Sorry this is so late, I had thought I posted it but I had actually only saved it.

It was a brisk Saturday morning in October, not unlike many I have had throughout my long, extended college career. But unlike most Saturdays I have spent in each of my many autumn semesters, this one was different. I was up early, earlier than usual, but that isn’t what made it different, what made this day so different was what the day entailed. Most Saturdays in my college career I would wake up to go play a rugby match. Over the years it had developed into a routine, but on this particular Saturday I was going hiking.
As many early mornings go for college students, I was slow moving and groggy. I hadn’t gotten nearly enough sleep due to the dryer I attempted to use not working, resulting in me staying up at least an hour later than initially planned. So I strategically brought my pillow with me to sleep in the car. After getting approximately two extra hours of sleep I felt well rested and awake for the remainder of the car ride. As the van I was in continued its trek to the hiking location, I stared out the window observing the various other mountains around us. Captivated by the various colors on the mountain side, I couldn’t help but think to myself that this trip was going to be more enjoyable than originally anticipated. As I mentioned it was a Saturday, and for nearly 5 years Saturday had always been a rugby day. I couldn’t help to be a little upset missing our final regular season game, which, if won, would mean the team would go undefeated for first time since I had joined it. Seeing the colors of the trees as we advanced up the mountain started to ease my anxiety from what I was missing.
Before I knew it we were at our starting point. After exiting the car, and quickly stretching my legs, I began the hike up the trail. It seemed to be going quickly. Every now and then we stopped to make sure our group didn’t become too separated. For the most part, however, the legs were on autopilot and I continued the hike until I reached the first set of clearings. The fellow classmates I was with went and sat out by the edge of the clearing, looking out across the beautiful landscape. After taking in the view and discussing with classmates about how nice it was I began eat lunch and enjoy all that I could see. I sat there, blankly staring out at the various mountain ridges and the sea of majestic colors, letting the view relax me. I thought about the readings I had selected for the response paper that I had handed in that morning, developing a better understanding of what the authors, such as Pollan and Leopold, had been discussing. Pollan in particular was stuck on my mind. In his piece, The Idea of a Garden, he discussed the unpredictability of forests. Looking at the tops of the trees below me I couldn’t help to wonder what had shaped these woods. The intermingling of deciduous and conifer trees had to have some explanation to it. After running through possible reasons for the assortment of foliage I eventually let it go. I was in a new place, it was time to enjoy my day without bothering myself with questions I was not going to be able to answer.
The day flew by. Eventually we were all back in the car driving back to Lafayette College. Having no cell phone service up in the Catskills prevented me from being able to find out about the results of the rugby match, which surprisingly didn’t bother me. I had a wonderful day. Although I will be continuing this year using my Saturday’s as rugby days, it was enjoyable and relaxing to experience something new this semester. For the first time I finally had a brand new Saturday.

TransCanada, the Canadian company behind the Keystone XL pipeline, asked the U.S. government on Monday to suspend its permit application, throwing the politically fraught project into an indefinite state of limbo, likely beyond the 2016 U.S. elections.

After an expected rejection from President Obama on the bill, it seems like TransCanada is just waiting it out hoping that a GOP candidate will take office in 2016. All Democratic candidates are against the pipeline, while all of the Republican candidates are for it.

So is this a win for environmentalists or just dragging out a loss if a GOP candidate takes the White House? It’s hard to say. Without a complete outline of the pipeline, it’s honestly hard to say what impact it would have on the environment. Even environmentalists cannot deny that most American infrastructure relies on fossil fuels. As candidates continue to fight it out for the presidency, it looks like the Keystone XL debate is going to be dragged out a little bit longer than expected.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/transcanada-requests-suspension-of-u-s-permit-for-keystone-xl-pipeline-1446507279

I mentioned this earlier in class, but here is the video if anyone needs a laugh. Basically, there’s a woman who is convinced that if we just move the deer crossing signs the deer will be diverted to those places….. People are really stupid sometimes.

The 60 Minutes Video

I had to watch this video for my Environmental Economics class and found it to be incredibly relevant to our class as well. In short, there are ranches in Texas that breed various species of large exotic animals that are endangered or extinct in their native homes (usually somewhere in Africa). However, the ranchers aren’t doing this just out of altruism. They make a profit by allowing hunters to come to their ranch and hunt these animals. The price tag is steep, but many people will pay it to be able to hunt such rare species.

The ranchers, and even a conservation expert, argue that unless there is a profit motive to keep these species alive and well, they will go extinct. When you look at the numbers, this method actually seems to have worked. However, this method raises enormous moral dilemmas that have caused many a lawsuit against these ranchers.

I’m curious to hear what you guys think about this program.

After our discussion in class yesterday about bears, I was intrigued by the idea of these massive, wild creatures presented as cute and cuddly. I read the chapter on teddies to find the interesting origin story of the classic teddy bear. During a hunting trip, Theodore Roosevelt declined to shoot and kill a bear, sparking cartoons where he was depicted compassionately sparing the bear’s life. The cartoon drawings of the bear were the start of the many famous cartoon bears, such as Winnie the Pooh or Smokey the Bear. These characters grew to be icons and key symbols in culture. The cartoons also inspired a couple who owned a novelty store to make toy bears to “celebrate the president’s act” of compassion toward the bear. The hunting trip was in 1902, and 12000 toy bears had been made in 1903. “In 1907, it made 974,000, and all sorts of copycats rushed into the teddy bear business. Suddenly a large and potentially dangerous animals, respected in the wild, had become a cuddly pillow toy” (Sterba, 168).

The image above shows one of the first bears named ‘Teddy’ to be sold, and it is amazing to see it still in perfect condition. This just shows how important the teddy has been throughout history. The year 2002 marked the 100th anniversary of the cartoons, and so this teddy was part of the National Museum of American History’s political history collection and their The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden exhibit. It is incredible to think that the idyllic, cuddly teddy bear has been a part of our culture for over 100 years by now. This makes me wonder about people like Tim Treadwell who romanticize and idealize wild, unpredictable creatures as friendly and approachable, and how culture has perpetuated this symbol through the years. The teddy bear is presented from a young age and known to be a great and cuddly thing, so how might that affect people’s perceptions of nature and the place of people in it? Does this further separate humans from nature, when people focus on a manufactured, cute image rather than the real thing? Do wild animals somehow seem less wild, or does this mean the shock of encountering one would be even greater? If we don’t properly understand nature and the creatures within it, then it may be difficult to conserve or preserve it.

http://americanhistory.si.edu/press/fact-sheets/teddy-bear

In the past few weeks I have seen a lot of deer. I have seen them popping up on social media, on campus and as road kill.

Human intervention

Ironically when we were talking about the issue of deer overpopulation in class last week, a video of an injured deer came up on my timeline when I checked Facebook during our mid-class break. In the video the baby deer seems to have a broken leg and a man rescues it and nurses it back to health. Once healed, the man tries to return the deer to his mother but at first fails because the deer is so attached to him. The video is no doubt adorable but should he have gotten involved in nature and healed this deer? Wouldn’t it be more”natural” if the deer was left alone to either heal on its own or die? If you want to check out the video here is the link! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga2TOCb4SKw

Deer at Laf

Although our campus is a very controlled form of nature, the real nature still makes its way onto campus despite our efforts to keep it away. I have seen deer multiple times on the stairs down to the arts campus but the other week I saw a deer right by Ruef Hall.Before reading Nature Wars and before our discussion in class, I thought that spotting this deer was refreshing because I could see nature on our controlled campus. However, after my new knowledge on deer I am starting to think that seeing this deer was not as magical as I originally thought it was. These deer are everywhere and are adapting to our new suburban environments. So this deer probably made its way onto campus because it saw lush green grass to eat. So maybe I should actually be sad about seeing this deer on campus because their populations are exponentially growing in suburban areas but are missing in the forests.

Roadkill

Seeing roadkill is never fun but either its increasing or I happen to notice it more myself. Either way I don’t like it when I see it. I am aware that humans and nature are constantly butting heads but roadkill is a flat out example that animals died from accidentally colliding with humans. The same may be said for hunting but at least the hunters are prepared for it to happen and went in knowing that’s what they wanted to happen. With roadkill, both species involved are completely caught off guard and should the animal die, the human may feel guilt and sadness because that was not their intention.

I most often see deer roadkill  when I am coming around in the bend on 22 before the exit into the City of Easton. I suppose this is because deer inhabit the cemetery and wooded area on one side as well as the Karl Sterner Arts Trail on the other. However, in between there is a very fast moving highway and deer (as well as other species) have no hope should they encounter this road. The most memorable experience I have of seeing a dead deer on this road was when I was driving back to campus from Target. I glanced over to the side of the road and accidentally caught eyes with the dead black eyes of a deer laying on the side of the highway. As Ginny mentioned in class today, I saw the green fire had long been extinguished in this deer as it lay lifeless on the side of the road.

Maybe there is a way that we can make sure that deer and other species have a way to navigate from place to place and bypass fast-moving roads without being killed. On Facebook I have seen the idea of a animal highway.

This would be a greenway that is on top of an overpass and allows animals to cross between their different habitats. This idea sounds great because when you think about it roadkill is not the only problem of highways. They separate species and create little islands of nature. As time passes these species in different “islands” may adapt differently and evolve differently. So if humans can intervene by building these animal crossings maybe we can prevent this from happening. It would be difficult to build such a structure and maybe the roadkill spot of 22 is too small scale for such an idea but on the surface this idea sounds good to me! No matter what, humans will intervene with and impact nature so ideas like this highway will make our impact maybe just a little bit smaller. At this point I think we need to get over the fact that humans are impacting nature and come up with solutions to reduce how much we impact it.

I live in a place called Turkey Thicket in DC. Apparently, according to my neighbor whose family has lived in the area for centuries, it used to be a huge breeding ground for the gobblers. However, in the 17 years that my family has lived there we have only had one interaction with a wild turkey. Now all you can find about the “thicket” is that they recently built a recreation center and a playground.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Turkey+Thicket+Playground/@38.9389025,-76.9936344,16.98z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0xedd10ebe5d4ee677

I found this interesting in comparison to Sterba when he talked about the issue of novelty to nuisance. He says “Wildlife biologists were surprised by how easily turkeys adapted to people… they became habituated to feeding near homes and lost their fear of people, sometimes becoming aggressive” (156). The turkey I saw was definitely one of the skittish ones It ran away from me and all of the people that stopped to look it. I remember being surprised at how fast the fat bird could go and how aggressive my neighbors got in wanting the turkey out of their yard. To them it was a nuisance, a threat to their gardens, as if the turkey would cause more damage than the squirrels, possums, raccoons, and deer already had. It was confusing to see them bat it away when I knew that this was their home as well. After reading Sterbas chapter I realized that the turkey I saw, sometime in the 2000’s, was probably a direct result of the conservation efforts.

I have noticed that during class movies are referenced a fair amount and tie into conversations that we are having. I am sure all of you enjoy watching movies and I wanted to compile a list of a few of my favorite movies that have to look specifically at the environment, nature, and human interaction with the wild. There are many movies that address this but here are just a few.

Documentaries:

• 180 North
• The No Impact Man (leading to the No Impact Project http://noimpactproject.org/)
• King Corn
• Tapped
• Fast Food Nation
• Grizzly Man
• Food, Inc.
• Forks Over Knives
• An Inconvenient Truth
• Six Degrees Could Change the World
• Moving Art Series (Desserts, Oceans, Forests)
• Disney Earth
• BBC Planet Earth

Other (non-docs)

• Into the Wild
• A River Runs Through It
• Stand By Me
• O Brother Where Art Thou?
• Happy Feet
• Brother Bear
• Casablanca
• The Wind That Shakes the Barley
• Apocalypse Now
• Once Upon A Time In The West
• Promised Land
• The Way Back
• The Mission
• Wall-E
• Princess Mononoke

Check them out if you are interested and if you have any questions please feel free to ask me.

Ecological Literary Criticism

To begin considering how we, as writers, might come to a greater awareness of the environmental underpinnings and ecological considerations of the texts we create, we can begin with Lawrence Buell’s succinct phrase, “the environmental imagination.” In his ground-breaking work, The Environmental Imagination, Buell outlines what he believes to be the four earmarks of an environmental text:

1) The nonhuman environment is present not merely as a framing device but as a presence that begins to suggest that human history is implicated in natural history;

2) The human interest is not understood to be the only legitimate interest;

3) Human accountability to the environment is part of the text’s ethical orientation; and

4) Some sense of the environment as a process rather than as a constant or a given is at least implicit in the text.