WRITING NATURE: 
DISCOURSES OF ECOLOGY

Universities exert a presence not only in academia but also in their physical geography: for the most part, they take up very large expanses of land and contain numerous buildings. The quest for the integration of a university into its natural surroundings is a huge task for university planners. For some universities, this goal has been accomplished quite well, and the university seems to have been a part of the landscape since the beginning of time; its buildings appear to have grown up with the trees. For other universities, though, the task was neglected or misunderstood, creating an effect similar to that of plastering over cracks in a wall. Into this latter category I place the University of Florida, which colonizes the center of the city of Gainesville, Florida.

On a weekday afternoon you would find me being driven across Gainesville to the northeast corner of the University of Florida campus; after a long, tiring day at high school I am going to my daily dose of college math. The car enters the parking lot, passing the 'guard house' that distributes parking permits, pulls up to the curb, and lets me off. I stand motionless for an instant, my eyes and mind adjusting to the dazzling Florida sun, but I am quickly off, the heat pushing me to the shade and cool of the classroom building. I cut the corner of the parking lot and turn onto the sidewalk. Looking down to avoid the blazing sunlight, I see tiny weeds poking up from sidewalk cracks: their tiny shoots proclaim independence from the university's aesthetic plaster. Ahead lie more spots of green that, both physically and visually, split the concrete into islands of modernity among the primality of nature. Every so often, one of these tufts of green has been reduced to shavings by the convenience of a weedwhacker, and I can see the horror&emdash;and elegance!&emdash;of nature decapitated. Those stalks were in the way of a humanity that had become the overbearing houseguest.

But here was not the only place that humans had interposed themselves unwanted: we have reintroduced wolves to Yellowstone and built toxin-producing cement plants. Both in our attempts to "save the environment" and to "destroy" it, we disrupt the legitimate and replace it with a poor imitation or nothing at all. Finding our "correct" place in nature is a challenge: does there even exist a correct place for humanity within the environment? Should we act the part of the Creator, the Destroyer, or the passive observer? Maybe it doesn't really matter, or maybe there is no right answer, but one thing is certain&emdash;we will struggle with this question forever.

Soon I reach the shade of a cluster of buildings, and there I rest for a while; class won't start for another ten minutes. Leaning my back against the wall, I look out over the parking lot I had rushed through earlier, and Argus looks back at me as the dazzling sun is reflected by hundreds of windshields. This light is not just reflected, however: much of it passes through the glass and attacks the car's cloth, leather, and plastic interior, which boil like an ant under a magnifying glass. Even the air inside those cars begins to cook, and metal seatbelt buckles can cause burns. One could say that the gates of the University are become the gates of Hell, for all the heat captured inside. A squirrel darts across the pavement, looking for nuts, but it is not boiling, and I realize that, were we to truly pay attention to nature, our cars would not be boiling either. Nature knows very well how to cool a tree and a squirrel, is a car that different? But we ignore nature, say that it's "natural" for cars to sizzle on the parking lot, and then waste energy trying to cool them afterwards.

This applies to buildings, too. Those nice, shiny glass cubes I can see across the parking lot are cooled by air conditioning to an acceptable temperature. This is especially important for the admissions office, which wishes to attract students, and so I pay taxes to make it cold enough in the summer and hot enough in the winter, and I say that it is "natural." But it is not natural, for trees stay cool without power lines; a building should be able to do the same&emdash;employ shading and optimal architecture to maintain its temperature without resorting to gigawatts of electricity.

After a few minutes leaning on the wall, I decide to go inside, since it is nearing the time class starts. Walking across the plain of concrete and brick that covers the courtyard outside Matherly Hall, I pass a few 'islands of nature'&emdash;square openings in the cement large enough for a single tree. These are places of amnesty for nature: here, in a controlled fashion of course, nature is allowed to express itself without fear of retribution. Wandering outside the square, however, means certain death for a plant and possible injury for an animal. Squirrels dart between the islands nervously, scanning their surroundings every few seconds, their fear of humans refined to a science.

These islands of immunity are perhaps more unnatural and more ugly than the shiny glass buildings that surround them. Squirrels don't look happy, and many plants are only sustained by the huge doses of fertilizer the University uses&emdash;they don't belong where man has dropped them. This was the fault of the planners: they inserted nature as an afterthought, for its "aesthetic value," but nature is only aesthetic when it is left alone. It cannot be transplanted or translated by unknowledgeable outsiders.

We do not know nearly enough about biology or ecology to be able to change nature without the possibility (and likelihood) of causing huge problems. For an example, one is tempted to point to the more esoteric subject of genetic engineering, but some aspects of simple gardening and species interactions are really out of our scientific grasp. Therefore we guess, make hasty decisions, ignore the lessons nature can teach us, and make big mistakes, causing everything from dead trees to invasions of vines. Our actions are motivated by selfish desires unencumbered by any thoughts of nature itself&emdash;in a word, convenience.

Past the islands of nature, I reach the end of the concrete wasteland where a walled-off grassy hill stands alone next to Matherly Hall. The hill's antique emerald beauty complements the medieval gargoyles on the building's roof, but both look slightly out of place next to the bright gray-white of the courtyard and the perpetual cell phone users. Modern and ancient, natural and unnatural, all come together at the sharp point of the wall that divides the courtyard from the hill. Standing outside Matherly Hall, I look nostalgically at that hill, for it seems to want some animals or children to play on it, but only the wandering eyes of bored students looking out the windows even give it a second glance. Where has the vitality of nature gone? Even its peace and calm are interrupted by giggles and loud conversations. Where has nature gone? It has been plastered over, covered up, swept under. The pieces that do show through as ends and tattered corners are periodically extinguished or confined to the island-prisons, and so the campus can assume both an unkempt, ratty look and an empty, barren one.

The philosophy of the University's planners does not work: nature in conflict with humanity produces ugliness. It is only when humanity and nature operate in concert that true beauty results.