8 minute read
From the Classroom to the Jungle: A Journey in Environmental Humanities
By Matthew Gowans
The setting sun cast a warm glow on an otherwise vibrant green canopy of trees. Thirteen Snow College students stood atop a solitary observation tower overlooking an endless sea of jungle, deep in the Maya Biosphere Reserve. From there they could view spider monkeys napping in branches, pairs of toucans playfully calling to each other, and off in the distance a few ancient Mayan pyramids rising above the forest. This was just one of the climactic moments of a long journey from Ephraim, Utah, to the Petén region of northern Guatemala.
Living in a dream
So different, so new too
Not ready to wake
–Mariann Everitt
Over the many years it has been offered on campus, ENGL 2420, Literature of the Outdoors, has involved a significant field studies component, usually including local day trips and/or overnighters to nearby desert and mountain locations. These field studies experiences have provided students with opportunities to visit and participate first-hand in place- and project-based learning in these sites, which have oftentimes themselves been the subject of class readings. Although these trips have been valuable to student learning, this somewhat limited range of travel has occasionally tended to confine student learning in the field to topics specific to Western American land use, history, ethics, values, and aesthetics. For example, North American nature writing is heavily—and uniquely—invested in realism, tropes of pristine wilderness, and other settler landscape aesthetics. However, various other literary traditions (Latin American, Indigenous, etc.), often depict natural phenomena in a variety of different ways, such as animism, magical realism, traditional ecological knowledge, and more ecocentric cosmologies. These non-Western aesthetic and philosophical traditions don’t always recognize a hard distinction between people and nonhuman nature. In light of this difference, the Literature of the Outdoors class in Spring 2024 picked up pen, paper, and passport, and embarked on a journey to Central America for their field studies experience.
Rollercoaster flights
Soaring up into the air
Through the clouds and sky
–Jennifer Baum
The students were a diverse group, but also similar in many ways. Ten had never visited a foreign country, seven had never stepped foot onto an airplane, four had never seen the ocean, and three had never been very far outside of the State of Utah. Experiences they journaled included the thrill of flight, the immediate humidity when exiting the plane, barriers to communication, and the first time feeling like a stranger and a minority.
Music fills my ears
I want to sing along too
I don’t know the words
–Kaylee Gowans
The encounters with the natural environment during the trip were rich and plentiful. In El Remate, students hiked in the Cerro Cahui Nature Reserve where they observed a variety of trees, birds, and animals, including skeptical spider monkeys who persuaded the group to keep moving with falling seeds and branches. Other unplanned encounters included unfamiliar spiders, bugs, toads, geckos, and other lizards. After the long and hot days, they enjoyed a swim in beautiful lake Petén Itzá.
After a cool swim,
we sit on the shore,
watching a looong crocodile.
–English Brooks
Whereas in El Remate the group was close to nature, in Uaxactun they were thoroughly engulfed. Located in the protected Maya Biosphere Reserve of northern Guatemala, the unassuming village takes up a small portion of what was once a mighty Mayan city of 40,000 people. A few of the pyramid structures and other ruins have been uncovered, but most appear as mere hills clothed in jungle attire. Though the jungle is consuming, to the people of Uaxactun, it is both home and provider. Serving as hosts and educators, Neria Herrera and her brother, Antonio, introduced the group to pancakes made with flour milled from the seeds of the ramón (or breadnut) tree, dip made from the heart of a young palm, a refreshing drink created from the hibiscus plant, and allspice tea, everything prepared and sustainably harvested from the surrounding jungle.
The forest swallows
I’m devoured by the green
A snack for the bugs
–MaKenna Stout
With machete in hand, Antonio and Freddy led the students through the jungle where they encountered local plants and trees, listened to a ruckus of chanting howler monkeys, examined ruins, drank water from a large tree vine, and learned about the vital chicle produced from the sap of the sapodilla tree. Chicle was the gum base that served as the primary ingredient for companies like Wrigley’s, Dentyne, and Chiclets, a trade that boomed through the 1900s until coming to an abrupt end near the 1960s as companies shifted to cheaper synthetic based products.
A world of dew,
And within every dewdrop
A world of struggle.
–Kobayashi Issa
While in Uaxactun, a majority of the students were housed in the same one-room building that stored ancient Mayan artifacts like obsidian arrowheads, knives, and axes, jade jewelry, and ceremonial pottery. The government had reclaimed the objects from looters and given them to Neria and Antonio for protection. It was a shock to see such priceless items, some over 1,500 years old, in boxes and on shelves without protection and preservation. This was a humbling reminder of the money, resources, and support so many vulnerable cultures need to help them preserve their past.
Ancient pottery
Museum in the jungle
Long, long forgotten
–Jennifer Baum
Reading selections from the Popol Vuh, viewing the sacred artifacts, and touring the massive stone temples in Uaxactun and Tikal imbued the trip with a sense of the mystical. Students were introduced to the sacred ceiba tree which symbolizes an axis mundi for the Mayan people, that is, the center of creation and the direct connection between the three realms of the heavenly, earthly, and underworld. Just in from the banks of Lake Petén Itzá, a great circle surrounds one such tree with stone glyphs representing each of the four cardinal directions. The message to Mayans, similar to other religious cultures who maintain Tree of Life motifs, is that to know where you exist with reference to the Sacred is to never be lost.
Something hidden calls
Behind the sacred Ceiba
Sprite Aracari
–Matthew Gowans
All of these remarkable experiences and educational moments are not meant to portray a trip that was free of challenges. The journey wasn’t always pretty or comfortable. The coastal humidity of Belize City was intense, and its inner-city wealth disparity was tough to witness. The bus rides were long and sometimes bumpy and cramped. The bugs and spiders were mandatory roommates and seemed just a little bigger and a little hairier. And hearing howler monkeys at 2:00 a.m. for the first time is enough to give anyone a fright. Then there were the emaciated stray dogs of El Remate who frequented the vendors along the main street, all hoping for some morsel of food from a sympathetic customer.
Skin stretched over bone
Gaunt looks of desperation
Some dogs still have hope
–Kaylee Gowans
It might be said, however, that all meaningful adventures contain moments of discomfort. These stand in contrast to whitewashed tours or airbrushed timeshares that provide detours through the more distressing parts of the journey. Perhaps it is this discomfort combined with the beauty, mystery, and wonder that embeds our memories, deepens our perspectives, and solidifies our resolve to never forget what we have seen and how it has changed us. To use the words of author and artist Mary Anne Radmacher, “I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.” Students on this trip to Guatemala learned about different cultures and environments, but they also discovered a little more about their own culture and about themselves.
Something so simple
What changes the importance?
The outlook of mind
–Mariann Everitt
It's not every semester, or for every student, that classes like this have the opportunity to integrate these kinds of immersive experiences into the curriculum. (And there's quite a range of effective approaches aside from international travel that Snow faculty apply toward emphasizing global learning.) But for those students who do have the opportunity to participate, the impact on their learning can be powerful. Indeed, in many cases it is both the planned and scripted itinerary just as well as the more spontaneous discoveries, and even setbacks and inconveniences that can leave such a lasting impression. In such cases, it's trips like this, supported with institutional guidance from Snow’s Director of Global Learning, Alex Peterson, and generously funded from department, division and deans, that demonstrate Snow College’s commitment to student success.
