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.
I can see what you mean about the snow. I always get really excited when the first snow falls. It is so white, glittering under the moon and quiet. But I hate how when it starts to melt it mixes with the dirt and salt from the roads and looks gross. By the time March comes around, everything is starting to thaw back out, we are all tired of shoveling and being cold and the whole world seems drab because the sky has been gray for what feels like eternity. I suppose though that when I think about how it looks in the beginning of the season and compare it to the end of the season I tend to think of it as being more like the passage about the river than the one about the geese. The snows move in a cycle from beautiful to nasty to gone much like the river does. Though I really liked to comparison to the geese that you made. They seem to move in a similar cycle. Free to hunted to gone and then they return to start it over again. Maybe in class when we were focusing on the aesthetic and its importance to Leopold we should have been focused more on change. I wonder if he is more interested in the beauty of change than in aesthetics.
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