“As more and more tourists sought out the wilderness as a spectacle to be looked at and enjoyed for its great beauty, the sublime in effect became domesticated. The wilderness was still sacred, but the religious sentiments it evoked were more those of a pleasant parish church than those of a grand cathedral or a harsh desert retreat” (75).

I thought this was an interesting passage because many of our classmates have visited the grand national parks of the west, and I believe they would disagree with Cronon’s assertion that it was tame or no longer held that special power that it once did. In this instance, I cannot agree with our author that it is domesticated, but rather that it is easier and more popular to seek out perhaps.

“To do so is merely to take to a logical extreme the paradox that was built into wilderness from the beginning: if nature dies because we enter it, then the only way to save nature is to kill ourselves. The absurdity of this proposition flows from the underlying dualism it expresses” (83).

This passage stuck out to me because in my response paper regarding “What is Nature?”, I basically played this dualism game myself, regarding nature as being as least touched by man as possible. While I don’t know if I fully agree with the sentiment expressed in the quote, it is an unusual perspective that I had not thought of before, but one that certainly is expressed in most apocalyptic movies, when the human race is killed off, and nature and wilderness reclaims what was once lost. An interesting notion here from Cronon.

A funny thing happened last week; I was sampling on the Bushkill for some research, wearing my clumsy waders and toting my cumbersome field equipment along the bank, when I stumbled upon a gaggle of geese. Who knew geese could give you such a brutal stare down. As I emerged from behind some trees I could feel their merciless, death stares as they saw the culprit of the disruption of their peaceful dip. I hesitantly approached my sampling spot fearing these birds would rather greet me with a painful snap of the bill than with a friendly hello. In class we have discussed a couple of times whether or not we think humans have a place in nature or not and if we can find our place in nature. Cronon addresses this as well in our most recent reading. I believe that we can, but for a brief moment during this interaction with the geese I felt very very unwelcome in nature and like I was too “human” to belong in a place like this. I wonder if anyone else in class has had an experience in nature when they felt very unwelcome too?

“If the core problem of wilderness is that it distances us too much from the very things it teaches us to value, then the question we must ask is what it can tell us about home, the place where we actually live. How can we take the positive values we associate with wilderness and bring them closer to home?” (87)

I like this passage from Cronon because it contradicts my definition of wilderness. It is thought provoking in the sense that it calls attention to climate change and societies’ impact on the environment. How can we hold wilderness as the gold standard if we can’t live in it?

“In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we a completely lost, or turned round, – for a man need only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost, – do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.” (186)

I think this quote is mirrors what Cronon was saying. In Thourea’s time, he was living with the Wilderness. However, he believed that the common man could get lost in the wilderness, easily straying off the path and becoming confused by different surroundings.

Tonight, the first supermoon eclipse since 1982 is set to occur. It is pretty cloudy out today, but keep your fingers crossed and look at your window at 8:11pm.

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/watch-sundays-supermoon-total-lunar-eclipse-or-wait-until-2033-n433866

http://www.pc-tablet.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Lunar-Eclipse-moon-22921626-1024-768-1024×576.jpg

This weekend I went to Syracuse University for Family Weekend to visit my sister who is a freshman there. My sister lives in a dorm that is located on a hill above the academic buildings and the library. To allow students an easier route then following the road all the way down to the main part of campus, they have this really long enclosed staircase that students can use to get down to the other buildings. It is really interesting because as you walk down the stairs there is art all over the inside on the walls (and by art I mean street art). As I was going down the stairs I noticed this piece that really stood out to me. Of course I like the idea of the nature and city scene built into the ‘SOS,’ but my favorite part of the piece is that in between the panels you can see the trees and real ‘nature’ in the background. I would love to be able to see this picture in 20 years from now and see what ‘nature’ looks like in the background.

Quotes from this week:

“When I paused to lean on my hoe, these sounds and sights I heard and saw any where in the row, a part of the inexhaustible entertainment which the country offers” (Walden, 173).

“Wilderness gets us in trouble only if we imagine that this experience of wonder and otherness is limited to remote corners of the planet, or that is somehow depends on pristine landscapes we ourselves do not inhabit. Nothing could be more misleading” (Cronin, 88).

“As I walked in the woods I see the birds and squirrels; so as I walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind among the pines I hear carts rattle. In one direction from my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under the grove of the elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prairie dogs, each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor’s to gossip. I went frequently to observe their habits” (Thoreau 182).

I really enjoyed how Thoreau made this extension from natural society to the society of man. It was interesting to see him place the two side by side and to witness his fascination with the ways of man. I would really like to discuss this passage and how people felt about the of nature to of man back and forth.

“As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my hoe, I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval years lived under these heavens, and their small implements of war and hunting were brought to the light of this modern day. They lay mingled with other natural stones, some of which bore the marks of having been burned by Indian fires, and some by the sun, and also bits of pottery glass brought hither by the recent cultivators of the soil” (Thoreau 172).

We have discussed the connectivity to history through water, so I found this passage to be fascinating as it appears to assign a similar relationship to soil. These do not appear to be the typical thoughts of one working a field, but his approach to perform the once sacred husbandry affords him this example of deeper thought/reflection as well as some more spiritual thinking. While soil changes throughout time, it has the ability to contain relics from throughout history and a presence of deep history connecting soil and time.

“We reproduce the dualism that sets humanity and nature at opposite poles. We thereby leave ourselves little hope of discovering what an ethical, sustainable, honorable human place in nature might actually look like” (Cronon 7).

Cronon feels the duality we have established between humanity and nature is the root of some of the problems we find between ourselves and nature. How do we feel about this duality and how it may impair our relationship with nature?