Reflection

The topics of the two pieces that I wrote were my experience at a Dave Matthews Concert http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=ddx8rnk9_08f8krb&hl=en and my experience with a hike with my fatherhttp://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=ddx8rnk9_4db8f3n&hl=en. In the first piece I accomplished I was trying to identify what exactly the concert meant to me and in the second piece I was trying to identify examples of transcendentalism. The main idea of the first piece was my encounter with the Dave Matthews Concert and the main idea of the second piece was how I saw a hike with my father in a different way. While writing each piece I learned to be very vivid in my details and to paint a mental picture for the reader. Mainly everything I wrote I thought sometime about and some of the things I thought I wrote but later erased because I found them too wordy or unnecessary. During this class I have learned how to properly use commas, detail everything mainly, and to not get to wordy or boring.Honestly, for the Dave Matthews piece I wrote I didn’t do all that much revision but when I did I mainly tried to add adjectives and create a mental picture. Those changes, of course, came from what I learned in Mrs. Turner’s class. I tried to keep the same tense throughout the piece as well as limit boring repetition. For example I changed up my sentence structure numerous times in order to meet the criteria for that piece. As for the nature walk when I revised it I made sure that I maintained that same mental image but I also tried to convey that sense of transcendentalism.After reading my peers blogs I noticed how, not bragging, my vocabulary was noticeably more extensive. All of my classmates and myself, met the criteria and excelled in meeting that criteria. I really need to learn a lot of things from this class but the three most important points are that I need to stay in the same tense, I need to not sway to far from the topic, and I need to include a thesis statement as well as list the main points in my introduction paragraph.

Encounter with Nature

Rising midst North Carolina, Yellow Mountain is one of the most scenic hikes that I have ever been on. When I was a younger lad, my father took me on the ten mile trek a couple days after September 11, 2001. He strapped my shoulders with a backpack that was a miniature toy compared to his, and we were on our way. He took me up to the pinnacle to stay the night as well as spend some time with me. While I was on the climbing adventure I became a transparent eyeball like Ralph Waldo Emerson. I believe that once I read a couple of stories of Mr. Emerson and Mr. Thoreau, I saw an immediate connection between what they said and the hike that I took that day with my father.
When my father and I initiated our hike, I remember first seeing a golden patch of long grass with butterflies frolicking all about and it made me become one with God. This thought was sparked when I read the line from Nature which stated, "The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental." To me this quote means whenever a person is overcome by peace they are almost "in the zone" (not to sound cliche) and become part of nature. We made our way up to the top of the mountain and prepared a small temporary fire. The fire was like a box of Rice Crispies because of the crackling and popping. The contrast of the warm, cozy fire put alongside with the cold autumn air really made me feel like my father and myself were one with nature. The streets of buzzing cities were illuminated by cars headlights and they could be seen from our omnipotent view. In the short story Self-reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that, "The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify that particular ray." This quote to me means that God created the world and the people in it, and it is the people's responsibility to interpret the world's beauty.
There was a small fire tower atop that mountain and in it is where my father and I slept in our sleeping bags. The chilly wind and the rustling bushes were the only things that could be heard in that tower. Although my father was keeping me company, the environment around me made me feel somewhat alone. This can best be put in this quote from Henry David Thoreau: "...some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rainstorms in the spring or fall, which confined to the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and pelting..." In substitution for the "long storm", the cold wind that blew was what made me feel so warm and soothing on the inside.
In conclusion, the transcendentalism brought about by Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson was brought to life that day when I trekked up the mountain that day with my father. I became a "transparent eyeball" and could see everything around me. Solitude, no matter how lonely I was while I walked up the mountain without talking for a couple of minutes, brought me closer to the environment around me. The fire that may not have been large, soothed my heart and made me realize that I was a particle of God. The cold rickety fire house that kept my father and me out of the cold, was almost a haven for peace. That is how I can relate transcendentalism to that faithful hike.

Dave Matthews Band Concert

Last summer 30,000 ripples made up the wave of fans that flocked to the Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre in Charlotte, North Carolina on June 22, 2006. My sister, Rebecca, and I made up two of that great confederation of admirers of the Dave Matthews Band. We arrived in Charlotte four hours prior to the first drumbeat(active voice). You have a series of fragments here. Was that intentional? (Yes it was b/c I was trying to create a sense of parallelism) -Kristinaturner 9/14/07 4:55 AM Four hours preceding the first guitar chord strung. Four hours before the first chilling vocal.(parallelism) Those four hours were almost like waiting on a snowy day, to anticipate the cancellation of school; the wait will be mandatory but the final result will be amazing. We went and checked into the hotel, and from there we made our way to the arena where Rebecca and I tried to stay contained and enjoyed a session of pre-show tailgating. I made my way off of the lawn chair, after waiting for numerous hours, and progressed towards the gates of the stadium. The air was heavy with the dense June humidity and sweat poured profusely down my back, using my striped-blue collard shirt as a sponge. As soon as we made it to the front of the lengthy line the tension began to build. We climbed the steep steps up to the outdoor arena and once we reached the pinnacle, we saw an empty stage overflowing with expectation. We climbed through the grass and landed our feet on concrete and our hands on the smooth, red, warm handrail. From there we were ushered to our seats where we settled for about forty-five minutes. We tried to keep cool by drinking water and staying still but the excitement made that very difficult to do. The only sounds that could be heard were the murmurs of the fans around us that were further on the edge of their seats than I was. Finally the musical maestros took stage. They gave a modest wave to the crowd as Dave Matthews took place behind his guitar, Boyd Tinsley grabbed his electric violin, Carter Beufort became familiar with his drums, Stefan Lessard reached for the bass guitar, and Leroi Moore grabbed his saxophone.(active voice) There was a gargantuan dark purple curtain behind the performers. The time cam when they combined their skills to create an audio and visual masterpiece. A couple of seconds into the song “Satellite”, which is one of the bands biggest hits, the band stopped playing for a brief moment and the curtain fell. Like Goliath, the curtain fell and the stone that hit him was the music played by the band. With the absence of the curtain the crowd could see the various television monitors of different sizes and lights that gave an unbelievable orange ambiance. The monitors, which were joined by two massive pre-existing monitors to the left and right of the stage, showed every angle of each of the five members. From the first note to the last, the stage vibrated from the music, dancing, and singing of fans. (Participal Phrase)Surprisingly, I too felt my own hands abnormally clapping and myself oddly singing! (Adjective shift) The air smelled of perspiration, smoke, and the aroma of a summers’ eve. When the sun finally fell I was still warm from the body heat of my 30,000 friends. The lady next to me never took a seat but danced the entire night. After three hours of watching pure musical perfection by the Dave Matthews Band, we had to leave and enter reality. Ears ringing and head heavy with fatigue were definitely common symptoms after that concert. (Absolute) That was one of the most memorable nights of my life.