Echo

 Getting ready to get on the bus to go to our next field trip, I was excited, nervous, and unsure what to expect. I had those butterflies that you get when you first start to really like someone. It was an odd feeling, especially because of where we were going.. My professor said that we were going to a place called Echo, which grew food in the most natural way possible. Before taking colloquium, I planned on having my future home be self sufficient with energy but never with food. During the weeks leading up to our trip on Echo, I started to want to learn how to farm more and more. I have changed my ideal house in my brain to one not only being self sufficient with energy but also with food that I consume. I want to be able to go out to my backyard and pick my food for my evening meal. To have a cornucopia of fresh fruits and vegetables to snack on, and waking up to cows mooing and chickens clucking. The anticipation was killing me on the drive there, especially after we had gotten stuck in traffic on the freeway. We finally pulled into a parking lot that was surrounded by bamboo and I could already see the renewable practices going on. Waiting for us was a guide by the name of Vic Estoye, who looked like he had seen his fair share of changes. We signed in and walked across the street to an even bigger lot, avoiding the giant sprinklers as we went. Our guide showed us how modern tools could be altered slightly to benefit the needs of the user. For example, there was a bicycle rigged to a grinder so that one could petal to operate, and there was also a solar powered oven that used mirrors to focus the sun's light to a point, which easy reached 120+ degrees Fahrenheit. I saw plants that I had never heard of, sunflowers that grew taller than my imagination, and my first ever rice field. I felt inspired at what I saw. Our guide kept the mood fun, making jokes and feeding us along the way. It was apparent that one plant in particular, Maringa, fascinated Vic. He said that vitamins in it were far greater than any other plant and it had the taste of horse radish, though I passed on tasting it. The path went in all different directions, and one that I really thought was cool is how plants can grow on almost anything, plastic bags, carpet, even between the cracks in concrete. Nipa, one of the girls in class who is from Bangladesh, had seen a lot of the plants that we talked about. I was envious that she had been able to interact with these plants, something I hadn't been able to do throughout my life. I wanted to grow the things I interacted with, the experience was humbling to say the least. One of the plant leaves that I had tried tasted exactly like green peas, it was unmistakable. Moreover, I had tried my first cheery from a tree, which tasted nothing like the ones that came in the jars at Publix. As we walked back to the buses, I felt like I had learned so much, seen so much more than I ever had, and had a thirst for more. There had been so many paths that we didn't go down, so many plants that we skipped over without talking about, so much more to be seen. I didn't want to leave but knew that I could always come back. It was by far my favorite field trip we had been on.