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Saco River Trip

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One of my favorite places to visit is the Saco river. The Saco river is a relatively small river near the New Hampshire, Maine border. A group of friends and I usually only visit once a year and because of this I think it makes this place even more special to me. I find this place to be restorative and it also appeals to my attitude and self-identity in some ways. Considering that I spend a lot of time inside on the computer and near technology in general, usually this type of place would seem to be the opposite of what I would enjoy, but on the contrary I feel that I have a connection to this place. I think that because I spend so much time inside, this place is what I need sometimes to balance it all out. I would describe myself as an introvert …show more content…

This is one of the biggest factors that draw me back to this place every year. I was not fully aware why I was so attracted to this place, other than it was a fun experience when I was there. Now I understand better, the restorative effect of the natural environment. Stress recovery theory and attention restoration theory are the two most important theories that are related to restorative environments. Stress recovery theory says that when the natural environment is structurally complex and interesting, it can quickly invoke a positive response to it reducing levels of fear and therefore reducing stress. the Saco does just this, immediately when I enter the area of the Saco river I feel awe and a sense of equilibrium by the environment surrounding me. As explained by perceptual fluency, when I visit the Saco river, there are usually lots of people around and without the presence of these people I think that this place would seem scarier and probably stress inducing rather than stress reducing, but because this is not the case it makes me feel safer. The environment is also very repetitive, trees, sand banks, and the river, which makes it more familiar in turn also making me feel safer. The familiarity and safe feeling that the place offers are very comforting and can therefore reduces stress levels. Attention restoration also plays a part in the reason I am attracted to …show more content…

When I visit the Saco, I like to explore and experiment with my surroundings. Ever since I can remember I enjoyed tinkering with anything I could get my hands on. For example I remember a story my aunt told me about, when I was very young about 4 or 5 years old she had a radio that I would listen to occasionally, one day I decided to find out how this machine was making all these noises so I took it apart, apparently no one was watching me because this took me a while to do, but I basically did my best as a five year old to take this thing apart, and by that I meant I broke it. Nonetheless, the point is that I was curious and wanted to explore the things in my surroundings. This concept has carried over to my adult life, and into the Saco. Although I have always been curious about the way things work in my surroundings the Saco offers a different way to explore this curiosity. For example, I would explore the canoe, I wanted to know why it was floating and why it wouldn't sink with multiple people on it. I would experiment with tipping points trying to see how far I could push it and what would happen at the point of it tipping. This interest I had also relates to my major in some way and why I chose it. there are many similarities between the way nature works and how a program works. For example, nature needs to make sense,

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