Allie's Nature Blog

Tuesday, April 28, 2026 My outdoor experience was our trip to the Fort Worth Zoo today. The zoo was a great place to take a nice long walk. Despite it being an extremely humid day, I enjoyed the time spent outdoors. While I feel that I cannot fully call this an outdoor submersion because let’s face it, the zoo is completely man made, it was nice to just be outside and get to see wildlife. The zoo sometimes in the past has made me feel sad, to see these animals cooped up and not in their natural habitats like I thought they should be. But as I did more reading today about their different animals, I have realized they are doing things often for the animals good. The zoo is full of restorative and conservation projects, not simply all for the enjoyment of people. I think that may be what zoos were in the past, but now they have become more focused on education and enriching the lives of the animals.  While leaving my house to go to the zoo today, I was concerned about the weather. Sto...

  My best photo While it may seem bland to some, everytime I looked through my photos, my eye was drawn back to this photo. The colors are my favorite part. The sky is the best shade of blue, and the trees have their beautiful spring leaves. It feels nostalgic to me, I cannot quite express why, but I believe that is why I enjoy it so much.

Wednesday, April 21, 2026 I need wild because it keeps me sane. Even if it is just a mile walk outside, feeling the sunshine and breathing in fresh air helps ground me. It helps connect me to myself and to this natural world, instead of everything that is going on in my life. As a person going into medicine, I tend to look at things in how they affect my physical or mental wellbeing. Nature heals, and I believe that it can help both me and the patients I serve. When I am outside, I tend to be calmer, more focused on the present time and moment, and my body just feels more at ease.  In my future, I see myself especially using nature as a sanctuary. Nursing can be difficult on the mind, but spending time in the outdoors helps me reflect and slow down. I am lucky that when I go home to visit my family, I am going to a place that feels outdoorsy to me, and sort of like a sanctuary. I enjoy the time hiking or on a lake with my family, it brings me back to my inner peace. But talking abo...

Tuesday, April 21, 2026 A gloomy day. Both due to the rain and clouds covering the sky, as well as the fact that we did not get to go to the nature center one last time. The nature center has been such an amazing break from sitting in classrooms for the entire school day. It forced me to go out and get fresh air, as well as sweat a little and do something that felt accomplishing (not sure if that is a word or not, but I’m going with it).  However, I did enjoy today’s poetry readings, and I think the nature center would have been a bit hard for us to navigate with how muddy I’m sure it is. Although the mud may have made a little more fund on an experience depending on your outlook. But back to the poetry readings. Today I felt like I truly, for one of the first times, could understand what the poets were trying to say. Despite different language use, I was able to pick apart the lines and break it down for myself in a way to understand it. What I think is more difficult is that I ca...

Tuesday, April 7, 2026 A lovely day in Fort Worth today. Not too hot, a little overcast, making it perfect weather to do some work outdoors. I believe the bugs were enjoying it too because I got a large bug bite, but as my mom would say, “if that’s the worst thing that happens today, it was a pretty good day”.  We got so much more work done on the privet. It looked like we were trying to deforest the place by the end of the day. It really stunned me when I looked around at the end because I thought back to what it looked like when we started. The whole entire place had been covered and now it was it huge piles (an example pictured below). It truly makes me reflect on how one person does not think they can do much on their own, which likely yes, it would have taken one person a much longer time to do this, but as a group we can do so much more good, or damage, than on our own. It makes me think back to the Before the Flood documentary we watch. Thinking even just about red meat c...

Tuesday, March 31, 2026 Another day at the nature center! Today went by even quicker than last week which really surprised me because I thought that the privet was going to be much harder work. It was a bit more difficult to move and not whack someone with, but not much harder to cut like I thought it would. When I heard we were working with privet I was worried that it was going to be bad for my allergies and that I was going to get scratched up. But I was super thankful I wore long sleeves and had taken my allergy meds this morning because I didn’t get any sort of hives or bad nose, mouth, or eye itching.  I got to do some cutting down of the branches today which I didn’t do last week so that was definitely more of a workout then just hauling the branches away. It makes it more fun to switch up roles and not be in the same spot or job the whole time. Seeing the amount of invasive species growth makes me think about how much more there is to taking care of our lands than we usuall...