Habitat for Humanity in Lee County

As a part of my colloquium experience was an integrated service learning component. As a class to fulfill this service learning component we volunteered for Habitat for Humanity. My experience along with my other classmates in my group involved helping painting the entire interior of a home. This physical experience allowed me to understand how much I can contribute as a volunteer. Habitat for Humanity follows a mission of volunteer-driven construction of houses in order to help those facing home insecurity the ability to purchase their own home and have a level of certainty when it comes to having a place to live. Habitat for Humanity also helps drive the idea of sustainability by trying to utilize existing properties rather than developing new land. In addition, by having those who receive Habitat for Humanity homes pay it forward by volunteering 150 hours to the organization they are able to have a sustainable way of continuing to be able to bring home security over their long existence as an organization.

I personally learned the difficulty of something as simple as painting the inside of a house. I also learned how rewarding it felt to be able to contribute to my community and make a contribution that directly affected someone's life by helping to make them a livable, certain, and secure home.

Footprint Challenge

As part of the footprint challenge I decided to reduce my footprint by attempting eat and drink more locally sourced and produced food and beverages. The steps I took were eating less fast food, utilizing locally sourced ingredients, and for beverages I stopped drinking imported and commercial domestic beers and instead drank beer from Fort Myers Brewing. This experience was eye opening to me because all in all everything tasted better compared to what I was eating and drinking before. In terms of locally sourced ingredients my favorite meal was ribs made with a locally made rub and coleslaw made from locally sourced vegetables. It tasted great and it also tasted much fresher compared to prepackaged coleslaw. In terms of the beer that was the biggest difference. Fort Myers Brewing has some fantastic beers such as High 5 and Gateway Gold. These beers packed so much more flavor than commercial domestic and imports and I also felt great contributing to the growing beer industry in Fort Myers. In retrospect, I think I will continue with these changes as much as I can going forward to help reduce my footprint while also being able to enjoy better tasting food and drinks.

Turning Waste into Renewable Energy

This week's trip to the Lee County Waste to Energy Facility was not my first. I had been to the facility before as a field trip when I was in middle school. Going into this trip I thought I basically understood what the facility entailed, but my memories of my earlier, like other memories, were incomplete or incorrect. From the get go I had questions involving the environmental impact of burning waste, in my head it seemed like it would be impossible to maintain a clean way of burning trash that would not hurt the environment. I was wrong, however, because I learned that the way in which they clean their emissions involved a laborious process of cleaning through specialized filters and that their emissions were even much cleaner than the government implemented EPA emissions standards. In addition, my understanding was that the facility did two things, burn waste and process recycling. However, I learned that they do much more including composting and processing electronic and hazardous waste. In addition, I did not realize how much of an impact tires had in terms of waste or recycling. I now understand how difficult they are to dispose of or reuse and that the Lee County facility is able to process a large amount of tires in a clean way while also creating a renewable energy resource. Knowing what I know now I think more of these types of facilities should be implemented across the U.S. as a way to provide renewable energy as well as to mitigate the adverse environmental impacts caused by other methods of waste disposal such as landfills.

Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary and SWFL Before Humans

The Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary appears as a respite from the concrete jungle of Naples showing the natural beauty of what Southwest Florida used to look like before the settling and building took over. This place shows many the different habitats of SWFL such as pine flatwoods, wet prairie, marshes, and swamp. Each one of these habitats are home to different types of wildlife and vegetation. The pine flatwoods are defined by their namesake, pine trees, and inhabited by fauna such as woodpeckers and squirrels. Natural wildfires occur here to spur the reproduction of these pine trees and to cull invasive species and dead vegetation. Where the wet prairie begins is indicated by the lack of trees that grow there. Long grass and wildflowers dominate the landscape and most wildlife is hidden beneath the sea of grass; deer also are found here using the long grass as cover and graze on the vegetation. As the elevation takes a slight dip the wet prairie ends and the trees begin along with the swamp. Towering bald cypress trees, hundreds of years old, their bottoms concealed by water are home to many different animals such as apple snails, alligators, and wading birds. At points the swamp gives way to marshes where there are no trees, but fields of alligator flag sway in the water in their place. All of these different places give us insight into how the terrain and landscape of SWFL used to be and how far it has changed with human interference and modernity.

Wet Praire

Swamp

The Mound House and the History of Fort Myers Beach

On our class' visit to the Mound House I was surprised to learn that the history of people living on Fort Myers Beach went back millennia. I have lived in Fort Myers and gone to the beach countless times for the last 19 years and never would have guessed that this tourist hot spot had been lived on thousands of years of earlier by the Calusa people. Prior to this trip, my belief was that the only people in Florida prior to the colonization of North America were the Seminole and that they lived in the northern and central parts of the state due to the southern half being almost unlivable with the Everglades, swamps, and wetlands. This trip opened my eyes up to the thriving civilization that lived on the mounds of shells they built to protect them from the floods and hurricanes common to our area. This group of hunter-gatherers built up an entire city at Mound Key and the area around the Mound House was home to a thriving village of people.

I also learned why, after the fall of the Calusa, people moved to live in Fort Myers Beach. Contrary to the current tourist nature of Fort Myers beach where the economy and people rely on people visiting for vacation and the beach's beauty, the people who came to live at the Mound House were people living upon the land and trading with the other people who had come to settle in Southwest Florida. It was not until much later that tourist and seasonal based life we live came to fruition.

This trip was a very eye opening experience to me. It allowed me to learn much more about the place I was raised and the circumstances upon which this city and area was built. I think more people who live in the area should make the trip out there to learn what I learn. I think those that do will enjoy learning more about the place they have made home and also be more aware of the life of those before us had in order to make Fort Myers and Fort Myers Beach into what it is today.

Nature on Campus and Its Role as a Restorative Environment

As we walked around FGCU to the Food Forest and nature walk I was stunned by how much I did not know was part of FGCU. At the Food Forest I was able to see what kind of impact the students of FGCU have had by positively adding to the environment and ecosystem. I saw so many different trees and bushes that have had a distinct positive effect on the surrounding wildlife; I saw birds and a field mouse make use of the efforts of the Food Forest volunteers. In addition, on the nature walk I saw how the whole of campus is truly sitting in the middle of a thriving ecosystem and that the environment that FGCU was built upon is still conserved in a meaningful way. Both of these experiences have helped to further develop my sense of place at FGCU. I thought of FGCU as just a campus to go to class, but now I see the beauty of nature that surrounds those classrooms.

Richard Louv's ideas on Nature-Deficit Disorder and Restorative Environments really spoke to me as I have experienced these effects first-hand. The first institution I attended was located in Arkansas which is known as The Natural State. Looking back on my experiences there I see that when I returned from the camping and river trips I took there I felt more at ease, better, and I could accomplish more. Returning from these trips I felt a mental reset which I think contributed to better concentration and work immediately after these outdoor trips. Being exposed to the nature walks around FGCU has shown me that I can use them to my advantage by relieving stress and reducing my direct-attention fatigue by visiting and appreciating them in the future.