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Discovering the World I've Always Lived In

Ashlie Blackwell

I always appreciated nature as a whole. But I spent this summer discovering the flora and fauna I see every year.

I started for a class, but soon found myself stopping the car and crouching in the ditch to photograph some plant I had probably happily ignored for my whole life.

Soon, my identification app had a hundred entries, then more. Most of the things I found myself drawn to I recognized, as “that type of tree that grew on the corner of the lot”, or “that plant that sticks to your clothes when you brush it”, or even “that horrible huge spider that is too fast to catch and always in between the window layers”.

Now I know their names, and I appreciate them -even my nemesis spider, if it’s at a distance. And as it evolved, I began to find, what started as classwork, was easing my stress and keeping my eyes and my mind out and away from my worries, for the next unknown.