#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.