#14

When I read the beginning of Ecology of Eden it was brought to my attention that it is not just humans who destroy nature. Yes, because of technology we have created ways to greater destroy the environment, but we are not the only species whose choices impact the world. We kill animals and plants in order to eat, but that is the way of life for all species. We destroy the environment in order to create our habitats (homes) and so do other animals. This isn’t a way of rationalizing and saying it is ok to destroy the environment it was just something I noticed while hiking one day and I saw where deer had formed a home and destroyed a lot of plant life in the process.

#13

Should we separate ourselves from wilderness in order to preserve it? Shepard talked a lot about ideas to separate ourselves from the wilderness because in dwelling in it we change it. But are we not apart of the wilderness ourselves? By excluding ourselves are we not altering it? Throughout this class the question that has come to my mind is what is a healthy balance or is there a healthy balance in the way we live with the wilderness, and I have not yet found that balance but I continually read passages and come to the conclusion that we can NOT separate ourselves from the wild because we would lose touch with something we are a part of.

#12

The Dead by the Side of the Road.

This poem by Gary Snyder shows the loss of sacred not only in space but in the animals that live in a space. He paints a picture of animals that have been desecrated and now are lying dead on the side of an interstate. This made me think about the fact that a landscape is just a place if without what inhabits it and therefore a place isn’t sacred of its own accord, it is also sacred because of what it contains. We could see this in a video we watched earlier where this bird began to build its home as a part of its mating ritual. This bird makes up a part of the environment and its actions created something that was found sacred to the tribe that lived in this land.

#11

In philosophy I learned that some believe that without language and communication there is no way for people to experience the same world. Do we all perceive the world completely different? Is there a physical world? I would say yes there is a physical world but we all just experience it differently (as I said in an earlier blog about Kant). The idea we discussed about “storied place” is very relevant to this argument. We all go through this physical world experiencing the same materials yet our minds create different experiences induced by nature.

#10

Have humans forgotten how to interact with nature? Has technology seeped too deeply into our lives that we can no longer fully experience nature, or does thes separation from nature only make us have a greater appreciation for it. To me it seems that when I am in a place for an extended period of time I begin to take it for granted and then when I leave a situation I realize that I need it back. However, I find when I am in nature these days I can not appreciate it as greatly as when I was a child and around it more. When I am in the mountains these days I firstly can’t fully be in it. There is something in the back of my head that is reminding me of all the technology at home that comprises my daily life that I don’t have right now and I cant realize how to deal with not having it.

#9

Early in the semester we were told that “names convey power over things.” I didn’t fully understand this until in Wilderness as Sacred Place we watched a movie in which a man was lost in a land where he knew no one and no one spoke his language. In this time the man began to go crazy because he was in chaos. Eventually however, he broke down and began to weep and then began to give names to the things he recognized from back in his homeland of France. Afterwards the man was relieved at the fact that he could recognize things and he could feel power over anything, even if the only power he had was that of knowledge.

#8

“poets use language to give order”

The importance of language in our culture is very necessary, without it there would be confusion because we could not order our universe. We would live outside of a cosmos and in pure chaos. Language allows us to define and understand. Without language we wouldn’t even be able to define ourselves. Language also bridges the gaps between our storied places, it allows us to makes sense not only of ourselves and our world but others worlds also.

#7

“Give yourself up to a particular landscape.”

What does this look like? We watched a video early in the semester about a tribe of natives who fully experienced the land they lived in. Their activities and rituals fully revolved around the animals in it and the environment. They painted using all natural materials, they worshipped in sacred places, they ate of the land and they slept in the slept in the land. They used every part of the land and respected it and felt an attachment to it. The sad thing is they were dieing out and had no way to preserve these traditions because their children did not see the point in avoiding technology and truly dwelling in the land.

#5

I really enjoyed talking about the gardens that we create in order to replace the lack of nature we have in our towers. As a little girl I always had a garden and it was an easy way for me to escape from the mountain and be content without technology. However now the garden is not as fulfilling, I need more than a couple pretty flowers to keep me away from technology. I can of course leave for a weekend and go out into the mountains but eventually something will come up and I will come back to the tower only to crave the mountain. The only thing I can figure out to find contentment is that we need o find a way to live that includes the mountain into our daily lives, otherwise we are missing out.

#4

Technology has become our habitus. We no longer learn to dwell in nature we create our own islands away from nature. In Ecology of Eden we called this our tower away from the mountain. The problem with this is that we have depleted nature from where we live. Instead of finding some sort of balance we build up cities and push the mountain away. The problem that I see with this is, will we ever stop building our towers? If we don’t then we will continue to push the mountain away until there is no where to put it. If we do decide we have to stop, where and when do we stop?

#3

“to dwell in a place creatively over an extended period of time is to conduct oneself out of custom or habit.”

When we watched the video of images in class a couple weeks ago I thought back to this quote. There was a section where we watched the rhythms of the city and the patterns where cars were moving through the city and workers were performing their daily tasks. Is it good that we get into these patterns and where is the creativity in this? Maybe the creativity comes after the daily grind or maybe people find ways to change little parts of their life. DO we need pattern in order to enjoy spontaneity?

kant

In philosophy this year we studied Kant, who said that there is a world of objects, which is the real world, and then there is a world of phenomena, that is how we perceive the world after our mind processes what we see and experience. In our first class we discussed the idea that the world is different than what we ideally think. I just found it interesting to find that we had been discussing these ideas at the beginning of the year and later I had found that the philosopher who wanted to bridge the gap between empiricism and rationalism held these same views.