Where Sasha Walks

Last week’s presentation on Romanticism stayed with me after class ended. Instead of just thinking about it as a historical movement, I found myself thinking about the centuries before us. The landscapes people wrote about and made paintings of, and about the earth before modern infrastructure.  Romanticism emphasizes emotion, imagination, individual experience, and a deep honor for nature. After class on Tuesday, I walked home thinking about how disconnected my life can feel from those ideas, being in a fast-paced environment that focuses on school and the future. By the time I reached my house, I was researching classic novels from older time periods. Something about reading literature written in a slower world gave me the idea that it could help me slow down more. I called my grandfather to talk to him about it, and we ended up building a “to-read” list together (he is an avid reader)! He had gifted me a Kindle last year, and I became excited to use it for this new quest. Since ...

This past weekend, I drove to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville to visit my best friend. The trip was only a few hundred miles from Fort Worth, yet the landscape felt entirely different. As soon as I crossed the Arkansas state line, I felt a shift in my emotions.  The first thing I noticed was the trees. They were lining the highways, in endless clumps along hills and around water. In Fort Worth, the land often feels open and flat, and it is either a long stretch of dirt or a construction zone. In Arkansas, the scenery feels enclosed, but it is wrapped in greenery, and as you drive, you uncover more nature. The drive itself felt calming. I rode with my sunroof open and the windows down for the majority of the drive, letting myself look around and enjoy where I was.  Walking around Fayetteville, I kept noticing differences. The plants were diverse and not as curated as the TCU gardens. Our gardens are beautiful, but I liked seeing the natural state of cacti and other p...