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.
I agree. But--I wondered when reading this how Leopold would feel about our reactions to the nature in our own homes. Visiting a place is one thing, but how are we supposed to treat the nature in our own backyards when we come home to it? When I went to Nebraska (I know I talk about Nebraska a lot, but it was really an intense experience for me but I promise to shut up about it), I was completely displaced in the landscape because of the lack of trees, and hills, and even curvy roads (it is literally a grid out there and most roads are straight and intersect at 90*). So, when I came back home to Maine I had this incredible thankfullness that finally I could relate and understand and appreciate my home surroundings. When we visit places and don't go back, the pictures in our memories of them probably are tarnished if we return someday, but only because we expect the same thing we saw the first time, which is mostly impossible. But what about our home landscapes? If we are to know them as intimately as Leopold knows the environments he hunts in and the farm he lives on, do we or can we appreciate them in the same way when we return home?
ReplyDeleteI think you both raise interesting questions and while we've been discussing these topics in class, I've been thinking about the differences between the "tourist" and the "traveler." As buses of leaf peepers make their way to our small corner of the world, I immediately become defensive at the "quaintness" of it all. As a native Mainer I outwardly welcome foreigners but inwardly think that they can never truly understand what it means to live and work in this state by simply visiting when the leaves are pretty. On the flip side, I love traveling myself and am most certainly a tourist. I've done the exact sorts of things when traveling West and abroad. So the question remains: how can we improve traveling so that we are not simply creating emissions in the air and destroying the now-beaten paths that exist across our country and globe?
ReplyDeletehttp://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/sustainable/index.html
This website discusses the new concept of geotourism, through which travel experiences become more meaningful and sustainable. This is a fascinating and exciting way to think about the environmental and cultural impacts that our advanced transportation practices now allow.
I enjoyed reading this, Lizzie. You point out and discuss an interesting facet of Leopold that I've been thinking a lot about lately. It reminds me most of a backpacking trip I took a few years ago through the East Sierra Nevada in Northern California. The first time I went everything was new and breathtaking and spectacular; I made the mistake of going again to the exact same place along the exact same trail the following year and, sure enough, I was distinctly disappointed with the experience at the end of the week. Wish I knew about Leopold and what he had to say on the topic then...
ReplyDeleteHowever, I wasn't sure what you meant by a purely "mental appreciation" for the landscape, since you then go into how overwhelming tourism ruins a piece of the land; but how are we to gain this mental appreciation and memory from visiting a place if we're discouraged from going there in the first place because of the sense of us being tourists?
I think it takes an acute awareness of balance and community reflection as to whether tourism is ruining or enhancing a place such as a natural landscape. The geotourism that you pointed out, Emma, is fascinating and I'll have to look into it more.
As you could probably tell from my question today in class I have been wrestling a lot with Leopold’s concept of wilderness. The passage that you brought up, I believe illustrates one of the ways we can experience wilderness, but still keep it wild and I like your idea about “mental appreciation”. As I was thinking about this, I was struck by the way Leopold called photographs “trophies” and his feelings towards the camera industry, as he called it “one of the few innocuous parasites on wild nature” (171). He details how taking photographs does not directly harm the environment, but he still calls cameras “parasites” which is a term that I never think to be particularly “innocuous”. I believe that Leopold pitches this idea of “mental appreciation” and effort to only see a place once, in order to preserve the wildness. It seems to me that Leopold believes that these “trophies” almost humanize nature and make it more of a product worthy of mass production. I think seeing things like post cards, photographs, calendars, mugs and all other sorts of novelty items with nature depicted in or on them, that these items take the wildness and almost mythical associations with wilderness and squashes it so that a wilderness becomes common and associated with the everyday.
ReplyDeleteI loved the quote you brought up because it made me think of the photography trip I took this summer to England and Spain. I remember that there were times when I didn’t want to live behind a camera lens anymore because I didn’t feel like I was really seeing what these places were like. There were a few days where I didn’t take photos at all, and I think it’s these days that I remember most about the trip. There is something about just being there, and taking it all in, and not wanting to even try to duplicate it, in any shape or form, because the picture that’ll flash on your camera screen will never live up to the impression that the environment and your subject has made on you. It’ll just never compare. I hated looking at my photos after the trip even though, technically, I had some good shots. They irritated me, because they didn’t say what I wanted them to say, they couldn’t capture all of what I wanted them to. I try to explain it to my friends and family, but they fail to see it. All they see is what a photograph leads them to see and not necessarily anything more. I left England and Spain feeling that if I were to return I would have to go and discover new places in order to have the beautiful memories for forever of the places I’d already been. Today, I don’t look at my photos. I don’t have them hanging on the wall. Some of my friends who think they understand say, “Well, maybe you just need more practice with it – you’ll get to be a better photographer.” But that’s not it – it’s something more than that – something beyond the camera, beyond the paintbrush, beyond the pen, and beyond language… I’m not sure anyone can ever capture that and I’m not sure anyone ever should
Incredible post, Lizzie!!
ReplyDeleteIt made me also think about what Leopold was trying to say about us thinking of nature and the natural world as objects and something to own, a way of thinking that he desperately wants us to change. In his blurb about the "god-like Odysseus" hanging his slaves, he tells us that at the time, "the girls were property. The disposal of property was then, as now, a matter of expediency, not of right and wrong". This point may seem a little off topic, but I think when we see a beautiful view or a gorgeous sunrise that we as human beings are rarely content to just appreciate it as a glorious act of nature, but strive to own it for ourselves and capture it on our own terms, like taking a picture of it or even trying to describe it in a blog. :) When you think about the impact that photos and cameras have had on our lives it is truly mind-boggling; we document weddings, births, parties and graduations with picture after picture after picture that, though they bring joy and the memories of those wonderful times, tend to almost diminish the happiness that was the actual event. I think everyone knows at least one person who shows up to every event with a camera and partakes in almost nothing the whole time, they are so hell-bent on capturing the happiness and merriment that they do not experience it for themselves. When we hide behind a camera, how much do we really look at the object, be it a party or a beautiful scene? Sometimes the majesty in the moment is of knowing you can't relive it. :)