Author John R. Stilgoe offers an interesting interpretation of the outside world early on in the text when he asserts, “The whole concatenation of wild and artificial things, the natural ecosystem as modified by people over the centuries, the built environment layered over layers, the eerie mix of sounds and smells and glimpses neither natural nor crafted- all of it is free for the taking, for the taking in” (2). While I understand the evolution of ecosystems depending on the inhabitants, the notion of nature being modified by humans, yet still being natural, is one that I believe has varying degrees. Just how much is something in its natural state, is it wild, if it has been modified or impacted by humans at some point in time? Do nature and natural mean the same thing, or are they also different levels of a scale that balances between how much a portion of the Earth has been used or developed by humankind?

This idea of varying degrees of nature due to human interaction was one that was prevalent during our walk through campus on the first day of class. Was the garden planted by the students in front of our building as natural as the woods that border our campus that are too steep to build on, or is one more natural than the other, a better emulation of nature than its counterpart? I believe that the woods are a stronger representation of nature than the garden was because of its lack of modification by man; with human interaction comes artificial results, and the natural evolution of the woods was less interrupted or tainted by the footprint of man.

Through my sliding scale definition of nature and natural, the question certainly can be asked: are nature and natural things a finite resource, and can they ever be regenerated if human interaction was the means of original degeneration? I do not know the answer to that; but I certainly hope that over course of this semester, some light is shed on the matter.