They are not green like the pines, nor gray like the stones, nor blue like the sky; but they have, to my eyes, if possible, yet rarer colors, like flowers and precious stones, as if they were the pearls, the animalized nuclei or crystals of the Walden water. They, of course, are Walden all over and all through; are themselves small Waldens in the animal kingdom, Waldenses. (212)

Thoreau’s classification of these fish as “Waldenses” was interesting as it seems like they area subdivision of the pond. Walden Pond is not just a large body of water, it is a living, breathing entity. The fish have found a home here and are therefore part of this larger body. This reminded me of Eiseley’s connection with not just the water in the river, but also all the living organisms that had touched that water as well and been a part of something larger.

The next passage which interested me was on the general topic of Thoreau surveying the pond and finding out its depth. I found it interesting how he talked about people thinking the pond was bottomless or how it went straight through to the other side of the globe. Some of this mystery mirrors the unknown of the oceans today. It shows how technology has allowed us to easily measure these depths, and yet the oceans are now the mysterious bodies of water. Technology has given us access to more information and at the same time given us access to more questions in the process.

“They possess a quite dazzling and transcendent beauty which separates them by a wide interval from the cadaverous cod and haddock whose fame is trumpeted in our streets. They are not green like pines, nor gray like stones, nor blue like the sky; but they have, to my eyes, if possible, yet rarer colors, like flowers and precious stones, as if they were pearls, the animalized nuclei or crystals of the Walden water. They of course, are Walden all over and all through; are themselves small Waldens in the animal kingdom, Waldenses” (Thoreau 309).

It would seem through the winter Thoreau is struggling connect spiritually, but here he begins to reconnect in this chapter. He once again finds this “transcendent beauty” musing in him once again spiritual, transcendental thought.

“Such a rule of two diameters not only guides us towards the sun in the system and the heart in the man, but draws lines through the length and the breadth of the aggregate of man’s particular daily behaviors and waves of life into his coves and inlets, and where they intersect will be the height and depth of his character” (Thoreau 315).

Here Thoreau seems muse the idea of extending this analysis of pond topography to an analysis of the depth of man’s character.

“No, she must keep silence! What is it that suddenly forbids her and makes her dumb? Has she been nine years growing, and now, when the great world for the first time puts out her hand to her, must she thrust it aside for a bird’s sake? The murmur of the pine’s green branches is in her ears, she remembers how the white heron came flying through the golden air and how they watched the sea and the morning together, and Sylvia cannot speak, she cannot tell the heron’s secret and give its life away” (Jewett 1207).

I interpreted this quote as a passage that summed up the main character’s inner struggle. She has these social anxieties that nature allows her to escape. In this one instance telling the hunter of the bird’s whereabouts would allow her to step into the social world and escape these anxieties, but she realizes she cannot do that. Nature has been her comfort away from the uncomfortable social world, and she cannot do it wrong as a way of trying to step into the social world.

“However, Maine had a lot of hunters, trappers, and fishermen who did a lot of things that people not engaged in these activities might consider unfair. In his weekly column, one outdoor writer asked: Was putting out decoys and using calls to lure in ducks and turkeys fair? What about planting clover or using sexual attractants to bring in deer? Was treeing raccoons with hounds different from treeing bears? Was baiting, trapping, and then boiling alive a Maine lobster fair? All were common practices. What was the difference between putting out food for bears and baiting a hook with a worm to get a fish to bite?” (175). 

Nature as a picture, Hunting as we talked about in class, Up Close and Personal, Conservation Biology and what species are seen as the most important by humans regardless of ecological impact, Social perspectives

“The tree seemed to lengthen itself out as she went up, and to reach farther and farther upward. It was like a great main-mast to the voyaging earth; it must truly have been amazed that morning through all its ponderous frame as it felt this determined spark of human spirit creeping and climbing from higher branch to branch. Who knows how steadily the least twigs held themselves to advantage this light, weak creature on her way! The old pine must have loved his new dependent. More than all the hawks, and bats, and moths, and even the sweet-voiced thrushes, was the brave, beating heart of the solitary gray-eyes child. And the tree stood still and held away the winds that June morning while the dawn grew bright in the east” (Jewett, 1205).

This passage beautifully described a relationship between the tree and the girl. This relationship developed as she climbed, signifying her closer connection to the tree and the world around her. In the end, she truly feels she has earned the reward below.

“Sylvia could see the white sails of ships out at sea, and the clouds that were purple and rose-colored and yellow at first began to fade away. Where was the white heron’s nest in the sea of green branches, and was this wonderful sight and pageant of the world the only reward for having climbed to such a giddy height?” (Jewett, 1206).

This joyous sight is her sacred reward for climbing and seeking out the heron on her own. She considers this a secret of the heron that she is now responsible to keep. She won’t even tell the one who came searching for the heron, and who, in part, inspired her own search. The understanding of this view and this world in which the heron lives is its own reward.

“Then to my morning work. First I take an axe and pail and go in search of water, if that be not a dream. After a cold and snowy night it needed a divining rod to find it. Every winter the liquid and trembling surface of the pond, which was so sensitive to every breath, and reflected every light and shadow, becomes solid to the depth of a foot or a foot and a half, so that it will support the heaviest teams, and perchance the snow covers it to an equal depth, and it is not to be distinguished from any level field. Like the marmots in the surrounding hills, it closes its eye-lids and becomes dormant for three months or more” (Thoreau, 306-307).

Thoreau’s description of Walden Pond uniquely compares it to the animals of the area, through the seasons in an awesome, magical transformation. The pond changes so much between the seasons, but it remains a sensitive, yet strong entity.

“”You’re not going to kill it are you?” It was a question he tried to deflect by saying that the beavers were being captured alive in cage traps, treated humanely, and that his methods not only were legal but had won the praises of animal protection groups. His customer, on the other hand, usually didn’t ask. Asking would result in an answer they didn’t want to hear. They wanted to assume that the animals causing their problems would be removed by LaFountain and then relocated to some place where they could live happily ever after” (Sterba, 63).

This quote reminded me of a quote in Tallamy’s piece The Vital New Role of the Suburban Garden. On page 23 Tallamy writes, “We feel completely justified in sending plants and animals that depend on those habitats off to make do some place else. This is partly because no one is going to choose a pollywog over a human if presented with such a choice, and partly because, until recently, there always had been someplace else for nature to thrive.” One of my interests as a environmental major is environmental justice. While reading these quotes I found a connection to EJ because a common problem that we face in America is the idea that we can just ship the annoyances off somewhere else, but when you ship these things somewhere else they become someone else’s problem. And we tend to not think about who we are shipping our problem off to, because as long as it’s not affecting us we don’t care enough to change the decisions.

“Don LaFountain stopped calling himself a “recreational trapper” and started calling himself a “professional wildlife damage controller.” The difference? As a weekend hobbyist, he could sell the pelt of each dead beaver he trapped for $20, more or less depending on the vagaries for the fur auction market. As a licensed professional, he could charge $150 for removing a “problem beaver,” $750 for removing a typical family of five, and $1000 and more for installing “beaver deceivers”” (Sterba, 83).

I thought this quote was interesting because it brought me back to the idea of response paper #2 and the importance of naming. We talked a couple times in class about this idea of how important choosing a name is (ie the names of national parks, wilderness areas etc) and also the importance of knowing the names of things (like types of birds, trees etc), I think this is a clear example.

“What I have observed of the pond is no less true in ethics. It is the law of average. Such a rule of the two diameters not only guides us toward the sun in the system and the heart in man, but draws lines through the length and breadth of the aggregate of a man’s particular daily behaviors and waves of life into his coves and inlets,and where they intersect will be the height of depth of his character” (Walden 315).

“The murmur of the pine’s green branches isa in her ears, she remembers how the white heron came flying through the golden air and how they watched the sea and the morning together, and Sylvia cannot speak, she cannot tell the heron’s secret and give its life away” (The White Heron 1207).

“The exploration and conquest of the northern United States and Canada were propelled in large part by the economic rewards of dinging, catching, killing, eviscerating, and skinning these fifty-pound aquatic rodents” (Nature Wars 69).

“Based on the head and thrown away? He’s right, but that’s not what the voters I talked to thought they had approved. The clear message of the anti trapping forces was: Vote for this initiative and animals won’t die” (Nature Wars 84).

While I love hiking in general, I was not incredibly excited for our trip to the catskill mountains. It seemed kind of unnecessary to me to drive three and a half hours to go on a hike, and to spend more time in the car than actually hiking. It was true that on a normal saturday I would probably watch college football and do nothing productive, but being the college student who loves sleep that I am, I hated having to wake up at 6:15 in the morning to be ready to go. Plus, on top of all of those minor complaints, up to this point all of my favorite hikes I had been on in my life had been on the west coast. I found incredible beauty and awe in the hikes of the Sierra Nevada mountains thousands of feet above sea level with views for miles around. Yet, while my hiking experience on the East Coast was limited, none of the hikes I had been on had been anything comparable to hiking on the west coast.

When we finally arrived at the trailhead, I was in a much better mood. I had survived the early morning wake up and long car ride, and now got to do the thing that was actually enjoyable to me, hike. We started walking up the trail and immediately I was drawn to all of the leaves on the ground. I had experienced East Coast fall before and seen the leaves changing color, but I had never been among such variation of color and so many leaves all at once. They covered the trail making it slippery and wet, but with each additional step, and each additional leaf crackling under my feet I felt more and more of a connection with the area. While I was enjoying the hike and very glad my professors had forced me to stop be active on a saturday, the hike did not compete with some of the experiences I had hiking the Sierra Nevada mountains.

My opinion of the comparative beauty of the west and east coast all changed when we reached the first ledge. I have spent my whole college career comparing the east and west coast. Me and my friends have debated natural beauty, politics, sports, and a whole range of other topics with me always defending the west coast. Standing on that first ledge and looking out and rolling hills of autumn colors I was just as awestruck as I have been standing on the top of any mountain. The vista took my breath away like I never expected it to. It was at this moment that I decided to try and stop comparing at least the natural beauty on the east and west coast. While I will always have an affinity for west coast environments because I have grown up in them and am more familiar and comfortable in them, this hike taught me that the east coast can also be stunningly beautiful in its own way.

My parents are down on Sanibel Island, Florida for the week.  Since they bought a house there they have become really into bird watching. I wrote in my second response paper about my family’s bird watching experiences on the beach and the impact that naming has had on my family. To follow up with my response paper, yesterday while my parents were sitting on the beach and they sent me a couple of pictures of the different egrets they saw (the pictures are taken on an IPhone).

This is a picture of a great egret:

This is a picture of a snowy egret (if it’s feet weren’t in the water you would be able to identify it by its yellow feet):

This is a picture of an assortment of birds near the water:

In Sterba’s chapter Teddies, we learn about how wild beasts once feared by the settlers and Native Americans took on an image as cuddly, friendly creatures. Sterba explains the phenomenon by discussing its occurrence in Europe, “Long before the modern era, however, bears had taken their unique place in European cultural mythology. Extirpated from most of Europe for centuries, they became the subjects of stories, folktales, and books, often portrayed as cute, even cuddly, and almost human. Later, in films and on television, they could be shown to behave like people. As real wild bears receded from memory, anthropomorphized bears took their place” (466-467). In this chapter Sterba mentions a number of examples of how this has occurred in our society. Here are some of the mentioned examples below:

<a href="http://sites.lafayette.edu/evst254-fa15/files/2015/10

/Bear-in-Circus.jpg”>

At the end of the chapter he brings this issue back up and connects it to our “denaturing”. “In our minds, we have always given animals human traits. We romanticize and sentimentalize them as members of the animal kingdom to which we belong. Children grow up surrounded by images of wild animals presented as furry or feathery little people like them. We learn from our pets how some animals live and then mistakenly project that knowledge onto wild creatures living a much different reality. In the past, however, people had enough direct experience in the natural world to to sort sentiment from reality. Not so today. Today’s denatured adults often continue to see bears and other wild animals the way they did as children without the corrective lens of direct experience” (185).

http://www.aark.org/WP/

The link above is a link to the AARK, a non-profit animal rescue center next to my house i mentioned last class. The site features descriptions of their mission, events and photos of the animals the rescue.

While the center has a noble mission, my family and I have questioned a few times whether they are using best practices to the aid these rescued animals. Like I mentioned in class, on multiple occasions, we’ve had specifically young deer wander up to our house or barn looking for food. The deer released from the center had clearly been domesticated to the point where they didn’t have a problem approaching people. While this was entertaining for us, its sad at the same time when these wild animals are released and have no idea how to survive in the wild for us.

Even though the intentions were good the impacts for some of these animals could still be negative.