Blogging on Blogging
Often, when I am planning to travel to an Italian, German, or Spanish-speaking country, my foreign language skills improve the closer and closer I get to the trip. Then, when I arrive at my destination, and begin to immerse myself in the foreign experience, the language becomes ever so more natural to me. Eventually, I feel at home. But, to my surprise, towards the end of the trip, an inverse process occurs — I stumble on grammar, am reduced to the present tense, and forget all sorts of familiar, every-day words.
Experimenting with this blog has been much the same for me as learning a new language.
Experimenting with this blog has been much the same for me as learning a new language. I had to seek help, stumble a lot, and make many mistakes before I could begin to get the hang of it. And now that I have, my vacation here at Lake Hawthorne is coming to an end: We are about to leave this idyllic place for home — forsaking the frogs in favor of sirens in Washington DC. Sitting, for the last time, on the porch in the early morning, watching the reflecting sun ripple like diamonds across the water, I take my leave, wondering: Have I met my husband’s challenge to use the blog to relate theory to practice and practice to theory? More specifically, has blogging affected how I experienced my own vacation at our cabin, here on the lake? Did it alter the way I think about and perceive what I am reading? Will I keep blogging, or will my new found enthusiasm deteriorate, much the way my skills at a foreign language might, when I return home to Washington and become engrossed in the world of work?
The Forest Food Web (courtesy Maryland Public Schools)
I speculate… Yes, to be sure, blogging has made a difference. I am more attuned to, and reflective about, what is happening around me. I find that, when reading, writing, and reflecting on my own experiences, I bring my whole self to bear on a problem, issue, or observation. Every object around me is brought into greater relief, and I can recall it in the greatest detail. Thus, I can still see in my mind’s eye the three pileated woodpeckers, their red top-nots bobbing, hammering away simultaneously at the dead tree adjacent to our house. At the same time, however — as is true when looking at any set of objects and activities in all their complexity — I experience how the whole is greater than any of the parts. So I see the frogs, the birds, the midnight sky, my grandchildren — even the deer ticks — as part of a wondrous on-going process: The substance of life, as well as the material for the blog. As Ron Burt might agree, it is the interaction among the diverse senses that is the source of good ideas.
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