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| Also found at LDS Earth Stewardship |
I admit, it looks nice. But there's something rather (to use my brother's description) self-conscious about this project. My picture doesn't show the stream, or the trail, but shows one of five waterfalls along the stream and trail. It also shows how badly BYU's landscaping team wants to create a natural scene. But by wanting a natural look that also imbues each waterfall with "its own personality" (Bruce Maw, BYU Campus Landscape Architect) they have constructed a natural look that is so calculated as to become unnatural. It's basically an outdoor set piece, where nature is a prop used primarily for our personal pleasure, rather than an autonomous group of systems that each have their own patterns of behavior.
I appreciate having a place for students to "get away from it all" and enjoy some nature - I want that, too. It's important to have gardens and responsibly integrate nature into the urban space. But I get uncomfortable when part of the motivation seems to be to construct a superficial image of beauty and prosperity that values nature solely for what it can do for us, something to be tamed and controlled. BYU sits at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, where trails aplenty take you out of the city and human-constructed natural landscapes into much more vibrant, rejuvenating and adventurous territory. I worry that creating such docile and predictable spaces hinders us from taking nature on its own terms, where it is not simply a submissive prop. We think we know how best to handle the environment, which is hardly true considering the strain Utah Valley, and BYU, put on our desert environment.
The south campus stream and trail is a nice gesture, but it's incomplete. For my part, the south campus stream and trail still lacks a genuine personality, and instead displays a self-conscious and somewhat superficial personality I too often find at the university.
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