Where Sasha Walks

Hello Blog!  My most recent treks took place in Oahu, Hawaii. This is where I spent my spring break, and it was slow and relaxing, with beautiful, engaging scenery. I appreciated seeing the mountains, greenery, and diverse plant life while there.  One of the most interesting parts of the trip was experiencing different weather conditions within just a few days. From Thursday to Saturday, we had heavy, constant rain that made the entire island feel a little somber. Then on Sunday, the weather suddenly shifted, and the sun was out for the rest of the trip!  Another thing I noticed on my last day of the trip was how different the waves were from place to place. By the sixth day, we had gone to many beaches along every part of Oahu (Kailua, Waikiki, East Oahu, North Shore), and I began to make distinctions in the waves I was seeing. The beaches were minutes apart, yet had different wave patterns, different sand, and different landscapes surrounding the water. Some beaches had...

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...