I took an Environmental Literature course in the Fall 2020 semester. The final assignment? To write an essay about being immersed in nature an to include a few references to works we had read in class. I wrote about water because I have always felt a connection with it. My professor submitted my essay on …
There is something special about taking the long way. The old fashioned way. The hard way. Sure, there are planes and trains and buses and cars and bikes, but there’s just something about going for a hike. For a long walk, for a short stroll, to relieve your mind of tolls. To soak in the …
It’s the 51st anniversary of Earth Day. And we’ve come pretty far. But, climate change is a marathon race, not a 100 yard sprint. We’ve got a long way to go, and we’re going to need drive, we’re going to need passion to get through to the end of the race. Not a short burst …
Pop some headphones on and go for a walk while listening to my story about one heck of a walk. Part One: I ask my mom about her favorite parts of New York. She asks me about walking from Buffalo to Albany. Part two: My mom asks me about all the odd things I saw …
No, I am not going to talk about an elixir mix of herbal tea, or incense that gives you a spike of motivation. A “motivational plant” is a term I made up to describe plants that grow in interesting conditions or in interesting ways. Interesting conditions. Humans — often the well-off humans — have a …
Letchworth State Park had a canal running alongside the Genesee River gorge. Its been abandoned for over 140 years. It took 25 years and 6 million dollars to construct the Genesee Valley Canal. All for the canal to be abandoned 16 years after it was completed. Talk about throwing money in a ditch, eh? …
Once you see it, you can’t unsee it; vines have covered New York. (Well, a lot of New York). There are so many different kinds of vines. I don’t know a lot about them, and fear mislabeling them, so I will generally describe them and give my guess as to what they’re called based off …
My name is Jules Hoepting (jewels/joules, hope-ting), a 21-year-old dork who has taken to walking around and testing my phone’s photo storage capacity. Canadian by birth, I grew up in the flat part of New York, the former basin of Lake Ontario. When I was one year old, my mom moved to Orleans County for …