Doing the reading for last class made me angry. Wendell Berry made a lot of sense right up until he started bashing education for luring people away from their communities. That was when I became uneasy. And then he took it further by saying that school has no purpose or usefulness when it believes its job is to prepare people for careers and when he said that choice only forces people to fail. I expected this time to be angrier still with the ending of his book. But I wasn’t. I really enjoyed the essay “A Good Farmer of the Old School”. I liked reading about Lancie Clippinger and how he manages to make his farm productive. The value both Lancie and Berry put on independence and thinking for yourself really made sense to me and I started to understand what Berry was getting at a little better.
On page 166 Berry writes, “As the price of work has gone up, the value of it has gone down, until it is now so depressed that people simply do not want to do it anymore.” This makes sense to me. I think he is absolutely right. Working in retail I see a lot of this. If you can’t meet the sales goals then you get yelled at and in many companies if this continues long enough, you get replaced. People are not valued and people do not value their work. They work so they may have money so they may continue to buy the things they need. I think to some extent Berry is trying to assert that big scale farmers are like this. They have too much work on their hands to do themselves so they hire others to do it for them. Others who have no love for the land or for the work and who are merely there because it is a living.
In many ways though I still disagree with Berry. He values families remaining in a place for generations. I understand why he values this because it does mean that families eventually gain knowledge of their land and people gain value and recognition in the community however it is very limiting. It allows for no one to ever be something else.
I see it like this. My dad works at Hannaford as an assistant manager. If I was to follow what Berry is suggesting, I would go to school to get an education that would be useful to me as a manager at a retail store. Then I would return home and get a job. I don’t like retail. That is a major part of why I am going to school. I am here at Farmington to get an education that will allow me to do something that I really enjoy. This is something that Berry advocates for. He writes that, “... the present national ambition of the United States is unemployment. People live for quitting time, for weekends, for vacations, and for retirement; moreover this ambition seems to be classless, as true in the executive suites as on the assembly lines. One works, not because the work is necessary, valuable, useful to a desirable end, or because one loves to do it but only to be able to quit” all of which is a product of the industrial economy creating small tasks that gets rid of all thought. If I were to go into the “family business” mainly retail, would I not be doing the same thing? I would be doing a job that I did not care for, I would be doing it mindlessly and I would be longing to be done. Does not small family farms that are owned generation after generation condemn some of their own to this fate? Some who would rather be doing something else with their lives? So which is it Berry? Should I do a job that I love or should I stay in one place my whole life, doing what my family knows?
Maybe small family farms cut out more choices than you think. I imagine those farms can’t afford to send their children to schools that would give them a superb education. How much choice do these families have between farming and a different kind of life? If being able to choose our own lives makes us more healthy in the terms of the ability to use our brains and enjoy our work which is more important, the health of the land or the health of the people?
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
To Text, Or Not To Text
(OLD BLOG, FEEL FREE TO SKIP!) :)
"Talk of Heaven! Ye disgrace Earth". What an incredible line. I love not only the majestic use of 'YE' but also the thought provoking statement about how when we liken all natural things to the majesty of Heaven or Eden that we forget that which we are talking about is here, tangible, tastable, non-celestial and perhaps more sacred and holy because of it.
On my walk this evening I thought a lot about social interaction, and about visitors. One thing that always strikes me on the walks I take for this class is the loneliness of walking alone in the woods, where everything is interconnected and humming with life, where the trees tower over me and the lake stretches out almost past where I can see. You cannot help but feel that you are small and insignificant, but that you are also small and insignificant with every other human being on Earth, adding almost a kind of kinship and camaraderie to the loneliness you feel. I think that even the most powerful or most physically domineering of people cannot stand beside the ocean and think themselves it's equal or lord over it, and that is how I feel in the woods, and it is both humbling and empowering how the majesty of nature knocks us all, great or low, down a few pegs.
The loneliness of a nature walk got me thinking also about what Thoreau had to say about his time in the woods and the visitors he received, and about how "fewer came to see me upon trivial business". I know that this was written many years ago, but I think the idea is still applicable today. I think that with the era of cell phones that our worlds are not only smaller, but that our interactions with each other have suffered as a result. When you had to set up a visit and go see a friend in person, or when you had to hand write a letter that would reach someone days later, we took more thought and were less likely to socialize for the mere sake of socializing. I feel that our connection to each other is much less thoughtful now that we can call for any reason, and exchange texts and pictures at the drop of a hat. In an era where we can avoid social interaction all together by checking facebook pages for changes and events in people's lives, what would it be like if we all just put it aside for a while, got land-line phones and answering machines? I imagine the result would be much like what Thoreau describes, and we would find out then who was worth keeping in contact with, who challenges us, and who we would go out of our way to contact.
"Talk of Heaven! Ye disgrace Earth". What an incredible line. I love not only the majestic use of 'YE' but also the thought provoking statement about how when we liken all natural things to the majesty of Heaven or Eden that we forget that which we are talking about is here, tangible, tastable, non-celestial and perhaps more sacred and holy because of it.
On my walk this evening I thought a lot about social interaction, and about visitors. One thing that always strikes me on the walks I take for this class is the loneliness of walking alone in the woods, where everything is interconnected and humming with life, where the trees tower over me and the lake stretches out almost past where I can see. You cannot help but feel that you are small and insignificant, but that you are also small and insignificant with every other human being on Earth, adding almost a kind of kinship and camaraderie to the loneliness you feel. I think that even the most powerful or most physically domineering of people cannot stand beside the ocean and think themselves it's equal or lord over it, and that is how I feel in the woods, and it is both humbling and empowering how the majesty of nature knocks us all, great or low, down a few pegs.
The loneliness of a nature walk got me thinking also about what Thoreau had to say about his time in the woods and the visitors he received, and about how "fewer came to see me upon trivial business". I know that this was written many years ago, but I think the idea is still applicable today. I think that with the era of cell phones that our worlds are not only smaller, but that our interactions with each other have suffered as a result. When you had to set up a visit and go see a friend in person, or when you had to hand write a letter that would reach someone days later, we took more thought and were less likely to socialize for the mere sake of socializing. I feel that our connection to each other is much less thoughtful now that we can call for any reason, and exchange texts and pictures at the drop of a hat. In an era where we can avoid social interaction all together by checking facebook pages for changes and events in people's lives, what would it be like if we all just put it aside for a while, got land-line phones and answering machines? I imagine the result would be much like what Thoreau describes, and we would find out then who was worth keeping in contact with, who challenges us, and who we would go out of our way to contact.
Smelly Ponderings
(OLD BLOG, FEEL FREE TO SKIP!) :)
My walk this week was one that I won't soon forget. The walk I go on is actually (GASP!) through the local Kennewatha park, which has some paths but actually has a lot of woods that are local enough to feel safe but secluded and large enough so that I think it counts as an authentic wilderness experience, or as close as I can get. I went on my walk and was still lacking in any real juice to start writing my blog. I decided that I would go towards the actual park and swing for a while to get my thoughts flowing. I slowed down and just sat on the swing taking in the sounds of nature around me, when a heard a rustling in the bushes nearby. Out walked a skunk, and my heart pretty much jumped into my throat. My first thought was of getting sprayed and how I would convince my roommate to let me back into the house to shower off the stench. My second thought was how I could possibly get out off the swing without scaring the skunk into spraying. The skunk walked out in front of me, and just stared at me, looking timid and uncertain. I don't know much about rabies, but I was pretty certain that at this skunk was a-ok, just uncertain. After a few moments, I started slowly swaying on the swing, thinking that if I was going to get sprayed maybe a little height on the swing would help the least amount of spray get on me. After a little while, I was just swinging normally, and the skunk was watching me with a bemused expression (if a skunk can look bemused), and then went on his way.
This whole situation really got me thinking about all the preconceived notions I have about nature in general. When I saw the skunk, I immediately assumed it would spray me, when I knew on some level even at the time that the skunk would only spray me if it felt threatened. Leopold said that he "once knew an educated lady… who told me that she had never heard or seen the geese that twice a year proclaim the revolving seasons to her well-insulated roof. Is education possibly a process of trading awareness of things of lesser worth? The goose who trades his is soon a pile of feathers". It stands to reason that the less time we spend in nature, the less comfortable we would be in it… But at what point do we actually toss everything we know to be true about nature out the window because of our discomfort being outside our homes? When nature becomes uncomfortable and alien to us, everything within it becomes strange and unpredictable in our minds. Maybe a few more walks into nature and I'll be confident enough to deal with nature the next time I encounter it.
My walk this week was one that I won't soon forget. The walk I go on is actually (GASP!) through the local Kennewatha park, which has some paths but actually has a lot of woods that are local enough to feel safe but secluded and large enough so that I think it counts as an authentic wilderness experience, or as close as I can get. I went on my walk and was still lacking in any real juice to start writing my blog. I decided that I would go towards the actual park and swing for a while to get my thoughts flowing. I slowed down and just sat on the swing taking in the sounds of nature around me, when a heard a rustling in the bushes nearby. Out walked a skunk, and my heart pretty much jumped into my throat. My first thought was of getting sprayed and how I would convince my roommate to let me back into the house to shower off the stench. My second thought was how I could possibly get out off the swing without scaring the skunk into spraying. The skunk walked out in front of me, and just stared at me, looking timid and uncertain. I don't know much about rabies, but I was pretty certain that at this skunk was a-ok, just uncertain. After a few moments, I started slowly swaying on the swing, thinking that if I was going to get sprayed maybe a little height on the swing would help the least amount of spray get on me. After a little while, I was just swinging normally, and the skunk was watching me with a bemused expression (if a skunk can look bemused), and then went on his way.
This whole situation really got me thinking about all the preconceived notions I have about nature in general. When I saw the skunk, I immediately assumed it would spray me, when I knew on some level even at the time that the skunk would only spray me if it felt threatened. Leopold said that he "once knew an educated lady… who told me that she had never heard or seen the geese that twice a year proclaim the revolving seasons to her well-insulated roof. Is education possibly a process of trading awareness of things of lesser worth? The goose who trades his is soon a pile of feathers". It stands to reason that the less time we spend in nature, the less comfortable we would be in it… But at what point do we actually toss everything we know to be true about nature out the window because of our discomfort being outside our homes? When nature becomes uncomfortable and alien to us, everything within it becomes strange and unpredictable in our minds. Maybe a few more walks into nature and I'll be confident enough to deal with nature the next time I encounter it.
Point A
I was pleasantly surprised when my nature walk did not require a jacket or even a scarf, but instead warranted only a hoodie! Although the seasons I feel are what makes Maine a unique and beautiful place to live, there really is nothing like those few days in Fall and Spring that jump out and surprise everyone with nice, warm weather. I find that in the bitter winter months here in Farmington I find myself wondering how it was possible that I ever left home without a jacket on, that the air could possibly ever have been or ever will be warm enough so that I won't see my breath when I exhale.
This fall has been a particular shock to my system because for the first time in my life this past summer I lived in a state other than Maine. In North Carolina, you literally NEVER go outside in the summertime until nightfall, because it is so hot and the sun is so scorching that you can get a sunburn in no time at all (at least for my pale Maine skin) and the air you breath is so laden with heavy, hot moisture that you have to struggle with every inhale. The drive down to North Carolina for the summer was one that I will never forget in my whole life, because it was the first time I had ever been out of New England. As I drove down I-95 every new state I crossed over into was a new experience and a milestone in my life. As I was out walking tonight, I thought about how in the past year my world has gotten exponentially smaller, from my hometown of Kittery seeming like it was light-years away to understanding that it only takes one 5 Hour Energy shot to get to Washington D.C. where all the greatest decisions in the country are made.
In the past year I also had my first experiences with air travel, flying to Buffalo, New York to see Niagara Falls and also flying down to North Carolina in the Spring. Berry says that for him, "air travel always has about it an insistent feeling of unreality", and I find that I agree with him totally. Flying to North Carolina initially (only my second time on an airplane!) and then driving the same distance were two totally different experiences, as when I drove the distance I felt more of an ownership over the states that I crossed through, the sights that I saw. No one ever says, "Oh yes, I've been to New York City. I flew over it going from Boston to Florida". When I left from Farmington on my drive in may, it was 40 degrees here. When I got to North Carolina, it was 105 degrees. I was able to see the changes in the landscape, watch the pine trees disappear, see the land flatten out, watch the grass grow from green and full of life to brown and scorched. I was able to see the sunrise from the George Washington bridge, and see the differences the air pollution made to the colors. When we fly, we lose the most essential part of travel, which is the experience of going from one place to another. To appreciate the distance point 'A' is from point 'B' is part of what keeps our homes sacred and familiar, and with simply flying over the obstacles (like rush-hour traffic and Jersey drivers) we lose that sense of the journey, and our connection to the places themselves.
As I walked tonight in the woods of Maine, I breathed in deep the smell that only this state has, and was able to appreciate that I now know, for the first time in my life, what ~Maine~ smells like.
This fall has been a particular shock to my system because for the first time in my life this past summer I lived in a state other than Maine. In North Carolina, you literally NEVER go outside in the summertime until nightfall, because it is so hot and the sun is so scorching that you can get a sunburn in no time at all (at least for my pale Maine skin) and the air you breath is so laden with heavy, hot moisture that you have to struggle with every inhale. The drive down to North Carolina for the summer was one that I will never forget in my whole life, because it was the first time I had ever been out of New England. As I drove down I-95 every new state I crossed over into was a new experience and a milestone in my life. As I was out walking tonight, I thought about how in the past year my world has gotten exponentially smaller, from my hometown of Kittery seeming like it was light-years away to understanding that it only takes one 5 Hour Energy shot to get to Washington D.C. where all the greatest decisions in the country are made.
In the past year I also had my first experiences with air travel, flying to Buffalo, New York to see Niagara Falls and also flying down to North Carolina in the Spring. Berry says that for him, "air travel always has about it an insistent feeling of unreality", and I find that I agree with him totally. Flying to North Carolina initially (only my second time on an airplane!) and then driving the same distance were two totally different experiences, as when I drove the distance I felt more of an ownership over the states that I crossed through, the sights that I saw. No one ever says, "Oh yes, I've been to New York City. I flew over it going from Boston to Florida". When I left from Farmington on my drive in may, it was 40 degrees here. When I got to North Carolina, it was 105 degrees. I was able to see the changes in the landscape, watch the pine trees disappear, see the land flatten out, watch the grass grow from green and full of life to brown and scorched. I was able to see the sunrise from the George Washington bridge, and see the differences the air pollution made to the colors. When we fly, we lose the most essential part of travel, which is the experience of going from one place to another. To appreciate the distance point 'A' is from point 'B' is part of what keeps our homes sacred and familiar, and with simply flying over the obstacles (like rush-hour traffic and Jersey drivers) we lose that sense of the journey, and our connection to the places themselves.
As I walked tonight in the woods of Maine, I breathed in deep the smell that only this state has, and was able to appreciate that I now know, for the first time in my life, what ~Maine~ smells like.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Moderation
For tonight's nature walk, I decided to take a stroll over on both Perham and Court St today. My mind abreast with the thoughts of Leopold and Thoreau, I decided to actually stop walking for a bit and invested some time into looking under rocks and trees. Maybe I could possibly make the same astute observations that the two nature writers did in hopes of make my own mind blowing philosophies.
Unfortunately, the only philosophies that I gathered about nature writing is that not everybody is capable of doing so. Why is that though?
Maybe it has something to do with maintaining a proper balance between that of pure nature and that of pure humanity at play. This new revelation is due large in part to the new readings of Wendell Berry's Home Economics.
Just in the very beginning of his book he talks in about how in reality (which I think speaks the most to our times) most people can't actually give up everything they're used to, to live in nature.
On page 7, he brilliantly lays out some main principles of his book by stating that, "People cannot live without nature; that is the first question of the conservationists. And yet, people cannot live in nature without changing it. But this is true of all creatures; they depend upon nature, and the change it... the making of these differences is the making of the world." (Berry, 7).
Now Leopold illustrated this idea near the end of his book A Sand County Almanac, but not so clearly defined as the words of Wendell Berry. In getting back to my observations of trying to record nature, I believe I was unable to do so because I think too much on the pure side of humanity. But the even bigger problem is that when I try to think of nature, I think too much of it on the pure side of nature as well.
As Berry mentions, we are people who must change nature within nature to be able to adhere to human nature. This very idea by itself frightens me, because as he also points out in later parts of his essays that we humans have a tendency of destroying too much, or rather do things that are beneficial to us and us only; hence leading to an environmental imbalance within nature. However, my concern is that if it is in our nature to take and alter nature, then what can nature do to take and alter us? Regardless of all the readings that we accomplish, it seems that reaching that verdict is never fully achieved. The idea of an intrinsic act to obtain an intrinsic good rarely seems to be outlined.
As I continue to read on in Berry's book, I hope to stumble across a new way of acting intrinsically good towards nature and maybe even gain a better understanding as to why nature --after reading the works of Emerson, Thoreau, and Leopold -- seems so puzzling to me.
Unfortunately, the only philosophies that I gathered about nature writing is that not everybody is capable of doing so. Why is that though?
Maybe it has something to do with maintaining a proper balance between that of pure nature and that of pure humanity at play. This new revelation is due large in part to the new readings of Wendell Berry's Home Economics.
Just in the very beginning of his book he talks in about how in reality (which I think speaks the most to our times) most people can't actually give up everything they're used to, to live in nature.
On page 7, he brilliantly lays out some main principles of his book by stating that, "People cannot live without nature; that is the first question of the conservationists. And yet, people cannot live in nature without changing it. But this is true of all creatures; they depend upon nature, and the change it... the making of these differences is the making of the world." (Berry, 7).
Now Leopold illustrated this idea near the end of his book A Sand County Almanac, but not so clearly defined as the words of Wendell Berry. In getting back to my observations of trying to record nature, I believe I was unable to do so because I think too much on the pure side of humanity. But the even bigger problem is that when I try to think of nature, I think too much of it on the pure side of nature as well.
As Berry mentions, we are people who must change nature within nature to be able to adhere to human nature. This very idea by itself frightens me, because as he also points out in later parts of his essays that we humans have a tendency of destroying too much, or rather do things that are beneficial to us and us only; hence leading to an environmental imbalance within nature. However, my concern is that if it is in our nature to take and alter nature, then what can nature do to take and alter us? Regardless of all the readings that we accomplish, it seems that reaching that verdict is never fully achieved. The idea of an intrinsic act to obtain an intrinsic good rarely seems to be outlined.
As I continue to read on in Berry's book, I hope to stumble across a new way of acting intrinsically good towards nature and maybe even gain a better understanding as to why nature --after reading the works of Emerson, Thoreau, and Leopold -- seems so puzzling to me.
In Defense of Higher Education (and Other Sundries)
Before I launch into this post, I need to ask you guys to bear with me, as I have no idea where this is going to end up and I'm formulating my thoughts as I go.
I have no walk I'd like to expostulate on first before gracefully tying in my observations about Berry's text we read this week; instead, I'd like to jump right in and begin head on. I heartily disagree with a lot of what Berry has to say. His prose is hard for me to wrestle with in general, but none moreso than that found in his essay "Higher Education and Home Defense." And the most offensive and egregious to my sensibilities is a two paragraph passage and quite lengthy for the blog, but I would like to quote it here.
"The second requirement for entrance into the class of professional vandals is 'higher education.' One's eligibility must be certified by a college, for, whatever the real condition or quality of the minds in it, this class is both intellectual and elitist. It proposes to do its vandalism by thinking; insofar as its purposes will require dirty hands, other hands will be employed.
"Many of these professionals have been educated, at considerable public expense, in colleges or universities that had originally a clear mandate to serve localities or regions--to receive the daughters and sons of their regions, educate them, and send them home again to serve and strengthen their communities. The outcome shows, I think, that they have generally betrayed this mandate, having worked instead to uproot the best brains and talents, to direct them away from home into exploitative careers in one or another professions, and so to make them predators of communities and homelands, their own as well as other people's" (51-52).
Um, excuse me? There are so many things wrong with this passage that I barely know where to begin. The smug authoritativeness with which he pens his opinion is one point. Another is the scathing, broad generalities that are busy demonizing public higher education. Nevermind that education is one of the most precious things that a person can gain in his or her lifetime on this planet, that it helps broaden intellectual and cultural horizons, breaking down prejudices and intolerances. Nevermind the fact that the freedom to choose to attend a respectable school, to be taught things and learn, is currently denied to an uncomfortably large percentage of the world. No; instead, let's make generalities about the career choices that college-minded individuals entertain, that every person who decides to leave their community for school or after is driven purely by monetary and corporate interest alone. Let's paint public education in the worst light possible to prove an already murky point, in a time when obtaining an education is possibly the most important and life-impacting thing an individual can do for oneself and the world at large.
Berry's words here betray his backwards and selfish view of the higher education system. Yes, I definitely agree with him that the commodification of education is not the route we should be taking; that instead of putting a premium on schooling, we should be exposing as many people as possible to it. But to attack it in such a broad way, under the guise of criticism for corporate negligence for the local sphere, is something I definitely disagree with and oppose.
And what of the personal choice of students that he so blatantly ignores? He's hypocritical to espouse the rights and will of local community members, and then disregard the fact that those students who choose to not attend school locally are intent on never serving their communities with their newly-gained education. I chose to finish my formal education on the complete opposite corner of the country for many reasons, but I'm pretty sure none of them involve plans to sell my soul to a corporate, impersonal job for the further exploitation of fellow humans.
The bottom line is, Berry is unfair, unjust and just plain wrong in his generalizations and nigh demonization of higher education, and I am not okay with it.
I have no walk I'd like to expostulate on first before gracefully tying in my observations about Berry's text we read this week; instead, I'd like to jump right in and begin head on. I heartily disagree with a lot of what Berry has to say. His prose is hard for me to wrestle with in general, but none moreso than that found in his essay "Higher Education and Home Defense." And the most offensive and egregious to my sensibilities is a two paragraph passage and quite lengthy for the blog, but I would like to quote it here.
"The second requirement for entrance into the class of professional vandals is 'higher education.' One's eligibility must be certified by a college, for, whatever the real condition or quality of the minds in it, this class is both intellectual and elitist. It proposes to do its vandalism by thinking; insofar as its purposes will require dirty hands, other hands will be employed.
"Many of these professionals have been educated, at considerable public expense, in colleges or universities that had originally a clear mandate to serve localities or regions--to receive the daughters and sons of their regions, educate them, and send them home again to serve and strengthen their communities. The outcome shows, I think, that they have generally betrayed this mandate, having worked instead to uproot the best brains and talents, to direct them away from home into exploitative careers in one or another professions, and so to make them predators of communities and homelands, their own as well as other people's" (51-52).
Um, excuse me? There are so many things wrong with this passage that I barely know where to begin. The smug authoritativeness with which he pens his opinion is one point. Another is the scathing, broad generalities that are busy demonizing public higher education. Nevermind that education is one of the most precious things that a person can gain in his or her lifetime on this planet, that it helps broaden intellectual and cultural horizons, breaking down prejudices and intolerances. Nevermind the fact that the freedom to choose to attend a respectable school, to be taught things and learn, is currently denied to an uncomfortably large percentage of the world. No; instead, let's make generalities about the career choices that college-minded individuals entertain, that every person who decides to leave their community for school or after is driven purely by monetary and corporate interest alone. Let's paint public education in the worst light possible to prove an already murky point, in a time when obtaining an education is possibly the most important and life-impacting thing an individual can do for oneself and the world at large.
Berry's words here betray his backwards and selfish view of the higher education system. Yes, I definitely agree with him that the commodification of education is not the route we should be taking; that instead of putting a premium on schooling, we should be exposing as many people as possible to it. But to attack it in such a broad way, under the guise of criticism for corporate negligence for the local sphere, is something I definitely disagree with and oppose.
And what of the personal choice of students that he so blatantly ignores? He's hypocritical to espouse the rights and will of local community members, and then disregard the fact that those students who choose to not attend school locally are intent on never serving their communities with their newly-gained education. I chose to finish my formal education on the complete opposite corner of the country for many reasons, but I'm pretty sure none of them involve plans to sell my soul to a corporate, impersonal job for the further exploitation of fellow humans.
The bottom line is, Berry is unfair, unjust and just plain wrong in his generalizations and nigh demonization of higher education, and I am not okay with it.
Fluff and Complaining
My walks have gotten increasingly chilly and require more layers. I find this fact to be parallel to much of what is occurring in nature at the current time. While the trees are shedding their leaves animals all around are beginning to put on their winter “fluff”. While I don a sweater and a fleece, they bulk up on fur and eat a few extra nuts and berries to get ready for the harsh New England winter. As I plod along the leaf-covered trail, however, I begin to get a little warm. Luckily, I am able to unzip a layer or two to feel more comfortable. What, pray tell, do the chipmunks, squirrels, and other critters do when they get too warm? They can’t shed their fur in a moments’ notice, for they will need it later. (Perhaps later that day according to New England weather patterns). What would I do if I had to be stuck in a coating of heat trapping substance? I’d probably just sit around waiting to get cold. That theory probably doesn’t work for animals. Especially ones that are likely to get eaten. In lieu of this option, I would probably complain. I would complain a lot. Now, I know that wouldn’t make me any cooler or comfortable but I suppose in my mind, it would help a little.
Thinking to Wendell Berry’s Home Economics, I am reminded of the “Irish Journal”. On page 32 Berry is speaking with a couple of ladies in Suffolk. He notes that the “neighbor had been to America, where, she said, a lot of young people go and do not come back. She said that. During the first part of her three-week visit to Chicago, she had wondered why anyone lived anywhere but America. But then she had begun to be bothered by the noise and the crush of people and development and had wanted to get home to Ireland”. This passage spoke to me on various levels. The first being the “vacation” level. I love going on vacations. While I live in Vermont, my family has a camp in Maine, and we also go camping in Maine and Vermont quite often. I suppose there’s little I love more than pulling a sleeping bag out of the closet and heading out into the woods and sleeping under the stars. I love vacations that aren’t necessarily nature oriented as well. I enjoy doing things that are out of the norm. The only thing about vacations is that after a week, or however long you are gone, there is nothing better than the moment you come within view of your own house, you take a shower in your own bathroom, and you slip between the sheets of your own bed. Why is it that we put such a perfect view on that which we don’t have, in order to come back home and be relieved to be back in our tiny little bubble? I suppose that we become so accustomed to what surrounds us that it is uncomfortable to go into a place that seems to belong to another person, state, or country. Do we get attached to our own slice of nature where there is less noise, fewer people, and less development? Yet in the same vein, what about people who leave their homeland? My grandmother left Ireland for America when she was a small girl. Essentially running away, she hopped on a boat and ended up in America. She made a conscious decision to leave her homeland and begin life anew. At the time, she had the same view as everyone else: America is the place to be. Today, however, all she does is complain. Healthcare, manners, taxes, the shape of the cars, color of the grass, street names, you name it, she complains about this. I can’t be sure if this is due to old age or if she is just really disgruntled with American society. Can you really be that way if you chose to come here? If I were to consciously go out into the woods for an extended amount of time, I would tell myself not to complain. If it’s not going to help, and you chose to be there, what’s the use? Probably none at all.
Thinking to Wendell Berry’s Home Economics, I am reminded of the “Irish Journal”. On page 32 Berry is speaking with a couple of ladies in Suffolk. He notes that the “neighbor had been to America, where, she said, a lot of young people go and do not come back. She said that. During the first part of her three-week visit to Chicago, she had wondered why anyone lived anywhere but America. But then she had begun to be bothered by the noise and the crush of people and development and had wanted to get home to Ireland”. This passage spoke to me on various levels. The first being the “vacation” level. I love going on vacations. While I live in Vermont, my family has a camp in Maine, and we also go camping in Maine and Vermont quite often. I suppose there’s little I love more than pulling a sleeping bag out of the closet and heading out into the woods and sleeping under the stars. I love vacations that aren’t necessarily nature oriented as well. I enjoy doing things that are out of the norm. The only thing about vacations is that after a week, or however long you are gone, there is nothing better than the moment you come within view of your own house, you take a shower in your own bathroom, and you slip between the sheets of your own bed. Why is it that we put such a perfect view on that which we don’t have, in order to come back home and be relieved to be back in our tiny little bubble? I suppose that we become so accustomed to what surrounds us that it is uncomfortable to go into a place that seems to belong to another person, state, or country. Do we get attached to our own slice of nature where there is less noise, fewer people, and less development? Yet in the same vein, what about people who leave their homeland? My grandmother left Ireland for America when she was a small girl. Essentially running away, she hopped on a boat and ended up in America. She made a conscious decision to leave her homeland and begin life anew. At the time, she had the same view as everyone else: America is the place to be. Today, however, all she does is complain. Healthcare, manners, taxes, the shape of the cars, color of the grass, street names, you name it, she complains about this. I can’t be sure if this is due to old age or if she is just really disgruntled with American society. Can you really be that way if you chose to come here? If I were to consciously go out into the woods for an extended amount of time, I would tell myself not to complain. If it’s not going to help, and you chose to be there, what’s the use? Probably none at all.
When the Luster Dulls...
As I write this, I sit contentedly in the meadow adjacent to the Sandy River. Ice clinks in a Nalgene filled with tap water, Smart Wool socks snuggle happy feet, and a soft flannel shirt warms my shoulders. I am at peace, lounging upon yellow-green grass that in the next couple of months will soon be covered with a blanket of snow. I am happy for two reasons: it is my favorite time of the year and I just purchased my first pair of Carhartt pants.
After departing Reny's with my guilty purchase swinging at my side, I raced to put them on and proceeded to call my sister who works for the Utah Conservation Corps and wears the pants every day. "Rachel, I am on Cloud 9," I exclaimed. "These pants are life-changing." I was--and continue to be--ecstatic.
So, looking across the meadow with my new dark brown pants that accompany my tan Carhartt jacket, I'm incognito among the colors of this landscape. It is the transition time between fall and winter and there are truths billowing about these days. Unlike the sweltering summer, the air is breathable, fresh, raw. The brilliant oranges, fire reds, and blazing yellows of peak leaf-peeping season have passed and the deciduous trees now turn to one another, slightly embarrassed in their awkward transition phases. Where have our clothes gone? they question. They'll be neglected by locals ad tourists alike until next spring when green chloroplasts rub their fingers together for the magic of the vernal painting.
But I love these stark trees, the dark green conifers interspersed among twiggy ash grays and beige trunks and the small tufts of crimson and gold holding their breaths until they too will be swept away by late fall's winds.
It's a landscape that does not lie, has nothing to hide. We are able to see her faults, her insecurities, her vulnerabilities. Few write longingly about trees without leaves or dustings of snow or red ripe berries, but I can't help but view their situation as admirable. Nostalgic for their past days of wonder, hungry to wear winter's evening gown, they wait in limbo, the shy girl in the corner, wanting to dance but lacking a partner.
Scattered milkweed wisps bounce across papery leaves, wilted weeds, and the last of the dandelions. It's a scene that wouldn't make the front cover of a brochure, wouldn't invite foreigners to play with this kind of Maine. But I'm allured by the grit and gray, the solitude and quietness that pervades hours such as these.
Wendell Berry observes that "Even the ugliest garden weed earns affection from us when we consider how faithfully they perform an indispensable duty in covering the bare ground and in building humus. The weeds, too, are involved in the business of fertility" (9-10). This makes me think about what in nature is "valued" by society. The first things that come to mind are postcards, snapshots, slices of scenery that provide awe and admiration. What I'm referring to can mostly be placed under the broad category of the pastoral--the idyllic fantasies of harmonious relationships as projected onto nature by humans. Of course, art in association with nature must at all times be revered and used as a tool for understanding, but over-simplified art, which distorts reality, can be detrimental to the environmental movement.
Berry asserts, "We must not go there to escape the ugliness and the dangers of the present human economy. We must not let ourselves feel that to go there is to escape" (18). "There" refers to nature and his analysis suggests that by distancing ourselves from nature and dubbing it "other," humans further deepen the chasm held within the statement man vs. wild. He proposes we adopt a new way of thinking: man with wild.
I can't lie and say that I don't view my little escapades to the meadow as escapism. I'm a dreamer as much as the next guy. But through incorporating everyday ventures such as these, however small, I'm in effect breaking down the "vs" and including myself in a continuing conversation with the landscape in my own backyard. In recognizing the importance of transitions, when nature lacks a so-called conventional beauty, we can begin to recognize the complex web of ecological relationships responsible for creating the world in which we live.
Small Town, Big World
I always enjoy walking through downtown in the afternoon, in the fall and winter I carry coffee to warm my hands. The streets at this time are always busy, something that is rare in Farmington. There is a real small town feel at this time of day, I always run into someone that I know. Which makes my vow of silence hard to keep, not having my cell phone in my pocket helps. I can rarely ignore a ring or a vibration, I want to know who?When? And why?
I am very much a child of a the modern age, I have a facebook, a twitter, I have a cell phone with a full keyboard, so I also text. I am very connected, so it is not that big of a leap to guess why I have this drive to know who, what, where, when, and why. I am programed to do this. After reading Wendell Berry, I realized first of all that he would hate me. I love technology, and I enjoy the convenience of globalization. Berry is leery of technology, he does not even approve of air travel. "for me, air travel always has about it an insistent feeling of unreality. I feel that I am where I do not belong...I feel that I am going too fast - incomprehensibly fast"(22). Berry thinks that as the world turns more and more to technology we end up moving faster and faster.
The faster me we go the more removed we get from our communities. Wendell Berry is big on community. He thinks that being local oriented, he thinks that staying small and knowing your community and its needs. Berry shies away from progression, he is wary of it yet he knows that it needs to happen. Berry tries to find a balance, yet it seems to me that his balance is hard to achieve.
Farmington to me seems like a community that tries to think locally. I am probably wrong in this idea, but I have always felt like the town tries to support its own. I to try to think locally but it is hard to do so, when buy local products is almost always expensive. Also, it is hard to think locally when I need to buy technology, there is none that is produced within the state. I like Berry's idea, of being local and thinking small yet, it is hard to enact as the world has already gotten so big.
A Picture Perfect World
I can’t stop thinking about photographs and my inclination to take photographs. I was semi-hoping that reading Home Economics would get some of Leopold out of my head, but sadly it just ended up making me think more about A Sand County Almanac.
This week I took a walk the night of the full moon. It was, of course, relatively late at night so I found that I couldn’t get totally swept up and lost in the landscape because to do so might somehow draw danger to me, but the moon was insanely pretty. It was so bright, it made the normally black sky turn blue, and the normally white clouds turn gray and stormy. The blue of the sky made the orange on the trees stand out, even more so than they do during the day. The sky and the leaves seemed to be the only colors within a colorless landscape, a landscape that had already given itself over to the shadows and the darkness. I remember describing this walk to a friend of mine and she kept saying that I should have taken my camera, but I didn’t find myself agreeing with her. I found myself questioning her, questioning why I took photographs and what happened to my photographs after I had taken them. I found myself thinking that if I had taken my camera I would have been out for that perfect shot which I could later sell to someone in the form of a note card or enter it into a contest and possibly earn some money from it that way.
My mother asked me to take pictures of a particularly pretty bush this weekend and I found myself unwilling to do it, but unable to explain to her why. I think I understand now. I think I was reluctant because photography, for me, has become about money. Therefore when I get behind my camera I am seeing things in terms of their economic value. I’m putting a price on these natural sights, sights that people can see for free and sights, which, in my opinion, shouldn’t necessarily have a price, put upon them. When I take a walk I am frequently asked why I didn’t take any pictures and I think my response is something like Leopold describes in one of his essays: “But we who seek wilderness travel for sport are foiled when we are forced to compete with mechanized substitutes” (193). I believe that Leopold is trying to say that we don’t seem to be able to enjoy true wilderness when we have things like cars, trains, and big RVs. To not have these things looks absurd and he says, “It is footless to execute a portage to the tune of motor launches, or to turn out your bellemare in the pasture of a summer hotel. It is better to stay at home.” You can’t get the experience which you are craving because others are not getting it either. They are not getting it because of these machines. I am not getting to observe nature in the way that I would like because my camera is one of these machines. It keeps me separated, within the human fold, thinking economically or aesthetically, but not uniquely. When I talk a walk I don’t want to have to turn every thought, every moment, every picture into something economical. At the very least I don’t want to be forced to think about its economic weight consciously. It’s like Leopold says, “Recreation is valuable in proportion to the intensity of its experiences, and to the degree to which it differs from and contrasts with workaday life.” (194). In other words, the true value of recreation is not how much money it can get you. It’s not something that should be pursued in terms of economic gain, but which frequently is. It’s something that should bring you closer to nature, and not farther from it.
Conquering
Because I feel as though my honors thesis has usurped my life in very twisted ways, I chose to work on it instead of going for a walk or sitting outside without thinking. I'd invariably end up thinking about my thesis anyway thus defeating the purpose of said excursion. That said, I did spend inordinate amounts of time starting out my window trying to not think about my thesis and instead picturing myself putting the numerous piles of leaves next to my building in giant mounds and jumping in them. I wanted to do something to the leaves and I wasn't quite sure of what that something was, only that they needed to somehow become within my power. It was interesting how when a project or concept becomes overwhelming, we as humans decide to gain power over something insignificant and meaningless like my leaves...but I digress. So I started back on my little tangent about conquering. Leopold says "the conqueror role is eventually self-defeating. Why? Because it is implicit in such a role that the conqueror knows, ex cathedra, just what makes the community clock tick, and just what and who is valuable, and what and who is worthless, in community life." (204) I love this quote for many reasons. The first of which being that it is more extraordinarily true, and seems like something that would be obvious, but for obvious reasons is not. What I mean is: the very mindset of the conqueror, of someone who knows all, is completely conducive to overlooking the role of the self, in this case conqueror, in terms of the larger picture that includes the conquered. I looked up ex cathedra and found it to mean "from the chair" specific to the name of the chair that bishops used to sit in when they gave orders to the masses. The conqueror knows everything implicitly, or thinks she does, and must therefore be correct in conquering.
I read a book a while back for a class called Guns, Germs, and Steel (Jared Diamond. It's on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393061310/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1288036372&sr=8-1) which is actually a terribly boring account of the various ways in which humanity has perpetually conquered other peoples and a detailed historical account of how it was and was not done. Interestingly, the conquerors (usually Europeans) ended up succeeding but not with their own methods; they succeeded because of side effects of things they were trying to do and ultimately failed to do. As unrelated as this seems, this made me think about the ways in which we as humans try to conquer our environment and mould it to our own uses and the things we achieve as ultimately happy accidents that leave behind unforseen carnage and destruction.
What Leopold doesn't answer for me is how we stop attempting to conquer and what the difference is between conquering and husbandry of the land. Husbandry, as it's been described to me anyway, is complete and perfect care of another being, typically livestock on a farm, to the point that the husband, usually a farmer, has utter responsibility for the animals. If we are to take responsibility for nature, as her husbands in a way, are we not attempting a different sort of conquering? Is the complete understanding and absolute care for the purpose of well-being of nature somehow a good version of conquering? Can conquering be good the way he has described it?
I read a book a while back for a class called Guns, Germs, and Steel (Jared Diamond. It's on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393061310/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1288036372&sr=8-1) which is actually a terribly boring account of the various ways in which humanity has perpetually conquered other peoples and a detailed historical account of how it was and was not done. Interestingly, the conquerors (usually Europeans) ended up succeeding but not with their own methods; they succeeded because of side effects of things they were trying to do and ultimately failed to do. As unrelated as this seems, this made me think about the ways in which we as humans try to conquer our environment and mould it to our own uses and the things we achieve as ultimately happy accidents that leave behind unforseen carnage and destruction.
What Leopold doesn't answer for me is how we stop attempting to conquer and what the difference is between conquering and husbandry of the land. Husbandry, as it's been described to me anyway, is complete and perfect care of another being, typically livestock on a farm, to the point that the husband, usually a farmer, has utter responsibility for the animals. If we are to take responsibility for nature, as her husbands in a way, are we not attempting a different sort of conquering? Is the complete understanding and absolute care for the purpose of well-being of nature somehow a good version of conquering? Can conquering be good the way he has described it?
Humen vs. Animals.
The weather has been very strange for the last few weeks. Then again, this is not so strange for Maine. When I went for my walk, it looked beautiful and warm outside, but instead it was windy and bitterly cold. I felt a little silly in my winter jacket and hat so early in the season.
I had read both the Berry reading and the article for my walk, so I thought about both of these texts on my walk (since I did not want to lift my head up in fear of the biting wind). Back when I was younger and lived in central Pennsylvania, I rarely heard any of the people whom I was in direct contact with speak about pollution or other environmental issues. In Berry's first essay, he had written that "The people who want clean air, clear streams, and wild forests, prairies, and deserts are the people who no longer have them" (7). Is this why I did not hear about the fight for the environment in beautiful Pennsylvania? I had lived in a farming community; there were no mills nor factories for about a hundred (or more) miles. Perhaps the people who are concerned about environmental issues really are the people who live in the areas like cities. There are communities where pollution is a very small concern because either the people in the area do not live or make their living in ways that significantly harm the land, air, or water.
This idea then made me think about the article about the pastoral. Prior to reading the article, my understanding of the pastoral was basically the desire to go back to a more simple life in nature (like "Walden"). Could the desire to help the environment be connected to the pastoral? Tourists come to Maine from the city (New York or Massachusetts normally) just to see the leaves change. I could not imagine living in an area where there basically were not seasons. Then again, city folk might hate the idea of living in a place where there was not a large amount of business.
Berry has the argument that pure nature is not good for humans to live in. I feel that I agree with this argument strongly. In this day and age, humans are very different from animals. I know that Leopold would argue that humans are very animal-like, however I feel that humans are now more "people" than "animals." Survival instincts do not come as easily to a person living in 2010 than they may have for a person living in Leopold's time. A person living in a very natural environment, similar to the one I grew up in, might have more survival instincts than say a person from New York City, however I feel that neither would survive even half as well as an animal in the wilderness. To say that we are not different from animals seems somewhat naive to me. Although we should not denounce our animal-side all together (it is not good to live in a purely human world, as Berry points out), I feel that it is important to recognize that humans are no longer animals. This recognition alone might in fact help environmentalists evaluate our impact on the world and nature and how to make the least harmful impact we can.
I had read both the Berry reading and the article for my walk, so I thought about both of these texts on my walk (since I did not want to lift my head up in fear of the biting wind). Back when I was younger and lived in central Pennsylvania, I rarely heard any of the people whom I was in direct contact with speak about pollution or other environmental issues. In Berry's first essay, he had written that "The people who want clean air, clear streams, and wild forests, prairies, and deserts are the people who no longer have them" (7). Is this why I did not hear about the fight for the environment in beautiful Pennsylvania? I had lived in a farming community; there were no mills nor factories for about a hundred (or more) miles. Perhaps the people who are concerned about environmental issues really are the people who live in the areas like cities. There are communities where pollution is a very small concern because either the people in the area do not live or make their living in ways that significantly harm the land, air, or water.
This idea then made me think about the article about the pastoral. Prior to reading the article, my understanding of the pastoral was basically the desire to go back to a more simple life in nature (like "Walden"). Could the desire to help the environment be connected to the pastoral? Tourists come to Maine from the city (New York or Massachusetts normally) just to see the leaves change. I could not imagine living in an area where there basically were not seasons. Then again, city folk might hate the idea of living in a place where there was not a large amount of business.
Berry has the argument that pure nature is not good for humans to live in. I feel that I agree with this argument strongly. In this day and age, humans are very different from animals. I know that Leopold would argue that humans are very animal-like, however I feel that humans are now more "people" than "animals." Survival instincts do not come as easily to a person living in 2010 than they may have for a person living in Leopold's time. A person living in a very natural environment, similar to the one I grew up in, might have more survival instincts than say a person from New York City, however I feel that neither would survive even half as well as an animal in the wilderness. To say that we are not different from animals seems somewhat naive to me. Although we should not denounce our animal-side all together (it is not good to live in a purely human world, as Berry points out), I feel that it is important to recognize that humans are no longer animals. This recognition alone might in fact help environmentalists evaluate our impact on the world and nature and how to make the least harmful impact we can.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Memory Maker
Leopold does a great job of making his readers think about nature in terms of not just the physical but the mental. Leopold brings to light the idea that our imagination and memory can hold more possibilities and power than many of our other physical relations to the world. With my nature walk this week, it was unusual, one because I was actually driving not walking and two because I found myself at a loss for words. I traveled to Greenville for my best friend’s 21st birthday and on the way there I found myself thinking about our class (no this doesn’t happen everywhere and yes I am a dork). As we came into the actual town of Greenville you have travel down a long hill. This hill overlooks the town of Greenville, Moosehead Lake, and miles upon miles further in every direction. I thought to myself how pretty this scene was and how it looked like the “perfect postcard”. After saying this I wondered, if I put this scene on a postcard, if I took a picture of it, what am I really capturing? Absolutely nothing. I had automatically seen something so pretty and thought of how I could make it mine, take it with me and keep it. I never thought that simply seeing this beautiful sight was enough.
As Leopold discusses, there is a form of appreciation for the land that can be as powerful as being there physically. Mental appreciation is not something many people can grasp considering we have an outrageous number of tourists attractions. These are places of beautiful nature that we have taken and transformed by imposing our own idea of “nature” on it. In order to better appreciate nature, Leopold suggests a kind of “wisdom” that we could employ. “It is the part of wisdom never to revisit a wilderness, for the more golden the lily, the more certain that someone has gilded it. To return not only spoils a trip, but tarnishes a memory. It is only in the mind that shining adventure remains forever bright. (141)” The more beautiful we claim a piece of land, of nature, to be, the more people have traveled to see it, thus ruining the spot with overflow of human presence. When we see a place only once, we retain this as a special memory, our imagination creating an even grander place, setting it apart from other experiences and creating a more powerful place for us. How we “see” nature is changed in this sense, we respect it more, we cherish that memory and the place because we never return.
As Leopold discusses, there is a form of appreciation for the land that can be as powerful as being there physically. Mental appreciation is not something many people can grasp considering we have an outrageous number of tourists attractions. These are places of beautiful nature that we have taken and transformed by imposing our own idea of “nature” on it. In order to better appreciate nature, Leopold suggests a kind of “wisdom” that we could employ. “It is the part of wisdom never to revisit a wilderness, for the more golden the lily, the more certain that someone has gilded it. To return not only spoils a trip, but tarnishes a memory. It is only in the mind that shining adventure remains forever bright. (141)” The more beautiful we claim a piece of land, of nature, to be, the more people have traveled to see it, thus ruining the spot with overflow of human presence. When we see a place only once, we retain this as a special memory, our imagination creating an even grander place, setting it apart from other experiences and creating a more powerful place for us. How we “see” nature is changed in this sense, we respect it more, we cherish that memory and the place because we never return.
Leopold poses the question, “who is the more thoroughly acquainted with the world in which he lives?” (p.78) I kept this question in mind when I set out for my walk to the cascades. It is a small river, almost a brook, behind the Farmington fairgrounds. I discovered it when I lived behind the fairgrounds. It was and still is a place that my friends and I often visit. I love this place because although there is a physical presence of people, a trail and a fire pit, the noises of town are drowned out by the sound of the river and the shroud of tall pines.
It was really the entire first passage in Leopold’s chapter home range that I kept in mind on my walk.
“The wild things that live on my farm are reluctant to tell me, in so many words, how much of my township is included with their daily or nightly beat.”
I started my walk on my street; it is in town there is a doctors office, houses, and even a market. I thought about the animals that I’ve seen in the neighbor hood; squirrels, skunks, raccoons, stray cats make up the majority of the wild life. As I walk further from my street there are less and less houses. Do these animals still venture this far from what I think their world is? As I turn up the road towards the cascades all the houses are on the left, the right side is wooded. I reach my destination and head down the trail. Is this where the skunks or raccoons live? Or do they live in town? I really don’t think I’ll ever know. But it’s fun to think about.
As I looked around I couldn’t see any animals. But I couldn’t help but think they are there. Whether perched in the tree or peering through underbrush they could see me and I could not see them. I’m thinking that an animal is more thoroughly acquainted within his world. We spend so much time obtaining things we really don’t need and go blundering about the world without much thought to what is going on around you. And yet when you stop and realize that even a short walk between home and woods, you pass through many worlds of many creatures.
After this weeks wind many leaves have fallen off the trees. I think it’s kind of a bummer. I had friends come up for a visit from the Portland area that were shocked at how many leaves had fallen already. They said that most of the leaves were still on the trees down there. Bummer! The lack of leaves made the pines stand out even more then normal. Winter is right around the corner! And because of that it was quite chilly so I did not hang out there long. But overall the walk there and back, with Leopold’s question in the back of my head, opened my thoughts to new idea, which unfortunately left me with questions I may never know. I feel like I can compare the way I feel to the science of Leopold’s era in which he states, “science knows little about home range: how big it is at various seasons, what food and cover it must include, when and how it is defended against trespass, and whether ownership is an individual, family, or group affair.” P.81 Today I’m sure science has a much better understanding, but I still don’t.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Leopold, the Mountain and Wolves
“We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes—something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither wolf nor mountain agreed with such a view” (130). Walking along in Farmington it is hard to imagine wolves. It is hard to feel how powerful and awesome they really are. When I was a kid I spent some time fascinated by them. By dad and my grandmother live on Verona Island here in Maine and I spent every weekend visiting. It was normal for us to walk along a small wood trail between the two homes but not at night. At night the woods were still fairly wild and belonged to bears, coyotes and wolves. It was dangerous to walk through them then.
I remember one evening when my grandmother walked through the woods to see my dad. It was evening and the sun was almost down. That was when we saw what we at first thought was a dog. It was big and furry and black. Too big to be a dog but it had ears and four paws and looked like a dog. It was a wolf stalking around our house. It ambled on along into the woods just as my grandmother reached the house. Needless to say she did not go back through the woods.
I can understand that people fear what they don’t understand and they certainly don’t understand wolves. Maybe that is why they have been hunted to near extinction. But when I see one it doesn’t even cross my mind that we should shoot it. As scary as they can be, especially when they howl, they are also beautiful and loyal. They hunt in packs and mate for life. They play games with their pups for food. And they grieve when their pack members die. In some ways they are more like us than we realize. I can forgive Leopold for his folly in killing this wolf but I don’t think I can forgive the rest of the world for nearly destroying something so amazing.
Wolves will almost never attack a human unless provoked, the pack shares responsibility for the pups, only the alpha male and female of the pack have pups, when a whole pack works together they can easily take down a large animal such as a moose and they have a clear hierarchical social order that they live by but most packs are made of one family.
Maybe I don’t understand the accord that the mountain and woods have that Leopold describes in his passage but like the mountain I certainly know that they are important. I think Leopold takes full advantage of this story in this essay. I liked how he should that nature sometimes knows things we don’t but saying that the mountain did not agree with his take on fewer wolves. That statement worked well because in the end it was the mountain that suffered first from the loss of the wolves. The mountain was destroyed by the number of deer trying to eat the vegetation and wearing trails all over the place. Then the destruction continued as the deer died out from hunger because there were so many of them and no predators to keep their numbers low. Leopold does an excellent job of showing people that even animals we don’t fully understand and may be afraid of are helpful to the environment and to humans as well. Nature is in complete balance until we interfere too far. In this case the loss of the wolves destroyed mountains and deer. Who knows what other harm could have been caused by the loss of this one predator?
I remember one evening when my grandmother walked through the woods to see my dad. It was evening and the sun was almost down. That was when we saw what we at first thought was a dog. It was big and furry and black. Too big to be a dog but it had ears and four paws and looked like a dog. It was a wolf stalking around our house. It ambled on along into the woods just as my grandmother reached the house. Needless to say she did not go back through the woods.
I can understand that people fear what they don’t understand and they certainly don’t understand wolves. Maybe that is why they have been hunted to near extinction. But when I see one it doesn’t even cross my mind that we should shoot it. As scary as they can be, especially when they howl, they are also beautiful and loyal. They hunt in packs and mate for life. They play games with their pups for food. And they grieve when their pack members die. In some ways they are more like us than we realize. I can forgive Leopold for his folly in killing this wolf but I don’t think I can forgive the rest of the world for nearly destroying something so amazing.
Wolves will almost never attack a human unless provoked, the pack shares responsibility for the pups, only the alpha male and female of the pack have pups, when a whole pack works together they can easily take down a large animal such as a moose and they have a clear hierarchical social order that they live by but most packs are made of one family.
Maybe I don’t understand the accord that the mountain and woods have that Leopold describes in his passage but like the mountain I certainly know that they are important. I think Leopold takes full advantage of this story in this essay. I liked how he should that nature sometimes knows things we don’t but saying that the mountain did not agree with his take on fewer wolves. That statement worked well because in the end it was the mountain that suffered first from the loss of the wolves. The mountain was destroyed by the number of deer trying to eat the vegetation and wearing trails all over the place. Then the destruction continued as the deer died out from hunger because there were so many of them and no predators to keep their numbers low. Leopold does an excellent job of showing people that even animals we don’t fully understand and may be afraid of are helpful to the environment and to humans as well. Nature is in complete balance until we interfere too far. In this case the loss of the wolves destroyed mountains and deer. Who knows what other harm could have been caused by the loss of this one predator?
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Entitlement
(Apologies for this being so late. Sadface.)
Technically I was supposed to have written this before the holiday weekend, but since I didn't and am writing it now on this dark Saturday night, I'll go ahead and talk about a walk I took while off campus for the weekend in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
For those not in the know (like me, before this lovely little trip south), Gloucester is a port city. Which means when I woke up from sleeping on the floor in my friend's parents' addition Saturday morning, I immediately felt the need to go for a walk along the coast.
Having grown up in San Diego, barely a 20 minute drive from the coast, being in Farmington is always a little torturous. I love the ocean. Things don't quite feel right when I can't jump in my car and drive to the beach on a whim. So going on this walk last week was quite a treat. Here was this ocean, different from the one I was accustomed to, the one I claimed as my own, my rightful habitat. But it would do.
This got me thinking about entitlement and how... human that feeling/emotion/state of being is. And in reading Leopold, when he humanizes and personifies animals to make them more relatable, this feeling of entitlement is inescapable, especially in the opening essay: "The mouse is a sober citizen who knows that grass grows in order that mice may store it as underground haystacks, and that snow falls in order that mice may build subways from stack to stack: supply, demand, and transport all neatly organized" (4). Here, Leopold talks about the mouse as a sort of straight-laced business man, intently focused on the supply and demand aspects of his life and the collection of grass. Why else would the grass grow? To the mouse, this fact is the most natural thing in the world, nearly akin to instinct--the difference being that the mouse knows these things, and they are not gained from intuition. It's a fact, one known and learned but taken for granted, and it becomes a sense of entitlement.
The same holds true for the hawk in the next paragraph: "The rough-leg has no opinion why grass grows, but he is well aware that snow melts in order that hawks may again catch mice" (4). While less involved than the example of personification of the mouse, the hawk shares the same entitlement. Of course it thaws so hawks might catch mice to eat! Why else would it?
This is an interesting and insightful move on Leopold's part. Entitlement is one of the earliest and oldest of human sensibilities. From a young age we expect things will happen; that our parents will feed us, clothe us, love us. It's natural, a given fact, and as we grow older it only seems to grow more entrenched and cover a wider variety of things. Rarely do we as 21st century Americans question where food, clothing, education, and even technology comes from. These are merely facts, taken for granted; of course we are entitled to these things. And I think it interesting that Leopold chooses to highlight this among the animal world as well so early in his book. He is upfront about it while drawing subtle attention to our own human ability to take things for granted. And it is only through a sudden disruption or an absence of these things that we begin to pay more attention to them--whether it be a mouse and his snow, or a SoCal girl and her ocean.
Technically I was supposed to have written this before the holiday weekend, but since I didn't and am writing it now on this dark Saturday night, I'll go ahead and talk about a walk I took while off campus for the weekend in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
For those not in the know (like me, before this lovely little trip south), Gloucester is a port city. Which means when I woke up from sleeping on the floor in my friend's parents' addition Saturday morning, I immediately felt the need to go for a walk along the coast.
Having grown up in San Diego, barely a 20 minute drive from the coast, being in Farmington is always a little torturous. I love the ocean. Things don't quite feel right when I can't jump in my car and drive to the beach on a whim. So going on this walk last week was quite a treat. Here was this ocean, different from the one I was accustomed to, the one I claimed as my own, my rightful habitat. But it would do.
This got me thinking about entitlement and how... human that feeling/emotion/state of being is. And in reading Leopold, when he humanizes and personifies animals to make them more relatable, this feeling of entitlement is inescapable, especially in the opening essay: "The mouse is a sober citizen who knows that grass grows in order that mice may store it as underground haystacks, and that snow falls in order that mice may build subways from stack to stack: supply, demand, and transport all neatly organized" (4). Here, Leopold talks about the mouse as a sort of straight-laced business man, intently focused on the supply and demand aspects of his life and the collection of grass. Why else would the grass grow? To the mouse, this fact is the most natural thing in the world, nearly akin to instinct--the difference being that the mouse knows these things, and they are not gained from intuition. It's a fact, one known and learned but taken for granted, and it becomes a sense of entitlement.
The same holds true for the hawk in the next paragraph: "The rough-leg has no opinion why grass grows, but he is well aware that snow melts in order that hawks may again catch mice" (4). While less involved than the example of personification of the mouse, the hawk shares the same entitlement. Of course it thaws so hawks might catch mice to eat! Why else would it?
This is an interesting and insightful move on Leopold's part. Entitlement is one of the earliest and oldest of human sensibilities. From a young age we expect things will happen; that our parents will feed us, clothe us, love us. It's natural, a given fact, and as we grow older it only seems to grow more entrenched and cover a wider variety of things. Rarely do we as 21st century Americans question where food, clothing, education, and even technology comes from. These are merely facts, taken for granted; of course we are entitled to these things. And I think it interesting that Leopold chooses to highlight this among the animal world as well so early in his book. He is upfront about it while drawing subtle attention to our own human ability to take things for granted. And it is only through a sudden disruption or an absence of these things that we begin to pay more attention to them--whether it be a mouse and his snow, or a SoCal girl and her ocean.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Starting Over
Most people don't enjoy walking in the rain and most people get depressed and find the rain as a sort of bearer of bad news. Today, I found the rain to be the most essential to purge myself of the feelings that I have been experiencing lately. It always seems that when everything is going good in your life, you forget about all the bad times in your life and all the times that you feel like life is collapsing. When things in your life aren't going very well, it seems as though everything comes to a point and everything collapses and you experience the worst of feelings and you find yourself wishing that life would change. During my walk this evening, I found myself shuddering in my clothes, chilled from the night air and the rain that kept falling on me. The sky was a grayish eerie smear of dark rain clouds and the sky was pouring down ont top of me. I felt so insignificant in those fifteen minutes and felt as if my mind was going to expolde from playing all the negative things playing over in my mind from the last few weeks. Life is funny like that, and it almost seems as if nature knows when you need something to give you a push, something to help you get by. I took my hood off, looked up to the dark sky and let the rain fall on my face. I felt myself teary in the moment, by the more I looked to the sky, the more the raindrops seemed to wash away what was happening inside. It was like wiping the slate clean, a new beggining to the next few weeks of my life. It's funny how we try to control things in our life like our emotions and the events that make us feel sad, happy, bad and good. Sometimes, it takes us realizing that there are forces bigger than us that control the aspects of our lives that we can't, and sometimes, nature offers us a way out, a way to escape life for a moment. Today, that was the rain.
The part of today's reading that stood out to me the most today was when Leopold was in the section titled, "Axe-in-Hand." Leopold starts this passage by saying, "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, but he is no longer the only one to do so. When some remote ancestor of ours invented the shovel, he became a giver; he could plant a tree. And when the axe was invented, he became a taker: he could chop it down. Whoever owns land has thus assumed, whether he knows it or not, the divine functions of creating and destroying plants" (pg. 67). I found this so interesting because it really got me thinking about how as humans, some of us invest in the idea that there is higher being that controls all, but even still, we try to control all aspects of our lives, as well as other people's lives around us. The "ancestor" in this passage represents a universal idea of humans, all mankind together. The "shovel" represents mankind's ability to give things back to the enviorment to use in everyday life, things that we in a way may take for granted and other things that we use to control our lives, such as what we choose to eat, in the case of Leopold, "plant a tree." The "axe" represents mankind's ability to take away things from the enviorment, especially without intent to replace them, such as choosing what to kill and what to take for ourselves, also in the case of Leopold, "chop it down." Henceforth, because the universal human, "owns land," we therefore have a sort of godlike ability to control nature or rather, "the divine functions of creating and destroying plants." This got me thinking back to my walk and how we as humans always try to control everything in life, especially nature and the things that we take and what we choose to give back. It seems as when we need to be reminded that there are certian things in life that we can't control and that we can't always play God, nature takes over and uses it upper hand, grounding us again and reminding us that we can't always have control. I think that we would do well to try and understand this more, rather than always thinking that we control every aspect of our lives. Perhaps we would appreciate life more, especially the things that nature has to offer.
The part of today's reading that stood out to me the most today was when Leopold was in the section titled, "Axe-in-Hand." Leopold starts this passage by saying, "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, but he is no longer the only one to do so. When some remote ancestor of ours invented the shovel, he became a giver; he could plant a tree. And when the axe was invented, he became a taker: he could chop it down. Whoever owns land has thus assumed, whether he knows it or not, the divine functions of creating and destroying plants" (pg. 67). I found this so interesting because it really got me thinking about how as humans, some of us invest in the idea that there is higher being that controls all, but even still, we try to control all aspects of our lives, as well as other people's lives around us. The "ancestor" in this passage represents a universal idea of humans, all mankind together. The "shovel" represents mankind's ability to give things back to the enviorment to use in everyday life, things that we in a way may take for granted and other things that we use to control our lives, such as what we choose to eat, in the case of Leopold, "plant a tree." The "axe" represents mankind's ability to take away things from the enviorment, especially without intent to replace them, such as choosing what to kill and what to take for ourselves, also in the case of Leopold, "chop it down." Henceforth, because the universal human, "owns land," we therefore have a sort of godlike ability to control nature or rather, "the divine functions of creating and destroying plants." This got me thinking back to my walk and how we as humans always try to control everything in life, especially nature and the things that we take and what we choose to give back. It seems as when we need to be reminded that there are certian things in life that we can't control and that we can't always play God, nature takes over and uses it upper hand, grounding us again and reminding us that we can't always have control. I think that we would do well to try and understand this more, rather than always thinking that we control every aspect of our lives. Perhaps we would appreciate life more, especially the things that nature has to offer.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Leopold, There's a Fly In My Biota!
Sometimes I try to do my homework outside, but even if I am sitting beneath the most ideal tree in the middle of a two-acre field, I can only focus on most work for a few minutes before I am on my stomach staring at an ant walking up and down the length of my pen. I am thoroughly convinced, however, that A Sand County Almanac was meant to be read outside. I came to this conclusion while reading Part II, sitting in the middle of one of Bangor's many obscure recreational parks. Leopold's vast descriptions of times and places are so primal they are strangely familiar, but now and then they seem so absolutely foreign that, when discovered outside, you become a witness to the same natural energy that runs through his prose. While reading this last assignment, I felt more focused being slowly covered with falling leaves from an old Elm tree than I might have been in the most silent and confined library study cell.
On this particular outside study-session, when what may have been the last living no-see-um of the year silently crash-landed on a page in the middle of "Odyssey," instead of brushing him away as a mere distraction, I felt as though I was being rewarded with an "X" carrying visitor. As I took a few minutes to closely study his six tiny legs trudging over the page, I smiled, noticing that the text he walked on was coincidentally Leopold's description of life's eternal cycle. I read this passage as the little guy aimlessly plodded along:
"For every atom lost to the sea, the prairie pulls another out of the decaying rocks. The only certain truth is that its creatures must suck hard, live fast, and die often, lest its losses exceed its gains" (107).
I telepathically unloaded all the fresh ideas and new perspectives in my head to the bug. I tried to consider how his existence coincided with my own, how he came to be in Bangor and how he fit into his own little habitat, and how--thanks to our chance meeting--he was now part of my life. The part of his natural cycle where he took a detour on the pages of my book might not have had much to do with depositing atom "X" back to the sea, but he had at least made an impact on me intellectually. Minutes of my consciousness were spent improving my ecological worldview all because he happened to be in a park in Bangor when I was in the mood to wax philosophical about tiny insects. This connection made me realize that I understood the text on a level unlike anything I've read before. I was reading carefully edited, deliberately crafted human ideas about nature and combining them--in real-time--with a completely objective element in nature. Did I come up with any of my own profound insights because of it? Not exactly, but rather than having an "aha" experience I think I was able to take all of the information that Leopold was firing at me and apply it to my own environmental philosophy. At the end of the day, I think that this is one thing Leopold would have wanted all of his readers to do.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
chickens
This week’s nature walk was, ahem, a nature adventure. Being the dork that I am, while taking out the garbage I accidentally locked myself out, and subsequently spent two hours outside waiting for my boyfriend to return home with his key. (not a shining moment I realize)
Anyway, I suddenly understood how Thoreau could sit in his front door all morning without doing anything, although I was clothed. Anyone who says they spent quiet time outdoor in the woods is either lying, deaf, or really self-centered. I was struck by how noisy it was, and aside from the cars on 41, we don’t have any ‘big game’ animals around where I live generally. When you have nothing else to focus on, even the space between blades of grass makes noise.
Watching the woods, I found the source of one of the noises: my neighbor’s free range chicken. It clearly escaped from her unfenced yard and wandered into the woods behind my building for whatever reason. It reminded me of the beginning of Leopold when he follows the skunk. “The skunk track leads on, showing no interest in possible food, and no concern over the rompings or retributions of his neighbors. I wonder what he has on his mind; what got him out of bed? Can one impute romantic motives to this corpulent fellow…” I tried following the chicken for a while, but it didn’t follow any sort of trail or pattern (I think her chickens are a particular brand of stupid but that’s not the point…they dive at cars) and I eventually had to give up. But it got me thinking about the ways in which humans interact with animals, particularly my neighbor’s stupid free-range chickens. I don’t think she eats them actually, I think they’re more like pets, which in itself is a very interesting relationship. I was curious enough to follow the chicken just as Leopold was intrigued enough to follow the skunk track, although he didn’t have the actual skunk there. We wonder what animals are doing and are limited in our understanding because we have only our human terms to interpret their actions. I don’t think chickens or skunks wake up in the morning and think about going for walks to visit other creatures as part of a neighborly ritual, but we as humans lack their instincts and mindsets to understand it any other way. What do they think of us? Was my neighbor’s chicken actually following a human’s tracks through the woods (of which there are many trails and such from kids making shortcuts to the lake) wondering what it was doing?
Leopold doesn’t really address the motives of animals, which I like; he only tells us what they are doing, not what it means. Can someone as close to nature as Leopold or Thoreau interpret what they are doing better than someone who lives inside and spends all her time in a university? How close to nature do we need to be to develop an understanding of it, even if that understanding is shadowed by our human understanding in the first place?
Friday, October 8, 2010
Too Many Walks
I've gone on so many walks this week. I now try to walk to all of my classes rather than drive, so I've had a lot of at least somewhat private time to myself outside. Yesterday while I was walking it began to rain, but the sun was still shining. It was actually really pretty, even though I ended up walking under the rain for a few minutes. It is weird to me that rain can make a day both pretty and ugly. While thinking about this and the Leopold reading I thought of the geese passage. Leopold talks about how the goose has two roles; it can either be hunted down or welcomed with open arms. There are so many things in nature that are loved at one point in the year and hated at another. In December, so many people think that a snow fall is pretty. If there were a snowfall in June I think people would look at the snow with disgust and repulsion.
The reading we have been doing has been forcing me to think about how people and animals are the same and how they are different. Leopold personifies animals and nature frequently, but sometimes he will do the opposite and represent humans as animals. The passage about the trout showed how humans were like the trout rather than the reverse. On one of the roads I walk my dog on, there is a chipmunk that will come out and sit on the same rock every time we pass. The chipmunk just sits there, chirping (or whichever way you would like to describe that noise that they make) and watching us. I wonder if the chipmunk is just being nosy, like how some people are. I then thought about my neighbors and how they will sit out on their balcony and basically "people watch." Is it an animal or instinctual behavior to be a busy-body? I wonder whether the majority of our emotions are basically instinct driven and just how similar people are to animals. I guess it sits a little more nicely to personify animals rather than show how humans are animals.
I noticed today while I was walking that the smell of fall was very strong. Almost everyone knows what you mean when you say, "It smells like fall." For me, it is both a sad and happy smell. Autumn is beautiful and on a good day the weather is perfect. Here in Maine, however, Autumn also means that snow could fall at any moment. Winters in Maine seem to last an eternity, so when I smell the "smell of fall" I become a little upset because I know what awaits me. There are people who love winter because they skii or think it is pretty, though. Leopold's animal descriptions show how animals have different "feelings" towards the winter months. Like people, some animals benefit from the winter while others are miserable.
I feel like I could make endless comparisons between humans and animals, which in its own way creeps me out a little bit. I feel like I've always been "taught" that people and animals are two separate categories, but I feel like the two have more similarities than differences and Leopold does a nice job of pointing this out without being preachy.
The reading we have been doing has been forcing me to think about how people and animals are the same and how they are different. Leopold personifies animals and nature frequently, but sometimes he will do the opposite and represent humans as animals. The passage about the trout showed how humans were like the trout rather than the reverse. On one of the roads I walk my dog on, there is a chipmunk that will come out and sit on the same rock every time we pass. The chipmunk just sits there, chirping (or whichever way you would like to describe that noise that they make) and watching us. I wonder if the chipmunk is just being nosy, like how some people are. I then thought about my neighbors and how they will sit out on their balcony and basically "people watch." Is it an animal or instinctual behavior to be a busy-body? I wonder whether the majority of our emotions are basically instinct driven and just how similar people are to animals. I guess it sits a little more nicely to personify animals rather than show how humans are animals.
I noticed today while I was walking that the smell of fall was very strong. Almost everyone knows what you mean when you say, "It smells like fall." For me, it is both a sad and happy smell. Autumn is beautiful and on a good day the weather is perfect. Here in Maine, however, Autumn also means that snow could fall at any moment. Winters in Maine seem to last an eternity, so when I smell the "smell of fall" I become a little upset because I know what awaits me. There are people who love winter because they skii or think it is pretty, though. Leopold's animal descriptions show how animals have different "feelings" towards the winter months. Like people, some animals benefit from the winter while others are miserable.
I feel like I could make endless comparisons between humans and animals, which in its own way creeps me out a little bit. I feel like I've always been "taught" that people and animals are two separate categories, but I feel like the two have more similarities than differences and Leopold does a nice job of pointing this out without being preachy.
The Nature That Grows
Ah Nature! I still don't get it at times. As I went on my nature walk today, I was again held under arrest by the numerous fall colors both on and off the trees. I picked up a golden colored leaf and began to ponder more and more the possible "genius" that I could possibly gain from it. Maybe by pondering the leaf in the first place I was feeding my genius, but I guess I was hoping for a jolt of inspiration, a rush of jubilee as the leaves under this violent and windy day whispers the secrets of life; or maybe even some sort of tingle on the nape of my neck that would feel like I was on the verge of a major life break through... but sadly that never came. Hmph!
I think I might have read to much Thoreau as a result. Granted, my imagination might have got the best of me when I reached the end of Walden, but there are some things that I pulled from Thoreau that I can marry philosophically with the new entry into our nature canon: A Sand County Almanac.
One of the major ideas that stuck with me in Walden was the very idea of every inch of nature being our home. In Thoreau's "House-Warming" he claims that it is important to keep our homes as open and devoid of many secrets. To parallel this idea, I believe that all of his acute and empirical portions of Walden is suppose to further exemplify this idea of openness. It seems as though by marrying both philosophy and empirical facts, Thoreau wants Walden to be our home as much as his.
Now, where does Leopold fit into my views of nature? I believe it fits in to my view because of the concepts that he introduces in the beginning of his book. On page 25 Leopold writes "Our lumber pile, recruited entirely from the river, is thus not only a collection of personalities, but an anthology of human strivings in upriver farms and forest". I love this quote so much because of the very idea of trees being a record of humanity in general. It's a tangible memory bank of our past ancestry in which we often forget about. Our identities are imbued within in the trees. That is what nature is (at least to me). And like Thoreau mentions, that is why it is our home.
I think if at all possible, when I go on my next nature walk, I shall look not for moments of magical revelations, but rather the history that can be learned from the very roots that it grows in.
Wild Things
Lately, I’ve been walking at night. It’s cold, the streets are empty, and my thoughts abound. For the past few months I have been undergoing what I’ve half-jokingly dubbed my mid-life crisis. As a college senior, I’m bombarded with questions about the big “F.”
The future.
What will it look like? Where will I be? What will I be doing? Will I be happy? How can someone who enjoys writing make a living?
So, I make plans. I research. One day, I’m picking fruit in Australia. The next, I’m exploring Antarctica. The next, I’m hiking mountains in Montana.
I’m a poet, a dreamer, an environmentalist. I’m a teacher or a librarian or a journalist. I’m sleeping in a tent in the middle of nowhere or looking down the busy streets of the Big Apple.
I’m everywhere and everything, constantly in motion, constantly in flux.
This is me in the future, where all possibilities can be found.
But then, the phone rings, the clock ticks, the pot boils and I’m back in the ho-hum present again. Back to that place I so eagerly escape from.
As a writer, I live in a world of stories. I see beginnings, middles, and ends, all jumbled up in time and space and I want to snatch those narratives up into the palm of my hands, releasing them onto paper and the world.
So, I dwell in the past as much as the future. It’s the only way I can make sense of it all.
I can’t rightly claim Thoreau’s assertiveness when he exclaims that he lives for the present, but I try. I think that though he might not have acknowledged it himself, he was just as whimsical in this sense as any of us. I know this because he wanted contact. He wanted moments of time where he could stand in his bean field or by Walden Pond or in his log cabin and declare proudly: I am here. I am life. This moment is real and these clothes are dirty with the sweat of my labor and this pen is wet with the ink, which darts across the page at the command of this, my brain.
In much the same manner, I too, demand these life moments. Sometimes it’s camping out in the desert among sagebrush. Sometimes it’s that precise instance in the turning point of a movie when soft music plays and suddenly everything has a meaning that’s connected to my own life and humanity at the same time. Sometimes it’s visiting the grave of a grandmother I loved.
But Thoreau struggled with this concept of the present and I do too. In the introduction to his journal it reads, “Thoreau’s Journal had become a way of keeping time in two senses: it could vividly mark the rhythms of life and nature because its observations were always made in the present, and it could preserve such moments for later consideration” (11). We are writers and thinkers and people guided by their hearts. This means that we wish to bottle these moments and keep them forever. We want them readily at our sides so that when we need them most, we can simply unscrew the cap and breathe them in again. We retreat to these memories and live inside them, and we imagine our future bottled moments in our daydreams.
In Walden’s conclusion, Thoreau famously writes:
“I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six ears since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressionable by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now” (302).
I think this passage exemplifies the “wildness” that Cronon discusses. Thoreau asserts that people are too concerned with movement…to preoccupied with seeking travel as a means of fulfillment. He demonstrates how a simple pond can be so much more than a simple pond when examined with the right pair of eyes.
However, Thoreau does make a move. He moves from Concord to his small cabin and he fails to recognize this change being equally as important as any sailor going to sea or explorer heading over the mountains. Going into the woods suggests an acceptance of wildness. He confronts it. He makes contact.
But such contact can occur in any number of ways, because ultimately I think we must recognize Cronon’s words when he explains that wildness is a condition of the heart.
Everywhere, Everything and Everyone
I slammed the door as I left. I knew that the source of my anger wouldn’t hear the sound, but I felt like Nature would and that somehow she’d fix it. It was pouring rain, but I didn’t care, I walked outside without an umbrella, I had a rain jacket on, but it stopped being waterproof years ago. I stared up at the sky and watched the raindrops pelt my glasses and the fog begin to form. Maybe Nature was in the same mood I was or maybe she was just trying to tell me something. I took my glasses off, put them in my pocket and continued my walk. Nature was trying the best to suffocate my anger, but perhaps I was just too large of a conflagration. It was a while and a few blocks away before the fire was put out enough so that I could think about things other than what had incensed me. That’s when I noticed Nature was burning too; the leaves had reached their peak and their auburn flames licked at the sky. The dark the rain had caused made them appear more prominently than any sunny day had done before. I noticed fellow people running, like squirrels running to their trees as quickly as they could before their coats could get soaked through, and I wondered what was wrong with me. I wasn’t running back to my dorm or any building in particular. I wasn’t even running to a tree… I wasn’t even running… That’s when the wind got me, whipping itself around me with such a force that the rain drops felt like bullets, but they were nothing compared to the cold. I discovered that all of my anger had left and I felt rather ashamed of myself. I didn’t even need the scolding squeaks sounding from the trees to convince me that I was doing something wrong, so I turned back towards my room and ran.
This walk and the thoughts that I experienced on it made me think about how much we personify nature. Personification appears to be everywhere in Leopold’s writing, but it’s when he reigns it in that I think he achieves more. He makes us go looking for the personification and in turn how to relate it to ourselves. In a really non-personified passage on page 35 he is talking about the upland plover and how it has adapted to the changes we have made to the landscape. He says, “He nests in hayfields as well as pastures, but, unlike the clumsy pheasant, does not get caught in hay mowers. Well before the hay is ready to cut, the young plovers are a-wing and way. In farm country, the plover has only two real enemies: the gully and the drainage ditch. Perhaps we shall one day find that these are our enemies, too.” This last statement asks us to look back through the paragraph and see the upland plover as an ally, a friend we have forced to adapt to our agricultural life. It makes us feel even more for the “clumsy pheasant” which cannot avoid our hay mowers and we feel the loss of the brown buffaloes even though the plover seems to be ok with the black and white ones as a “substitute”. The last statement suggests that we may soon have the same enemy as the plover, but I believe that Leopold wants us not to think in direct terms of the gully and the drainage ditch becoming detrimental to us, but instead that they will become detrimental to us because they kill our ally, the plover. I think that Leopold believes it will take many losses like this before we can recognize the “age-old unity” of not just the Americas and hemispheres, but the unity of everywhere, everything and everyone, a unity that the birds already seem to have figured out.
Tree Rings and Things
You all will have to excuse me, I feel like this post might be a bit sentimental. This week when going on my walk I meandered through town a bit. The leaves all red, orange, and gold gave the town a charm it might not always have, setting up my nostalgia. There are moments here in Farmington that we appreciate more than others, when the leaves change, the first snowfall, and the first warm day of spring. Walking through town made me remember of all the times I had experienced these days over the years. In reading Aldo Leopold I was in someway forced to think about the past.
The reason for this is because of the scene with the tree. When he writes about cutting down the tree readers are able to see the sensitivity that he has. “Fragrant little chips of history spewed from the cut, and accumulated on the snow before the kneeling saywer”(9). I really loved this section as he seemed to recognize the necessity in cutting up the tree, yet, he appreciated what the tree had gone through to grow to be eighty years old.
As a senior I will leave Farmington in may, I have spent four years here. If someone cut me open when I turn eighty(creepy, flashback to last times serial killer) they would have to note my four years here. While walking through town I remembered some weird things from my time here. I remembered not the first time I went to Soup for You, but the time I stormed out of it because I was having a fight. The time I had to leave Narrow Gauge Cinema midway through a movie because my roommate thought she had appendicitis (she didn’t but it was an interesting experience). Anyway I began to appreciated Farmington the way Leopold appreciated the Oak tree.
I thought that Leopold did an excellent job of allowing nature to take part in his writing. He was different than Thoreau, in that he seemed to have more emotion toward nature. Leopold did not preach about nature in the way that Thoreau did. I was able to identify with it more, and think about it more.
In today’s world I think that we are very wrapped up in the taking and consuming of things. We as a culture do not appreciate what goes in to the taking and consuming. Reading this section made me wonder if we stopped to appreciate what was around us, would we be able to consume so much? It seems that we wouldn’t, because if we like Leopold stopped and thought about how many years a tree had lived though every time we wrote on a piece of paper we would not have enough time to consume so much. We would lead cleaner lives and be more in-tune with the past so we could learn from it more.
As winter approaches...
Upon my walk this week, it became increasingly clear to me that I can no longer deny the approach of the fall season. As much as I try I can no longer ignore the leaves cascading from the trees or the breeze as it blows in a new type of atmosphere. This was the best summer we have had in so long and I am not ready to let it go just yet. The encroaching cold instills some sort of primal urge that makes me want to get ready to huddle in my home for the next few months, all the while waiting for the first rays of the spring sunshine to peek out from the grayness that lingers through the New England winters. I have never lived anywhere else, so it’s not that I am unaccustomed to the particular weather, I just feel like the season is so melancholy. The leaves fall from the trees, the rivers stop flowing (visibly that is), the animals go into hiding from the world, and people seem to hide themselves away as well. Winter is just a different feel, and fall tends to put it into my head that it is finally on its way.
I suppose this is why I was drawn to a quote on page 5 of the Sand County Almanac. Aldo Leopold describes following animal tracks through the snow and coming upon the scene where a rabbit has recently been devoured by an owl. Leopold states, “To this rabbit the thaw brought freedom from want, but also a reckless abandonment of fear. The owl has reminded him that thoughts of spring are no substitute for caution”. In the rabbit’s experience, he was too excited that there was one day of warmth that he forgot about all of the dangers that live beyond his tiny winter world. I feel that we often do this as well. Whether after a long rainy spell or during a cold snap during the winter, we see the sun shining one day and we have the urge to run out into the world with our short sleeve shirts and sandals. When the air finally gets a chance to hit us it shocks us with an unexpected blast of chilliness. Just like the rabbit, we are devoured by the air and are victims to our illusion of safety… in weather that is. We assume that sunshine means warm weather and we remove our layers of armor. Leopold, here, seems to caution us all to be aware of our surroundings and the true nature of Nature and realize that it is more predictable than we want to believe. No matter how much we want to ignore it, New England winters are full of cold. Even though we have a few days of 50 degree weather, it will return to the full-on below zero temperature. If we rely on common sense, we can protect ourselves from the violent climate, or in the case of the rabbit, owls.
I suppose this is why I was drawn to a quote on page 5 of the Sand County Almanac. Aldo Leopold describes following animal tracks through the snow and coming upon the scene where a rabbit has recently been devoured by an owl. Leopold states, “To this rabbit the thaw brought freedom from want, but also a reckless abandonment of fear. The owl has reminded him that thoughts of spring are no substitute for caution”. In the rabbit’s experience, he was too excited that there was one day of warmth that he forgot about all of the dangers that live beyond his tiny winter world. I feel that we often do this as well. Whether after a long rainy spell or during a cold snap during the winter, we see the sun shining one day and we have the urge to run out into the world with our short sleeve shirts and sandals. When the air finally gets a chance to hit us it shocks us with an unexpected blast of chilliness. Just like the rabbit, we are devoured by the air and are victims to our illusion of safety… in weather that is. We assume that sunshine means warm weather and we remove our layers of armor. Leopold, here, seems to caution us all to be aware of our surroundings and the true nature of Nature and realize that it is more predictable than we want to believe. No matter how much we want to ignore it, New England winters are full of cold. Even though we have a few days of 50 degree weather, it will return to the full-on below zero temperature. If we rely on common sense, we can protect ourselves from the violent climate, or in the case of the rabbit, owls.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Friday, October 1, 2010
Sublimity
Today will have to suffice with not so much a nature walk, as a nature drive-home. I must attribute this to the steady downpour along with my inability to lay claim upon anything resembling a decent coat.
As I was driving home from my expensive educational institution, going seventy miles an hour in my Jeep, eating a sandwich that someone else made for me because I have very little idea how to grow my own sandwiches, paid for with money that someone gave me for making food for those who also are far too lazy to create their own, I realized that nature really does offer a man, at his fingertips, everything he might need.
I very much enjoy berries—berries of all colors and persuasions: Blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries and cranberries. It was the last that I was able to savor this afternoon. Falling out of my sandwich. All over me. If ever there existed a situation one might call ‘sticky,’ this was it. Napkin after pure, white napkin failed me as I hurtled through the storm, until I was struck by inspiration. I reached my hand out the window, stretching my fingers toward the heavens. The rain drops bit into my skin, but with every sensation I could feel myself cleansed, thanking nature for her bounty.
Such a pleasant experience with berries confirmed my desire to write about what might be my favorite passage in Walden:
“Sometimes I rambled to pine groves, standing like temples, or like fleets at sea, full-rigged, with wavy boughs, and rippling with light, so soft and green and shady that the Druids would have forsaken their oaks to worship in them; or to the cedar wood beyond Flints’ Pond, where the trees, covered with hoary blue berries, spiring higher and higher, are fit to stand before Valhalla, and the creeping juniper covers the ground with wreaths full of fruit; or to swamps where the usual lichen hangs in festoons from the white-spruce trees, and toadstools, round tables of the swamp gods, cover the ground, and more beautiful fungi adorn the stumps, like butterflies or shells, vegetable winkles; where the swamp-pink and dog-wood grow, the red alder-berry glows like the eyes of imps, the waxwork grooves and crushes the hardest woods in its folds, and the wild-holly berries make the beholder forget his home with their beauty, and he is dazzled and tempted by nameless other wild forbidden fruits, too fair for mortal taste.” (189)
These opening lines to Baker Farm move me; ordinary, beautiful descriptions are transformed into an overwhelming, multi-spiritual experience. My imagination and my appetite are as tempted as Thoreau’s.
At many points in my studies, as happens with Transcendentalists or Romantics, I have run headlong into the concept of the sublime. We bandy the term about, and certainly it was always expected that I could spit out some definition of the word—and I could. I could point to a painting, or a passage and scholarly air that “oh yes! That, Sir, is quite sublime.” Content, perhaps, with a pat on the shoulder, or concerned with greater pursuits, it was not until this moment in Walden that I realized what a gulf existed between definition and meaning.
It is with little pride that I claim this revelation. Thoreau certainly presents few—if any—obstacles to it. Here is a place where the natural borders upon the super natural—a place worthy of Celtic worship—worthy of comparison to the mighty Norsemen—a place evoking a modern, Miltonian, Christian view of temptation—where imps abound, and roundtables evoke the English mythology of old. No, Mr. Thoreau pulls no blow when confronting the reader with the ordinary turned extraordinary.
I hope it says less about any density on my part than it does my imagination, the degree to which this passage strikes me, but I am struck. So, I will bid farewell, for now, to this guide of our imaginations and of our souls.
Optimism
I think that, personally, the most important thing about my weekly nature walk is that it gives me a chance to lessen my exposure to the loud bustle and hurried energy of this town (however sleepy it might be compared to other towns.) I live in an apartment that faces Main Street, and it is only recently that I noticed how much noise pollution I hear on a daily basis. Whether I am hanging out at home or just sleeping, there is the constant drone and clatter of cars, motorcycles, skateboards, and those terrible logging trucks (the last being something I have come to equate with Thoreau's train.) On my last walk, I headed back down to the same valley and field where I was last time, and rather than close my eyes and try and zone out for a while, I kept my eyes and ears open. I determined to try experience what remained of the day's waking moments amidst the calm quiet with full concentration. I still had to tune out that always-present drone of traffic, but you'd be surprised at how focused you can get once all you can hear is the wind in the grass. I prefer to go walking near sunset, when I can almost feel the heat being sucked from the ground and the air as the light dies behind the low hills of the valley. I found myself staring at the clouds for a long time, watching them get steadily darker and drift so slowly that it felt as if I were tracing the movement of the hour hand on a clock tower. I thought a lot about the myth of permanence, and of the nature of all human effort, and mostly the things that I had read in Thoreau's Conclusion.
This final chapter seemed to me the culmination of everything Thoreau wanted his audience to hear, almost as if he acknowledges that they might have lost their way, somewhere around his dramatic chronicling of the status of the ice on Walden Pond over the course of an entire New England winter. I like to think that he is rewarding diligent readers with his most condensed, purpose-driven musings. Among these I remembered clearly one of his more proverbial quotes, “The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly from the rich man's abode...I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace” (307). Indeed, this seems like the kind of wisdom that you might get out of any religious text—it's a reminder of the merits of practicality and an encouraging take on how you can best view your own life. Many of these kinds of passages in Conclusion are partly expressions of one of the many major underlying themes in Walden, which is preoccupied with putting a mirror up to the face of his audience's worldview. Once you hear the piercing truths in Thoreau's simple observations, you know instantly that what you've just read is something you should have realized all along, and it is all the more sweet if you are able to retain a fraction of that sensation after having set the book down.
To me, and I think to many other people in generations after Thoreau, what makes these otherwise common proverbs resonate so clearly is that they were written by a man who lived in a time so relatively close to ours, who lived so near us geographically, and who appears to be fighting against the same problem-ridden society that we find ourselves slaves to. Along with his humble admissions of self-contradiction and fallibility, what makes me so willing to take Thoreau's ideas to heart is an underlying tone of earnestness and a concern for the well being of his fellow man. This book is thick with his own voice from beginning to end, and I suppose it would be best to leave you with my most recently-discovered favorite quote: “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them” (303). This reassuring quote, I believe, is one of many final calls to Thoreau's neighbors, where his voice is heard with authority and experience. He is commanding his readers in the last sentence, telling them not to throw away the dreams of the life they might have wanted, but instead to forcefully take their lives and build them into the kind of foundation that can meet their dreams from the ground up. It's powerful stuff, and what amazes me is that it is but a small fraction of the optimism that Thoreau has for his world.
Remembering The Past
I took my walk this week, Thursday evening, behind my mom’s house. This is a place that I have seen change since I was young. My great uncle had built the house and the first occupants had cleared a small pasture so their horses could graze. Now as I walk through a tangle of small trees underbrush, saplings, and various ground loving plants, I am amazed at how much nature has crept in and taken over this once open ground. I reach, what used to be, the end of the clearing and entered the woods.
Down a short and fairly steep embankment, with a slippery carpet of moss I might add, there is a small but fairly quick flowing brook that runs from Barry pond several miles north to a small beaver pond about ¾ of a mile into the woods. Though I thought about venturing to the pond that evening but I decided it was getting too late and I settled for the brook. There have never been any fish and only the stray crawfish that hints that any life exists there. But at the same time it is the source of life for so many small woodland creatures around.
As I continue looking around I am also saddened by nature. The woods and this brook used to be more open and negotiable but the ice storm of 1998 ushered in a maze of toppled trees and fallen limbs. Many look as if they are about to fall from their perches at any minute due to years of rot and ceaselessly changing weather. And as I was standing there I was reminded of a few lines from the chapter Spring. “Thaw with his gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other but breaks it in pieces.” (p. 289) The storm and ice were Thor and the ensuing Thaw left in its wake a wrecked patch of forest. This was a place that I played for hours as a little boy. My friend Luke and I would make small boats and race them down the brook splashing carelessly. But alas the storm made the woods too dangerous of a place to play.
So I began to wonder what would Thoreau have done had an ice storm hit Walden in the winters of ’46 or ’47? Would he even be affected by it? Could those who lived in towns and villages then be able to cope if their world was covered in a layer of ice? I almost feel guilty asking these questions since I didn’t even live in Maine for the ice storm (I visited my grandparents, who do, regularly as a child). Part of me thinks Thoreau would have a field day if it were to happen to him. He would have an abundance of natural wonders, all kinds of shapes and colors, to explore, analyze, and record in his own unique fashion. I also think he would find such a storm to be an act of beauty from nature as he hints, also on page 289, that, “you may melt your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows but into.” Perhaps one who lives like Walden, even today, could get by if such a storm were to come again.
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