“The first task for settlers was tree removal– that is, unless he was lucky enough to find and pay a premium for a beaver created meadow good for growing hay and pasturing, or Indian-cleared field for planting crops. Trees were an impediment” (Sterba 25).

The history of the timber industry and deforestation is something that concerns me because it seems to not have stopped , or slowed down– and this is how it all began; it simply has moved elsewhere following that path of least resistance theory. How can we switch this mentality of tree conservation and stop forest degradation that now has stricken South America?

“Now only a dent in the earth marks the site of these dwellings, with buried cellar stones, and strawberries, raspberries, thimble-berries, hazel-bushes, and sumachs growing in the sunny sward there; some pitch pine or gnarled oak occupies what was the chimney nook, and a sweet-scented black birch, perhaps, waves where the door-stone was. Sometimes the well dent is visible, where once a spring oozed; now dry and tearless grass; or it was covered deep — not to be discovered till some late day — with a flat stone under the sod, when the last of the race departed” (Thoreau 168).

I think to me this passage is another reminder of this constant fight between humanity versus time and nature. It seems humans cannot win in that fight because eventually the land will result back to its original form because a life only last years and nature carries on almost infinitely. In this passage I am visualizing a ruin of an old cabin, buried almost entirely in the earth with an almost defeated personality being emitted.

“At this season I seldom had a visitor. When the snow lay deepest no wanderer ventured near my house for a week or fortnight at a time, but there I lived as snug as a meadow mouse, or as cattle and poultry which are said to have survived for a long time buried in drifts, even without food” (Thoreau 171). 

This passage I can completely understand his critique about winter solitude. When it is cold I enjoy staying inside, reflecting on myself, and not really seeing anyone. It may have something to due with the winter weather, but to me is a good rotation between seasons. In the Spring/Summer/Autumn your social and in the winter a step is taken back and your always a bit more quiet and solitary. I do not know why this is, yet I noticed it happens.