Dunedin is such an interesting city to me in terms of its “naturalness”: it is definitely a college town where its buildings are plentiful and there is no shortage of concrete structures. On the other hand, the river runs through the city, and there are pockets of nature that are hidden within the city. For example, I recently went on a hike that was half an hour away from my house, and I not only got to enjoy a beautiful waterfall, but also see glow worms for the first time in my life (which, contrary to the name, are not worms, but fungus gnat larvae that glow in the dark). Just mere feet from the entrance of the hike, there’s houses that are reminiscent of the suburban U.S. Sitting at my spot in the Dunedin Botanic Gardens, I picture my roots hitting an environment similar to that of the glow worm creek spot: I picture my roots hitting solid, compact dirt, but also water sources that are unbeknownst to me as someone living on the surface.

Something I’m always bewildered by is the fact that when I’m standing on a street, I’m not standing at “ground level” because the asphalt is technically elevated off the “true” ground. Thinking about the way humans have managed to completely upend the natural earth, yet also choose to preserve certain aspects is so contradictory to me. For example, most of Dunedin’s water comes from Deep Creek and Deep Stream, which are tributaries that are a part of the Taieri River. While the water comes from a natural source, it goes through 174 kilometers of pipes to get to a reservoir or a treatment plant; in these sorts of cases, I think the interaction between humans and nature is something to be more critical of, but at the same time, there are also positive relationships, such as using renewable energy. More than half of Dunedin’s power supply comes from hydroelectricity, which is definitely more sustainable than using fossil fuels. In my environmental philosophy class, we often talk about how humans see themselves in relation to nature: is nature seen as a resource, or as a being in and of itself? It is not an easy question to answer.