that hauled ore out toward Torch Lake on viaducts flying forty feet above the ground. I stood and imagined the sounds and sights. The chugging locomotives, the ground vibrating under the pummeling of machines, the thunderous crashing of ore dumping into hoppers and being smashed by trip hammers. But those things are all distorted echoes of a past that's gone. I'll never know it. At this point, I'll never even talk to anyone who knew it.

It's painful to think about the loss of these experiences. And the experiences will always fade away, no matter how many material remnants are left. Today there is no one left alive who experienced mining copper by candlelight under the surface of the Keweenaw. Someday soon, there may be no one left alive who experienced a manually operated telephone switchboard, or who programmed computers with punch cards.
We have artifacts and remnants, but what of the experience? Where does it go? How can we keep it? And why is important? Does keeping the ideas and echoes of places and things connect us to our past, or weigh us down in our flight toward the future?

Perhaps individual perception of this is tied to age. The younger we are, the fewer things we've experienced and know to be gone, and the more things there are ahead to discover. The older we are, the more things are missing and to be pined for, and the fewer things stretch out ahead of us. In light of this, I wonder if a certain sense of detachment from the past would be beneficial. Through the last long while, I've definitely moved toward a perspective I refer to, admittedly as someone with nothing more than a popular understanding of the concept, as zen. I try to realize that, at least for me, there is so much beauty inherent in the finite nature of a particular thing. If they were never lost to time, they would be something other than what they are. Disappearance ought to feel less painful in the context of the realization that whenever something is destroyed, it is transformed into something else. Whenever the state of something changes, it settles into a new state.

How does one find comfort in looking to the future and embracing change while knowing that time will strip away things that are very dear?