Going into the archives at Geneseo was really eye-opening for me because I had no idea just how many resources our library held. Liz, our archivist walked us around the Special Collections section of the library, showing us old maps with all the property owners, old historic architecture drawings and various other things such as papers in the Wadsworth collection showing property transactions and data on the town. Some of the stuff Liz showed us was not exactly pertinent to what we will be doing this semester, but it was really interesting to see the impressive quantity of old records that the library held and how detailed and personal things were.

When discussing the four places that most interested us, Lizzie and I decided upon the following: Letchworth State Park, the most obvious place because of its proximity and grand scale of nature it provides; the Retsof mine area, an old salt mine that collapsed and eventually filled with water; the Conesus lake area; and the old Genesee Valley Canal area, which eventually turned into a railroad and now is a greenway.

Letchworth is a place that I know will provide both the impressive scenic views that can inspire any kind of art, and also a wide variety of archival materials to work with. The library itself has lots of materials in its Genesee Valley Historical Collection and there is also a museum in the state park that I am sure will have lots of stuff we can work with. Letchworth intrigues me because of its grand scale of beauty and placehood. Its designation as a state park and the “Grand Canyon of the East” give it a place firmly set in the scope of “nature” in the past, present and future, which is nice to both observe how people used and viewed it as a place of nature.  I have been to Letchworth many times and its extreme beauty of the canyons and waterfalls are sure to inspire interesting and beautiful writing. Given the scope of this place, both geographically and its natural intensity, and the scope of its available archives though, I know working with this place will take a lot of narrowing down and creativity to create something new and different.

The Retsof mine area is an area Lizzie brought to my attention, and before she talked to me about it I had no idea it existed. The mine collapsed in 1994, caused by (or causing) an earthquake,  which led to sinkholes popping up and the mine filling with water. Lizzie showed me the place on Google Earth and you can see a square-shaped lake within some trees and surrounded by farmland now. This place is cool because it is a strange sort of nature that was accidentally and dangerously formed by man. The library has some legal papers on the mine, so there is definitely some archival information out there, but I think this spot in particular presents the most challenges regarding research.  The uniqueness and instability of this place interests me though, and I think it would be particularly cool to look at this place in the context of Anthropocene.

Conesus Lake is a place I have also been to many times and have done some nature writing there because I find it very peaceful and beautiful. Lizzie and I thought of this place when we were meeting with Liz because she mentioned some materials the library has in the Genesee Valley Historical Collection. I like the idea of doing a project on Conesus Lake mostly because it is personally one of my favorite places that I have a lot of good memories regarding, but also because it might be cool also looking at it in the context of Anthropocene because of its algae problems and invasive species such as zebra mussels.

The final place is the site that I know the least about, yet I am very intrigued by it. This place was once the Genesee Valley Canal, then turned into a railroad, then morphed into a greenway. I have never been to this place, but I am interested to see if this place has a lot of remnants of its past lives. I think Lizzie and I will be able to find a fair amount of information about this place because of all the government funded projects surrounding it and the library has a section on their webpage now entitled 20th Century Remains of Genesee Valley Canal, so I am hoping we could find a fair amount of cool stuff surrounding this place. I think when looking at the surface of each of these places, this might be my favorite one because I think it challenges the definition of nature by its close association with man. This place is cool to me because it changes and morphs to fit the changing needs of society and I think it offers a lot of opportunity for nifty technological things that could emphasize and parallel the change with the events of man.

Whenever tasked with writing about a place important to me, my mind always reverts back to a small campground in the northern Adirondacks called Rollins Pond. My family and our friends have been traveling to Rollins Pond every summer since before I can remember. It is a place that is distinct from home, but a place that is so comforting to return to that I am positive that a part of me remains behind at Rollins Pond even when I depart from it.  There are many things that make Rollins Pond special, but the thing that I think continually traps me into writing about it all the time is its singular quality of being the most “natural” place that I have been in frequent contact with. Rollins Pond is located twenty miles away from Saranac Lake and far from any big towns or busy highways. Driving into the campground, there is minimal cell phone service, no motor boats allowed on the water, and no houses built up around the lake, leaving it isolated from most modern amenities besides the electricity and running water in the bathrooms scattered about every couple miles or so and the ice cream truck that drives through the campsite around dinnertime. It is a place full of such simple beauty that made me fall in love with it when I was younger and continues to still cast its spell on me. From the misty mornings where one can listen to loons call to each other across the water, to the whimsical creeks that twist and turn through the trees, there is a strange, yet simple allure to this place.

When I was younger coming to Rollins Pond, I was always most excited to go off with my friends to all our favorite designated places – Fishing Rock, Swimming Rock, Slippery Rock, Skull Island, Blueberry Island – to spend our days fishing, jumping into the water off rocks, picking wild blueberries and exploring together. Being without a television and other distractions forced creativity beyond which I think I will ever experience again, resulting in numerous skits and songs performed and other bizarre games created — some of which I remember involved fishing for squirrels or balancing on logs trying to push people off. Nature became a place for the imagination to run wild and a place to put aside time to mess around and laugh with people, something often difficult to make time for with the interference of modern life.

One of my most vivid memories I have of Rollins Pond was when I was around ten years old and there was a meteor shower. It was late at night and we went out on the canoes to view a crystal clear, vibrant sky that was filled with distinct sparkling stars and a mystical Milky Way. We held on to each others paddles so our canoes could connect to each other and laid back and watched in amazement as the galaxy entertained us. I still remember that first shooting star I saw that night and the awestruck feeling I got along with it. Still to this day, I have not seen anything like it. We gazed up at the sky for an hour or so trying to count how many shooting stars we saw, with the number totaling over two hundred. I remember going to bed that night brimming with happiness and not being entirely sure why I felt so content. It was a night firmly implanted in my memory because I was amazed at what the Earth was capable of doing and also because I got to share in this memorable experience with so many people I adored, which I think has the capability to bind people together in some sort of way.

As I continue to return to this place, my appreciation is still intact, but it definitely differs. I am still aware of the uniqueness of this place on Earth and aware of its magic, yet I am also more in tune to the tiny details that give this place its intrigue. It’s the smell of pine trees mixed with fires burning. The sound of a canoe slowly breaking the smooth water. The purple/blue/pink sky that hangs over the trees at dusk. The sharp peal of laughter that breaks out amidst a silent night. The morning fog over the water and the mysterious calls of loons that soon disappear beneath the water. The magic of this place exists, yet it exists in the simple and concrete, rather than the complex and abstract.

I think the most reassuring aspect of this place stems from its seeming ability to resist change, which is comforting in a world that changes at dizzying speeds. Growing up while being able to return to a place that is unchanging is a very self-reflective and unearthing experience that forces one to profoundly recognize and analyze changes that have occurred among themselves and their relationships with the people that they love. It was not necessarily something I analyzed when there, but now that I am thinking about this idea, I am aware of how this place accentuated the differences in our lives. As us kids got older, the raucous play mellowed into casual conversation and we began to realize the difficulty of very different people forced into being friends by our parents. When we got even older, the group fell apart and we found ourselves continuing to show up to Rollins Pond but at different times and with new faces to replace the old. It was sad, but also, I suppose, a necessary stepping point of growing up and moving on. Yet as the differences among the people emerged, the place remained the same and the vast geological time scale now serves to remind us of the comparatively rapid and finite human time scale.

This past summer, I returned to Rollins Pond with my mother and brother after being away for two summers. It was strange to be away for this amount of time, and my brother and I both felt the subtle differences. Across the lake, we noticed two docks and two small cabins built alongside them and in the morning we would hear small motor boats disrupting the morning silence and loud music drifting through the air at night time. It was a small, relatively insignificant change, but it stressed me out imagining a future with built up houses alongside the trees and motor boats criss-crossing the lake, all filled with people trying to maximize their time in an eroding “nature”. Things change, but it frightens me to think that things that were so reliable and grounding must be put under the pressure of humanity and submit to society’s rapid changes.

When I look back at what I have written just now, I realize the complexity of discussing this place in and of itself without also discussing the people whom I have experienced this place with. It puts an almost oxymoronic twist on discussing this place within the context of Anthropocene, because it is inevitable that this place would not be as special to me without the interaction between myself, my human companions and the Earth. The Anthropocene is a difficult concept because it seems to assume that humans are not a part of “nature”, but within Rollins Pond, it seems to me, the two have always been able to seamlessly bind together to create something in which humans and nature are able to recognize beauty and meaning by interaction with the other.