Taylor Walters - April 6, 2026: 2024 Geo Aesthetics Conference (Outside Reading Entry)

I wanted to write about the 2024 Geo Aesthetics Conference Paper that was shared with us because I thought it was beautiful but also complicated at first. It's about his experience hiking the Continental Divide Trail and the connections between respiration, transpiration, and inspiration. The core idea is that breathing is a form of exchange with the living world, not just a biological function. We inhale what plants release and they transpire what we exhale. We are literally sharing breath with the forest, which is incredible! The word inspiration even shares its root with the word for breath, which I thought was really cool. The part that stuck with me the most was his encounter with a bull moose near Glacier National Park. He and his son just stopped in complete silence, totally held by the presence of this massive animal. Their breathing actually changed. I think that's an aesthetic event like we've talked about in class, something unpredicted that completely shifts how you see the world. It made me think about being in the ocean and how when you're actually in the water, rather than just looking at it, the boundary between you and the environment gets almost blurry.

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