Tonight I made a comment to my sister that she should use her backyard more. As a graduate student, she told me that she would love to get outside more and “take advantage of nature,” but lately she has not had the time. For someone who grew up in a city, in a land of high-rise buildings and attached houses, this idea of nature is not so strange. David Rakoff summed it up best: if a New Yorker wanted greenery, he should order a plate of spinach.

I chuckled as I looked out at my sister’s fenced-in plot of nature. At Middlebury, I have been “introduced” to nature firsthand. I spent my first few semesters admiring the natural beauty from afar—from my room in Ross, overlooking the Champlain Valley and the Adirondacks to the west. I had a few outdoor labs for my first-year seminar, but I think I was too wrapped up in the newness of school to realize what a fantastic opportunity the surrounding areas offered. It was only this year when nature and I finally had a real introduction. I went on my first hike—a great hike—up Camel’s Hump, part of the Green Mountains in Huntington. From the peak you can look across from New Hampshire to New York. It was one of the best days I’ve had in Vermont.

Later in the year, I spent five out of our thirteen lab periods outside for my introductory biology class. During our first lab, we stomped through a few feet of snow into a patch of forest behind Bihall. A few of us seemed to freeze immediately, but when we went out into the snow a few weeks later, we were not as bothered by the cold. This time we explored a part of the forest held by the Middlebury Area Land Trust, a local non-profit land conservation organization. My lab partner and I counted different tree species in our plots to determine the impact of an invasive tree species, European Buckthorn. I had no idea that invasive plants posed such a problem in Vermont. Now I can recognize the native and non-native species and understand what the threat of species displacement means, even on a small-scale.

Once the snow melted, the outdoor labs were truly a blast. We threw on “waders”—either thigh-high or chest-high rubber boots—in order to examine the ecology of the Middlebury River. We walked upstream and downstream, in the sun and in the rain, to observe the variety of aquatic insects and categorize them. My lab partner, another student from a city, showed how out of our element we were when she used her umbrella during lab, even when we strode into the middle of the river. At one point, I even fell in the water (thigh-high waders were of no use then), but it was still a privilege to be at the river. I thought about how fortunate I was to go to a school like Middlebury, to have an experience like this one. Not only was I able to take advantage of the natural beauty around me, but also to do it in my free time and in class. I only hope my sister has the same opportunity as part of her education.