Walk to Class Challenge & Dr. Paul Lee (February 7, 2014)

A few weeks ago on February 7, our class focused on walking. We had two guest speakers, Jessica Pearson (Provost's Sustainability Intern for Transportation and Parking Services) and Dr. Paul Lee (founder of the UCSC Chadwick Garden and Santa Cruz Homeless Garden Project and former philosophy professor in the History of Consciousness department at UCSC in the 1960s).

After going over this presentation and talking about the readings, Jessica shared about her Walk to Class Challenge that's happening on April 22. There will be stations around campus and encouragement to walk to class that day instead of taking the bus. We look forward to the challenge, and we wish Jessica the best of luck in promoting it!

We were also fortunate enough that day to have a guest presentation by Dr. Paul Lee. We invited Dr. Lee because he supported the creation of a project called the Circle Trail Project and also helped preserve the land that is now Pogonip park.

Dr. Lee talked about the history of the Chadwick Garden and what it was like to work with Alan Chadwick. He shared that Alan Chadwick was "crazy" and the "hardest person to work with" but that he was integral to the organic movement. Dr. Lee called the Chadwick Garden "the spiritual center of the University" and said that "Chadwick taught students how to work" in a way that they hadn't been expected to do before.

He also shared about the Green Belt Initiative in 1977 to save Pogonip, explaining that he wanted it to become a botanic garden and horticulture belt along with the Chadwick Garden and Farm so close by. His original idea was to have the Homeless Garden Project (HGP) within Pogonip, though the HPG is now located near Long Marine Lab. The HPG came about because there were a number of homeless people in Santa Cruz in the 1980s and the first public homeless shelter was created. Dr. Lee said that there were 100s of homeless people then, but they only had room for 50. The question became what to have people do during the day, and the answer came in the form of the HPG, which provides a small stipend for working in the garden and is a safe haven for rehabilitation. Today, there are around 4000 homeless people in the area, according to Lee, and the HPG is thriving. Learn more about it here.

Side note & fun fact: Growing up in Los Gatos, my dad always saw signs that read "Save Pogonip" when he'd drive over the hill to Santa Cruz. He never knew what it meant until he grew up and realized it was the name of a land preserve. To him, it was just a funny name with no understanding behind it. I was able to tell him the other day that I met a man who helped support the "Save Pogonip" initiative. It's so fun going to college near where my dad grew up and be able to have common understandings of places that he explored when he was young.

Finally, Dr. Lee shared about the Circle Trail Project, which was the idea of a woman who approached Lee in the 1990s. The website for the Project states that "Sylvia Knapton conceived of a trail through the Santa Cruz Greenbelt that would showcase the area’s natural beauty and ecological diversity." Dr. Lee shared his experience trying to inaugurate the project, which essentially creates a walking trail between various destination points of interest in Santa Cruz, including the HGP, Long Marine Lab, the UCSC Arboretum, and Chadwick Garden, among others.

The pamphlet from Circle Trail Day in 1997.

The inauguration celebration was not as successful as he had hoped due to extremely hot weather. Despite this, Dr. Lee has been working on the Project again with a graduate student from the UCSC Digital Arts and New Media Department. They hope to design a phone application that people can install for a virtual tour of the Circle Trail so that when they visit these locations in Santa Cruz, they can learn the natural and human history of the sites. They are currently seeking people interested in working on this project You can learn more about the Circle Trail Project here and contact them through the website.

After presenting about these histories, one of the students in our class, Maryam, asked how we can pursue projects and plan things in the face of all of the red tape and obstacles to overcome in creating meaningful projects. Dr. Lee's answer was simple: "Ignore all that and just do it. Don't think about all the obstacles because if you do, you'll ask yourself 'are you out of your mind?' Don't plan, don't ask anybody first, just do it."

His point is well taken that we must take action on projects before we lose the courage to face the obstacles. My recommendation would be to take that mentality and pursue projects, finding those with the skills and ability to plan if you lack in those areas. It's about balance. In Dr. Lee's case, Alan Chadwick had the organic gardening knowledge to help design the garden. It was Dr. Lee's enthusiasm and ready-set-go attitude that got the project going. We could probably all do well with a measured dose of Dr. Lee's advice to "just do it."

Thanks, Jessica and Dr. Lee for visiting our class! We appreciated learning from both of you about projects that help support walking in Santa Cruz, and we wish you both the best of luck in your endeavors.