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.