Highway Across the Serengeti

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/world/africa/31serengeti.html?_r=1&ref=multimedia

Green Poetry

I feel like the Japanese have a great sense of place and nature and that relationship with humans. So I have formulated some of my feelings about Green Poetry in the forms of haikus. Then I wrote my own Green Haiku.

Do you understand
Green Poetry, like a tree
Or is it empty?

Is nature crazy?
Or we deceive as we please
Interpretations

Do we all connect?
A web of lies in disguise
Interdependence?


Trees and bumble bees
Silenced by the forest's din
Paths gone here and there

Endless Space

I can't stop thinking about yesterday's class discussion. If people are separated from everything by reason, or the distinctions that naturally ensue between one body and another, is it possible to transcend the space between and think the ecological thought. At first I thought it was impossible because reasonably a genuine connection would never exist between too bodies because of the endless space between every molecule, No matter how hard you try to touch something are you ever really touching it. Even if we were to rearrange the molecules of our body so that it could pass through other bodies there would still be space.

Then I realized the possibility for cooperation between molecules. If two bodies could fully cooperate with each other I think they could transcend the space. What if both bodies rearranged their molecules? Would even the molecules themselves be able to touch? Even if they did touch they would also not be touching. Sort of how we are both ourselves and not and in the mesh and not. Maybe the space is what connects us. Space is what gives a body it's form and distinction and the possibility for transcendence. Space makes distinctions and then tells us that they do not matter. This is my understanding of the mesh thus far. We can never be in the mesh when space exists because we will always separate ourselves. However, we are always in the mesh because we are all connected by this space. An awareness of this distinction might lead to a transcendence. Who knows?

Amelie's Delocalized Adventure

Let me start out by saying that not having any sort of location is AWFUL. I don't think this is, or can be, what Morton was implying occurs under the ecological thought-- or if it is, future humans will have a much greater ability to comprehend weirdness than I (and I flatter myself that I am something of a connoisseur where weirdness is concerned).

First of all, when you're "living delocalized", it's very difficult to decide to go anywhere, and therefore do anything. The minute I thought "I feel like swinging on a swingset" my mind jumped to "I want to go to the-- wait, wait, don't think it--" which never worked, I ended up thinking "park" and then I sat there trying to think of something else. So it was a day which mainly consisted of quiet meditation, which would have been fine had I not at times been incredibly frustrated at my inability to make any decisions without this preconceived idea of localized space.

Then I got a text from my best friend, who is currently in Lyon, France, and let me tell you, nothing makes you more aware of space, the vast distances and horrible textures, than knowing that the one person whom you most want to see is in France. Without the concept of space, I couldn't reason with myself that I shouldn't pick up the phone and call her right that instant. I couldn't even really convince myself that she wasn't still at Tulane, chilling in the LBC (I have enough trouble with that most of the time; we've known each other since we were eight). Space translates to inflated phone bills and thus differently weighted decision making. Space affects time-- when I get out of my 3:30-5:00 class, she's already on her way to bed. I'm going to be honest and say that I cheated on this part-- I texted my friend back, despite knowing that doing so I had to keep in mind the idea of France and thus localized space.

Occasionally I made the conscious decision to wander somewhere. In order to do this, though, I had to cheat and go down in the elevator to the first floor (I didn't want to risk wandering into the dormroom of someone I didn't know). I ended up at this part of Tulane I hadn't known existed, which was perfect for me because I didn't know what it was called and it was easier for me to think of it as some amorphous space blending into every other space that ever was. I didn't have any memories to associate with it or any preconceived notions of what that space was supposed to do. I stayed there for quite some time, staring at grass and wishing I had brought a book. I got a lot of thinking done, which I suppose is good. When the sun started looking like it was thinking about setting I decided the day could be over and I went home-- and it is incredibly freeing to think the word "home" when it's all you've been trying not to think for six hours-- and on the walk home I started letting the associations flow over me, and it felt extraordinarily liberating. "This place is called X. Y happened here, and Q, and Z." The closer I got to my dorm, the more densely interwoven the associations became. I felt as though I were walking through a web of all of my past experiences. And entering my dormroom, I unrestrainedly thought to myself that it was mine, that it was full of my things-- it was like being four years old again, in a way-- and I felt this strange sense of pride in being able to name all of the things, or most of them, and say where they came from. And I had a sense of what the space was for, what I had done in it, what I would do in it in the future.

In conclusion, I think space is a useful concept. All of this is sort of irrelevant because the more I read of The Ecological Thought the less I believe that Morton is implying we should do away with space entirely. It's more, I suppose, like that idea of cubes of jello which Mauricio mentioned in class today-- acknowledging that space is amorphous, that the nature of spaces can shift. I think of something someone said in my class with Dr. Schaberg-- that a restaurant is a restaurant because the waiters and cooks and customers show up everyday; if a ballet troupe shows up one day instead with a boombox and a barre the restaurant is for all intents and purposes a dance studio. We should be aware that the function of a space can change, aware that next year someone else will live in my room, and in the years after that the building may be demolished (it really should be demolished) and used for something else, possibly by someone else, and possibly that someone will not be human.

The experiment was still useful for the development of my land ethic. I don't regret doing it. Much.

It makes Sense!!! ... I think.

So the image of pantyhose today, ironically enough, really worked toward helping me "understand" (that I don't understand).

How often do we think about pantyhose? Ha, probably not often if you're a girl, and hopefully not at all if you're a guy. But how funny it is that we "live" in the pantyhose every day.

Pantyhose aside, talking about the idea of the "self" (not a self) that has visible (yet invisible) permeable boundaries helped clarify everything we've been reading (absorbing?) in The Ecological Thought.

I felt that Derrida's ideas in Differance really helped tie things together for me, too. (Thank you, Dr. Schaberg!) For those of you who are unfamiliar with Derrida's philosophy, the "Differance" refers to the space between things, to put it extremely reductively. Basically, the differance would be the space that occupies the place between each letter of each word and between each word of each sentence, etc., helping to tie all of the pieces-parts together.

I am so relieved to finally have some sense of clarity in regard to this "ecological thought" theory.

Now whether this is a sporadic "light" that will soon disappear (kind of like a firefly... now you see it - now you don't) has yet to be seen (or not seen). Perhaps it was just a moment of clarity that graced my mind for a beautiful 2 minutes in class that will soon be lost forever. Actually, no it won't - it may have passed through my permeable non-boundary boundary for the moment, but no worries, it'll be meandering around in the mesh somewhere....

Helpful Videos

While doing some research on what others have said about The Mesh, I found that Timothy Morton has some videos on The Mesh as well as other ecological topics. Though I have not watched them, they are very interesting. They also certainly helped a little bit in understanding the mesh for me personally and maybe hearing the ideas in another's voice was a helping factor. Everyone should check them out. This is the link to Timothy Morton's youtube page. Enjoy.

Turbine

Cold, the wind, my turbine screeches.

And from the blades, cut through dark night I fear the metal will slice apart the stars.

They are so close, I watch them tremble, each hiding behind the next, hovering closer together. Yet the whips go round and round, the speed and strength is threatening, demanding.

It's so crowded up there. I wonder how it is they manage to keep each other safe. So tiny. The wind is not always so friendly, it can be temperamental, I tell them. But that turbine is another thing, it sweeps and hurls and furls through the darkness, so close to the little stars. The fearful stars.

I wonder how they would bleed. I wonder how they would cry. Would I be able to hear them? The little whimpers. But they are safe, they keep each other tight.

Sometimes its not enough though. Some of the little stars get so frightened, I see, and they jet out away from their brothers and sisters into darker spaces of the night. Some of the little ones flee, I do not know where they go, I tell them.

So I watch and wait, wondering how many more inches does my turbine need to reach the stars.

Dancing about Architecture

Hey I just wrote this post over at my blog. I think it has a pretty environmental theme.

Attempting to Write a "Nature-Themed" Poem

I chose to write this poem in sonnet form because typical themes of sonnets include nature and love; very traditional themes of poetry. Although in class we talked alot about the interweaving of two forces in poetry, humankind and nature, I approached this poem as more of an elegy for a bed of roses. I got the idea from orange roses my mother sent me on my 21st birthday that were still in my room, dried and wilted with muddy water in the vase.

Sonnet

Roses blooming in a garden of concrete and tombstone.
Weak rays of lights cannot penetrate the dreary sky
The clouds darken as the thunderous heavens moan.
A sleek black crow lets out a piercing cry,
as the first raindrop bleeds from the loaded clouds.
The torrential rain pours down in sheets
Loose garbage melts like candle wax off the grassy mounds
and the parched stream thickens with mud and sleet.
The once-radiant sunburnt petals wilt in the rain
Their stems growing weak and brittle with time
A guided symbol of lost love and pain
Polluted waters wilting the leafy spines.
All nature’s beauty ultimately fades
Like roses aging in silence amidst their watery graves.

If People Were Like Bees or Ants

Insects, like ants and bees, are fascinating to me because their decisions are group oriented. They have a swarm mentality. Their actions are based upon the survival and general welfare of their group. While ants and bees have a different way of communicating, both insects are concerned with the collective mentality. I am not sure whether or not insects are capable of having a "mentality", but they are living creatures with a desire to survive and some would say with a spirit.

Bees engage in a sort of dance to communicate. They move from one location to another in a swarm. The swarm protects the bees because less bees will be harmed if there is an outer layer of bees shielding the others. Each bee has a job. Scout bees find new nesting sites, agree through dance upon their success, and then return to the hive to convince the other bees of their success. A decision is then made quickly by the whole hive whether or not to leave.

Ants communicate through the release of chemical messages called pheromones. One time I observed ants trying to gather popcorn and take it back to the pile. It was interesting. Any time an ant passed another ant it would stop and touch the other ants feelers. In no time there were too many ants to count. The popcorn was gathered in no time. Ants create little cities with waste dumps on the outer edges. They know to put the waste away from them in order to stay healthy. Even humans weren't great at this in the old days. Ants send out chemicals in order to make a collective decision about when to to bite a food source. They secretively swarm and bite their pray all at the same time in a surprise attack.

Engineers have started trying to emulate this swarm mentality when creating robots. They are creating swarm bots which communicate and make decisions as a group. This technology is particularly handy because if robots can communicate they can repair themselves and even make new robots. Well, maybe that is a little scary, but I think that the swarm mentality could be helpful to humans in other ways. If people made decisions that were less selfish and in the best interest of everyone, the world would be a better place.

I'd also like to comment on how insects are so feared by people. They are not nearly as intimidating as some large carnivorous mammals, however, something about them tends to make humans really uncomfortable. I think that it's because they are so different from us. People tend to be afraid of the "other". It's not as easy to personify bugs just as it is not as easy to personify plants. I think that this is why people can so easily kill either organism.

Grass: To cut or not to cut? That is the question.

Personally, I love a fresh-cut yard. There's nothing like the smell of that grass, freshly snipped by the blades of the lawnmower (or if you grew up in the country like I did, giant tractor) and the feel of it underneath your feet, slightly prickling and tickling your toes as you walk atop it.

Yet some people, I imagine, might find this offensive. Why? Maybe because they think things should be left in their natural state. Maybe because they feel that its "harming the environment." To me, (and I hope most would agree) this seems a little extreme. I can appreciate maybe clearing out a forest unnecessarily as "offensive," but cutting your grass? That is expected.

Why do I bring this up? Well, it strikes me as really funny how much more attune I've become to anything pertaining to the environment/nature since taking this class. This evening, my dad and I were stuck in traffic and were talking about transplanting perennials and planting trees in my yard, and somehow got on the subject of grass cutting. He said he is more of a "natural landscaper," (oxymoron?) in the sense that he really could care less about "finely manicuring" everything, i.e., weed-eating, leaf-blowing, hedge-trimming "maintenence" with which many homeowners find their weekends occupied. Now, this in part could be because they live out in the country and so while we do have nice flowerbeds around our home and no shortage of trees and things to keep pruned, I can definitely appreciate his lack of motivation to keep everything so precisely manicured. He prefers to spend three or more hours out under the open sky, on his big Cub tractor (yes, its yellow) just slowly making his rounds around their (mostly open) 3+ acres. He finds it relaxing, refreshing, calming. And, too, there's just nothing like that "fresh cut grass." It looks nice, it smells nice, and he takes pride in keeping it that way and takes personal pleasure in the practice of cutting it.

I'm not quite sure exactly where I'm going with this, other than that while we were having this conversation, it struck me that my mind immediately jumped to our class and to the things we've been learning and to what others' "reactions" might be to something as simple as grass-cutting, insofar as it pertains to our "environment" and to "nature" and to living in the "mesh."

The Known Universe

"The universe is difficult to comprehend because it is obvious." -Albert Einstein

I recommend viewing this on fullscreen:

Interconnectedness

I find Tim Morton's concept of "Ecology without Nature" challenging and very thought-provoking. One important question is if we see nature as a concept that is seperate from us in that we are "here" and nature is "over there" how do we change this way of thinking?

We mentioned in class that we are able to see connections to Buddhist philosophies in the text. I immediately thought of the concept of "anatta" or "no-self" in which it is impossible for a soul to exist in a being, because a soul is a fixed and permanent entity and we are subject to inevitable decay-- put simply, feel free to elaborate or correct me. A being is not permanent. Thinking about the continuous change that is the human life cycle made it easier for me to connect with the idea that the "I" is not as seperate as we like to imagine. Like we said in class, the "I" in a word statement like "I am lying" (I forget the proper name for these contradictory statements) becomes seperated but still completely dependant on the "I" that is speaking. The "I" that is speaking is not, in fact, "lying" when admitting (truthfully) to be telling a falsehood (we described this much better in class, so confusing!). I see how these two I's are seperate, in a way, but still ultimately connected. One could not exist without the other.

In imagining the process of a human life including death decay, and how we are constantly changing, it is easier to see the web of connections we have to everyone and everything around us.

Environmental Anthropocentrism and Silly Folk

I just commented what essentially amounts to this insight on one of Kait's posts, but now I kind of feel like teasing it out more, or stating it more elegantly, or something. (Looks like I'm off to a great start, huh?)

One claim made by many environmentalists, and I think one which could potentially alienate a great number of people, is that the world would be better off without humans. As if humans were this spectacular disaster which could only happen once. As if extinguishing all of humanity would really make any sort of difference in the grand scheme of things.

All species fill some sort of ecological niche. Reading The Ecological Thought has made me more aware than ever how extraordinarily fluid these niches are-- it's as if the universe is constantly chasing its tail. The prey evolves, the predator follows, but before it can some of the grasses are overgrazed and other grasses take over and so new prey evolves to eat the grass and god only knows what all of this rapid change is doing to the bacteria in the soil, not to mention the soil's basic composition. Changes in the soil will cause adaptations in plants, &c. I realize I'm making everything sound much more deliberate than Timothy Morton implies it is, but that is merely for purposes of expediency.

The fact remains that the first humans weren't beamed to earth from some other dimension. They evolved on this planet just like everything else. If anything, this is what we should take away from the mesh-- humans are natural. That's why ecological disaster is affecting us. We are completely and totally natural, and as such, I think it's incredibly silly to assume that if we kill all the humans everything will go according to Mother Nature's plan. We are the plan. At the moment the plan doesn't appear to be working perfectly, to which I say gang aft agley-- species have destroyed themselves before and they will again.

We've seen apes with the ability to utilize basic technology, and really, as Timothy Morton points out, anyone could have been the bipedal tool-user. Didn't have to be the descendants of apes. Could have been lizard people, or amphibious beings who grew from winged tadpoles. Giant mollusks with hands (ick).

Essentially, the idea that wiping out humanity will fix everything is wrong, and it is wrong because we are nature. If humans are gone, something new will turn up, and I, for one, am not willing to put my blind faith in nature to produce consciousness plan B. We are the product of nature, and we have to make the most of that.

a weekend in the wood

Last weekend I worked the Awakening retreat at Camp Whispering Pines in Independence, Lousiana. We slept in screened-in cabins and enjoyed limited electricity, but for the most part, I attempted to avoid anything that I would use in the city (except for food and clothes, of course). Some of these things included an ipod, a cellphone, a shower, and a toilet. Since all of these items are not usually found in the woods, I avoided using them. One item that wood-visitors never leave home without is a flashlight. However, I chose not to bring one.


According to Edward Abbey, the flashlight, like the other items I left at home, "tends to separate a man from the world around him" (15). I completely agree. At night, the light constricts the pupils and produces an extremely limited line of vision. In the woods, I chose to walk down the night path without this safety blanket and my experience was beautiful. I could see extremely well. The moon and the multitude of bright shining stars lit the way.

Unfortunately, not all of the retreaters headed Abbey's advice. Perhaps they have not even thought about it. When you're in the woods and it's dark, our minds automatically think "Flashlight!" Passing those toting electric torches, I was blinded. The light that was suppossed to guide me actually blinded me.

The theme of the retreat was based around Matisyahu's song "I Will Be Light."
___________________________
You've got one tiny moment in time
For life to shine, to shine
To burn away the darkness
___________________________

During this one tiny moment without a flashlight, the shining life of my eyes, my soul, the moon, and the stars burned away the darkness.

BP Dolphin ride

Banksy is a British artist who does very poignant graffiti and public space installations, often illegally. He just made this, for Brighton Pier (a popular tourist destination).



It's going in my talk no doubt!

Messing up the Mesh

During our discussion on Morton's the "Mesh", I feel like I still have conflicting images of what that is. I understand that we are all apart of the Mesh, but does that mean that we have corrupted/eroded the Mesh that we live in? Since we are certain points on the Mesh (not restricted or limited to, just concentrated in), we have the capabilities to poison the rest of the network with our actions. Since we have poisoned it, environmentally, that means that we have poisoned ourselves as well.

However, connecting this to Abbey's reading, can we ever know that the Mesh originally looked like, or what its original framework was. If we can, can we get the Mesh back to that "healthier" state, or can we at all since we don't know what to recognize as a pure and healthy Mesh. Since we are apart of the Mesh, we can't imagine ourselves (humans) outside of it. What would the Mesh and, therefore, the environment be without us?

Just Checking In

This week for me has been one with mixed results. Over the course of this last week I have been following the diet plan pretty much on schedule, sticking to mostly fruits and vegetables or vegetarian style meals. But there have been occasions when I have "fallen off the wagon", and indulged in sugary snacks, especially pastries. This love of sweet stuff comes from my upbringing as a child watching my grandfather chase down every meal with something sweet, and then topping his day off with a bowl of ice cream at night before bedtime. Also, my girlfriend and her mother don't help me very much because they always keep the house well stocked with soft baked goodies and frequently solicit me to try them. These reasons and a few others will make this a very challenging problem to tackle for this next week, but not impossible if I can muster the courage and willpower to resist the temptation.

Over the course of this next week I will attempt to wean myself away from the comfort food I have been cheating with, and try to consume more fruit rather than the fruit tarts, but this is going to be a real challenge for me. I will keep you posted on the progress throughout the week which will also help me to stay on track while reminding myself of the importance of this task.

Starting Over. A Rant.

The other day, I was thinking about how everything is cyclical. There are seasons which circle back to each other and stages of life that are either negative or positive. Everything relies on each other. It would be interesting to see what would happen if somehow humans ran out of resources. What would happen if there was no electricity, no medicine, and no Internet. At first, I thought that it would be a good thing, because people would have to rely on other people, really communicate, and live in harmony with nature.

Then I realized the nature of humans is so far removed from nature itself that the chance of people ever being forced to communicate and live in harmony by some catastrophic event is miniscule. That would require everyone to be open minded and not completely selfish which is impossible. I want to know how to help people see how beautiful the world is and how important it is to connect. I want an end to individualism and a new beginning where people see themselves as part of a whole. I think that might give nature a fighting chance. This just goes back to the need for education. My question is, how can a person come to be open minded and truly affected by information and not experience? How can respect and love for everything be taught?

“We Aren't the World”

...that cheery 80s sing-along...

Actually it's a talk I gave yesterday in Albuquerque. I speak third after Levi Bryant and Ian Bogost. More details here.

S.O.S. Save Our Stomachs

Last class I experienced something quite bizarre. The deeper we got into unraveling our impressions of thoughts and language (the higher and higher the consequent pile of yarn), the more we spoke of language and its potential obstruction to the ecological thought using language, the more absurd the scene became. I began to find everything happening in the room uncontrollably more and more silly, and words themselves began to disassemble into their essential form of mere patterned sounds; my tongue suddenly felt like a strange autonomous organism in my mouth. The recognition of the absurd in both the abstract and the concrete, us sitting there on orange mental chairs with the seriousness of children, babbling away in a building about this idea Nature, trying to figure out how to enmesh with the mesh, erase the software installed in our brains by human culture, these sad creatures feeling left out of all the rest of the universe--the room began to spin, I felt the disorientation Morton spoke of, was dislocated, floating. I left class, quite literally, with motion sickness. I sat on the ground in the quad and clenched the grass to let the nausea pass and in slight irrational fear gravity could have a glitch and I may fly off the surface of this weird spinning orb of water and dirt into space.

I do not know if I became closer to the ecological thought. I don't sense that Morton's intent is that we all feel freaked out by the existence of everything and unable to function with the facade of normalcy ever again. Or maybe it is. He did say "The ecological thought is about warmth and strangeness, infinity and proximity, tantalizing 'thereness' and head-popping, wordless openness" (12). I guess my symptoms paralleled the description to an extent (I did feel quite feverish), but I could never do anything in that state--it is very arresting, like being paralyzed in a capsule of perception that is both tight and binding and boundless. Unless it just takes some getting used to, and then in it (or of it) you can move. I don't know, but it is difficult feeling like an extra-terrestrial on your own planet. Or maybe that is the idea, that it is not your own planet to call home as nothing in the universe belongs to anyone or thing else, so you should hold the equal amount of reverence to the earth as if you were its guest. I don't know. I feel a little dizzy again.

In Search of Answer

Since we didn't get to talk about the Edward Wilson's pieces, I'll post about them here. I do what Wilson says on page 134 of how "the search of material nature of a species and environment is through a combined idiom of science and the humanities." I just combined those together, not sure they were really meant to, but I like how he implies there is a partnership between science and the humanities. I admire his commitment to really experiencing nature because he went all the way to New Guinea to do it. If anyone knows anything about the island, pretty much everytime they find a new species of animals, they are probably from New Guinea.

The "Is Humanity Suicidal" article was written in 1993 I believe and we are living in 2010 so there are some times I feel like I have to clear up. The first thing that really caught my eye was his population estimate for Nigeria. He believed that Nigeria's population would be doubled from 1988 to 216 million by 2010, oh wait we're in 2010 and the true population of Nigeria is 160 million which isn't as much as he thought. It is still the most populated country in Africa though. It is still a great increase, but my point that since his estimates are high and aren't correct, we still have time to undo some of the damages and change things. Nigeria has about 55 million less than he thought, just think about all the food and water and energy we saved! So there is always time to change and make things better, but I think world economies don't care about that, all they really care about is making money. Some countries like Costa Rica are trying to protect their lands, but most aren't.

I am kind of upset about how he is uneasy about eco-feminism. I consider myself a feminist and yes, I really do believe it is mainly men who are crushing and destroying and controlling the earth into these dire situations. Yes, there are some women and some supposedly good people that are doing it too, but mainly men and i don't see what is the problem with loving Mother Nature and thinking that 'ecosystem abuse is rooted in male-dominated concepts, values, and institutions!" I think it is a masculine thing where men want to show their power and that can really be achieve through dominating nature! That's just my opinion.

Strange Stranger Strange Stranger Strange Stranger.... can you say that three times fast?

So this past week when I was reading Morton's "Ecological Thought," I couldn't help but think about how abstract the concepts seemed. In other words, my mind went back to our outdoor class session that day where we struggled to stay in the "concrete" and kept drifting off into the abstract realm of things which, in the end, didn't help us explain or understand anything at all. Instead, drifting off into that realm seemed to only complicate things and leave us feeling more perplexed and helpless than before.

When reading "Ecological Thought" I felt as though I couldn't quite grasp at what exactly Morton was getting at; at least, not yet anyway. I feel that while the text was riddled with great examples (no pun intended, considering I can't seem to figure any of this out yet :) I felt that it was all a bit abstract and too wide in scope for me to quite wrap my head around. I like to be able to read and comprehend things right there on the spot; I struggle when I have to mull over topics in my head again and again in order to try and come to a conclusion as to what is being said. Hopefully this will hash itself out as I continue with the reading... I'm up for the challenge!

Thoughts on Thoughts

I found it interesting that Timothy Morton's injunction to follow the slogan "dislocation, dislocation, dislocation" comes directly after a detailed report of how the location of the Tibetan people has affected their worldview and mythology. It's an interesting contradiction, and not necessarily a damning one. But I think that it demonstrates what I consider at the moment to be the impossibility of what he is asking us to do-- not in holding an awareness of the rest of the universe in our heads, which I think is quite possible and would be an interesting habit to practice, and "dislocating" the places around us. New Orleans is distinct from Chicago is distinct from Singapore. They are all related, but they all deserve different names. At least, that's what I think. At the moment.

So I'm going to test this out. I'm going to spend tomorrow writing a paper which I'm currently busy putting off until the last minute, but after that it's fall break, and there's no reason I can't spend it incredibly confused and disoriented. It isn't like there are places I need to be.

So on Saturday I am going to practice thinking of the connections between things, keeping that at the front of my mind at all times-- thinking "this paper came from a tree", etc. I suspect I will get very little done on Saturday, but that's okay. In all likelihood I'll get even less done on Sunday, which I plan to spend not trying to think of locations. I'll probably end up wondering around the Quarter or someplace-- without any sort of boundary who knows where I'll drift off to.

I'm attempting to exercise the ecological thought as I understand it at this time. If there are other ways of understanding it, ways which might actually be practical,. please let me know-- I'd much rather try those.

Environmental Blogs

As a huge fan of the blogs, I went in search of some other environmental blogs and came upon Read Write Web. They had an article on the top 25 environmental blogs out there based on their personal opinion but many are ranked Nationally and throughout the world for having the largest amount of followers or hits. After scanning a few, here are some of the ones I found interesting.

Got2BeGreen is blog that is a little confusing at first but this is because it is written in the language of the author and you can just translate. I found this very appealing and unique since it was so universal. There was a little box on the side that allowed you to translate into the language of your choice and read on. The blog features green technology, products and a few restaurants and grocery stores. I was a little unsure about some of the products but found a lot that I had never heard of. The Mister Steamy ball was a favorite used for lowering the use of water and energy during laundry uses.

Green as a Thistle is another blog about a woman who is trying to be more environmentally friendly everyday and as documents it on this blog. I really liked this one because it is a real person, on a budget, trying to lessen her footstep. Some posts are very sappy, as in the grass ring her boyfriend proposed to her with a palm leaf ring, which others focus on her hardships. After she finished her year long mission, she wrote a book and started a eco-friendly motherhood blog.

Happy reading.

slight ranting

Since I read Tocqueville excerpt, I've been often pondering about the role that religion can play in a person's stance towards nature or the earth. I had never really fully comprehended that the reason that so many are so apt to assume the world is "theirs" must stem from the Bible, and its passage of dominion of the earth being handed over to man. Perhaps because I was not raised Christian the thought of the earth belonging to humans never really was ingrained in me. I can't remember ever feeling that the earth was a possession, that we are more than just inhabitants of it along with many other creatures. Tocqueville's writing leaked with this attitude, in lines such as:

"All things considered, the valley of the Mississippi is the most magnificent habitation ever prepared by God for man and yet one may say that it is still only a vast wilderness." (note: only a vast wilderness)

And not only did Tocqueville agree with the sentiment that man was meant to conquer nature, but specifically the white man was meant to conquer nature and those who followed its way: "Providence, when it placed them among the riches of the New World, seems to have granted them a short lease only; they were there, in some sense, only waiting."

There is also that line: "Like all other members of the great human family, these savages also believed in the existence of a better world and worshiped God, the creator of the universe, under a variety of names."

With respect to the beliefs of my fellow class members, here I am thoroughly befuddled by Christianity. I do not understand the belief that this earth is just the waiting place we are stuck on until we gain passage to the true paradise of Heaven. Go spend a day, an hour or minute even by any body of water or in the mountains or a forest and close your eyes. Or look at a cheap plastic globe and really really take in what it means to exist on a simultaneously massive and microscopic planet teeming with diverse life. What other paradise is there than the serenity found in bathing in the senses and an awe of the ridiculously incomprehensible fact of your existence (feel free to throw rocks at the fact solipsists) or the perfect flow of nature functioning, even despite our disruptions? What more can one want? What more paradise is there? Or is the idea of paradise just something that humans cannot systematically degrade? It seems that the idea of a "better world" has made many less inclined to care for this one.

A Lack of Stars

Sometimes I forget that there are stars. There are so many lights that we turn on at night here, that I haven't had a chance to see them in a while. I don't usually think about it, but now that I am it is making me sad. No one ever talks about light pollution. Maybe no one thinks that the stars are important. Looking out at a night sky filled with stars helps us see how small we are. There is a lot to learn from the stars. They tell us how to measure time. It's ironic that humanity in the beginning gained much of their knowledge from the observation of the universe and now humanity uses that knowledge to destroy the universe.

I wonder how the animals are affected by the lack of stars. This may be off topic, but I heard that women who live in the wilderness experience menstrual cycles that are in sync with the stages of the moon. Likewise the moon effects tides and therefor the lives of countless fish. Bugs fly into artificial lights and die. I went to a place called Starhill, Louisiana. I saw no stars. It's just something I have been considering.

An Undefining Definition

Cait, yes wow that totally made sense, and thanks for sharing because I feel the same way: the more we read, the less I feel we know about what nature actually "is." I had never really considered it until taking this class; I always just thought "nature" was that stuff that grew outside, you know, the trees and grass and anything green or flowery or any creature that made its home "outside."
Yet at the same time I knew that we, too, were a "part" of nature, although I had never taken the time to consider how we quite "fit" into our "environment," whatever that is.
I've come to realize just how ambiguous all of these terms really are, and that the definition of them seems almost completely individualized. We can look at how Thoreau defined "nature" and compare/contrast it with Leopold's definition, and compare/contrast that with Emerson's, and compare/contrast that with Abbey's, and compare/contrast that with "Wise Use", and com---- you get the idea. Its so nuanced! There are parts where they overlap and parts where they differ. So what is "nature?" And how can we be the best stewards of this nature?

I think its hard to be a steward of something you don't completely understand or know how to define. If you don't understand the goal, then you won't care about working toward it. Perhaps some of our abuse of the land has been because we don't truly understand what we are supposed to be preserving or how we are supposed to be 'working with' it.

And on a totally random side note, when reading deTocqueville yesterday, I came across the passage that we alluded to in class - the one where Tocqueville criticizes the Indians for not using the land because they were merely "hunters." Um, didn't they plant corn? I mean, what about that Traditional Thanksgiving story we all heard again and again as children... where the Indians brought us corn to eat since we were so very starving ... the corn and crops that the Indians taught us how to plant?

Separation

After thinking about all of our current events and past readings there is a lot to think about. Right now, I feel like I am growing father and farther away from understanding what "nature" is. There are so many ideas from Tocqueville's arrogance, Emerson's transcendence, and Abbey's not-so-solitary solitaire, all of which not only contradict each other, but contradict the realities of the environment that we face everyday (in a world post-industrial revolution).

The idea of "nature" therefore differs in so many ways with each passing author, environmentalist, and generation of the both.

However, will we ever truly understand the essence of the natural world? Can we? Is it a truth that we can never understand because of our humanity? Nature does not have humanity (if I can assume). Therefore, we cannot perceive it from our own interpretations - because are interpretations are invalid as humans.

Stemming off of that, with our lack of validity, we may not even be able to interpret each other. Humans live in their own reality that varies from each individual. If we all live in separate realities, then it may be impossible to actually connect with anyone or anything. Its as if we are in separate realities to each other, then "nature" is a different universe to all of us.

Essentially we don't understand nature, we don't understand each other, and barely understand ourselves.

This is pretty much what the last lecture left me with.

If that made sense.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18567/

This is an article about those underwater wind turbines I mentioned so enthusiastically in class yesterday.

Reign Over Nature

"As I speak, thirteen million civilized Europeans are quietly spreading out across this fertile wilderness whose extent and resources they themselves still do not know for certain. three or four thousand soldiers drive the wandering race of natives before them. behind these armed men come woodsmen who penetrate the forests, scatter the wild animals, explore the rivers, and lay the groundwork for civilization's triumphant march across the wilderness."
-de Tocqueville, 323

As we have talked about it in class, the way in which he viewed conquering the wild. I think his language is interesting because I know anything foreign or what they don't know they call 'salvages', but I think it's interesting that he used 'civilized Europeans'. Shouldn't it be understood that the Europeans are already civilized, or is he trying to further emphasize that? He even talks about the "material prosperity of the Americans." This is all he is really worried about in his essay. I guess all he really wants to see is the wealth that people can harness from the untamed American lands. In the end, he gives the impression that being wealthy gives you more freedom and he was allowed to do that in America.

Nature Maker

I couldn't come to class in time today, but for the advertisement assignment, what I found was this site that makes realistic looking trees for commercial buildings and I thought I would share it.

http://www.naturemaker.com/

I thought it was hysterical people will pay to design their own steel trees to put into airports and casinos. Especially since the trees they're designing look so real.

What's wrong with real trees?

Fear and the "Implacable INdifference" in Desert Solitaire

"Alone in the silence I understand for a minute the dread that many feel in the presence of primeval desert, the unconscious fear which compels them to tame, alter or destroy what they cannot understand, to reduce the wild and prehuman to human dimensions. Anything rather than comfort directly the antehuman, that other world which frightens not through danger or hostility but something far worse-- it's implacable indifference." (91)

At this point in the novel Abbey concedes to an understanding of the human capacity to fear raw nature that he denies in himself. His toughness, and condescension toward man's relationship with nature, causes him to take on a persona of "lone ranger." He regards himself as a man alone in the wilderness. He is weary of bothersome tourists who take a different, more shallow approach to "his" desert canyon. He demonstrates this weariness in his"hardness" towards humanity and his reverence of nature. In his treatment of tourists, we see sarcasm masked by humor, but also tolerance. If he really wanted tourists to leave the desert canyon, he could take a much harder approach (tell them it's dangerous, don't let them think he's joking, manipulate their emotions, and be abrupt-- all under a guise of friendly helpfulness). So we come to the conclusion that Abbey does not despise the tourists. He is disgusted by their behavior, but understanding of the reasons behind it, however morose and twisted the reprocussions may be.

The quote at the beginning of this post is Abbey's admittance of his own humanity; his own fear that he overcomes in pursuit of a higher knowledge and understanding of nature. Fear in this sense could mean many things: fear of diversity, fear of the unusual, fear of the unknown, fear of the uncontrollable, unrestrained, and the unrecognized. There are many reasons humans fear the rawness of nature. Personally, I could list a dozen more. Abbey is recognizing not only that these fears exist and run rampant in society, but also that they are natural and understandable (one step away from forgivable) fears. Difference is synonymous with fear in our culture. All things that are severely different cause conflict with our own beliefs systems, challenge our thoughts, emotions, and experiences.

Desert life poses serious obstacles for a man or woman raised in the comforts of cities we have created out of these once "natural" lands. Putting a city boy in the desert is like taking the lone, wild horse and putting him in a barn in rural Missouri. However, for Abbey to admit that fear is understandable, even in only a "brief instance" is a rare occurence in this novel. This leads me back to the question we have been trying to answer in class: "What is the desert a medium for in this novel?" I believe Abbey is using the desert as a medium for awareness. Just as Abbey is demonstrating awareness of our human approach to nature and it's understandable flaws in this passage, through Abbey's lense of experience we can become more aware of the desert (it's multi-faceted connections with humanity, animal life, and the global environment). We begin to touch the surface of understanding it's beauty. From the brief experience provided for us second-hand by Abbey I have determined that some of this beauty lies in the *difference* between nature and the cities we have created to shelter us from it.

Freedom

When reading Democracy in America for tomorrow's class, I found the selections to be filled with really interesting points, ideas and beliefs that still hold true in some cases. One of the most interesting lines I found was on page 27, "The Indians, though all ignorant and poor, are also equal and free." This was not only an interesting discovery for Tocqueville but to me that he would come to such a realization. The fact that a person could be free in poverty or equal in ignorance is a very intriguing idea. In the current United States, we are all given the same rights, whether poor or ignorant, yet we are not all equal and free. When continuing thinking of this idea, I tried to find the relation to this in nature since that is what I do with every thought in this class. Nature, like a person in the United States, is suppose to be free though at times it is not. Nature at times is confined by concrete in the ever growing landscape of buildings and roads at times. It is cut, ripped, stomped on and taken from its home. Though Nature has the ability to be wild, it is controlled by humans often. We manipulate flowers to make them different colors, we get patches of grass and put them with others and we put chemicals on grass, weeds and leaves to make them different than their natural way. Still in spite of this all, Nature grows wild. I thought this metaphor for humans and human nature was a really unique way to look at things. It also gave me a feeling of patriotism that I would some how grow wild no matter what the United States' government would throw my way ha. This really just made me think of how much Nature can be a metaphor for everything is in and around our lives. (As disjointed as this post is.)

Wall Arch Collapses

"In the government truck I make a final tour of the park. East past the Balanced Rock to Double Arch and the Windows... past Tunnel Arch, Pine Tree Arch, Landscape Arch, Partition Arch, Navajo Arch, and Wall Arch..." (Abbey, 267)



"Wall Arch, located along the popular Devil's Gardens Trail at Arches National Park collapsed sometime during the night of August 4, 2008. Rock has continued to fall from the arms of the remaining arch, necessitating the closure of the Devil's Garden Trail just beyond Landscape Arch.

On August 7, 2008 representatives of both the National Park Service Geologic Resources Division and the Utah Geological Survey visited the site and noted obvious stress fractures in the remaining formation.

First reported and named by Lewis T. McKinney in 1948, Wall Arch was a freestanding arch in the Slickrock member of Entrada sandstone. The openning beneath the span was 71-feet wide and 33-1/2-feet high. It ranked 12th in size among the over 2,000 known arches in the park. "



-nps.gov/arch/parknews

"You're holding a tombstone in your hands. A bloody rock." (Abbey, xiv)

A Poem from the Beautiful Nature Imagery in Desert Solitaire

“Aravaipa Canyon”
By Edward Abbey

We see no mountain lions this evening.
Nor any of the local deer,
although the little heart-shaped tracks of the former
are apparent in the sand.

Javelina, or Pecary, too, reside in this area;
piglike animals with tusks,
oversized heads,
and tapering bodies—
they roam the slopes and gulches in family bands
(like Apaches)
living on roots, tubers, and innards of barrel cactus
on grubs, insects, and carrion.

Omnivorous,
like us—
and equally playful,
if not so dangerous.
Any desert canyon with permanent water, like Aravaipa,
will be as full of life as it is beautiful.

talk the talk and walk the Walk

This past Saturday, I was driving to work off of Magazine and saw a huge mass of people all wearing white shirts holding banners and signs. They were walking down the sidewalk, not chanting or screaming, just holding their signs for all the read. The banner at the head of the line read: "Walk for Farm Animals".

I looked into the organization and they are a national group with "walks" over several states annually and even events in Canada. They work to promote awareness for farm animals abused in factories and raise money for the improvement of their conditions. They are also sponsored by organizations including, "Boston Baked Bonz: A Unique Dog Bakery and Gift Shop!", "Great Sage, Organic Green Cuisine", "Karmavore Vegan Shop", and "Simply Zen".

For more information:

http://walkforfarmanimals.org/

Here is the fiscal results for the walks:

*Please note: This number represents the total amount raised. In the past we reported the net amount, but beginning with the 2009 Walk we are now reporting the total

Congratulations to the top 10 Walk cities!

New York City	$79,644
Toronto	$16,724
Baltimore	$13,543
San Francisco	$12,711
Boston	$11,702
Phoenix	$11,300
Hartford	$9,172
South Florida	$9,000
Chicago	$8,876
Santa Monica/LA	$8,774

Speaking the Truth

As much as I think it is great that everyone is becoming so "green" or environmentally conscience, part of it is all for show I think. Since celebrities and the media have started this whole 'Green' idea. It makes me laugh when walking into Nordstrom and seeing all these hipsters with 'Green is the new Black' shirts; kid, are you going to recycle that bag you bought all these new clothes in? How much did you spend on that shirts and does any of it go to the environment? Doubtful. Or hippies that always say they are vegan and are living for the Earth, those kids are always wearing Birkenstocks. Birkenstocks are from cows and the least vegan-friendly thing ever. I have also read that a lot of celebrities that back environmentally friendly companies end up getting free stuff for their endorsement. I am all for helping the environment and keeping this planet around longer, but I am the first to admit that I like my steak, I only occassionally recycle and love to buy books, which just kills trees. If you want to help the environment, do it for everyone, not because Leonardo Dicaprio uses that product or the 'Green' movement has hit Gap.

Why it's cool to be green

Suddenly, concern about global warming has crowded the environmental bandwagon, with many businesses front and center

Sunday, May 13, 2007 3:52 AM

By Spencer Hunt

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

It's hard not to save the world these days.

How about a hybrid car or a new energy-efficient washing machine? Did you know that compact fluorescent lights use one-third the electricity of regular bulbs?

After years of being stuck on society's back burner, the environment is popular again. It's cool to be green.

Lawmakers are looking to cap so-called greenhouse gases that are blamed for climate change, movie stars are buying "carbon credits" and businesses are pushing eco-friendly products.

From Ford and General Electric to Wal-Mart and SC Johnson (the maker of Pledge furniture polish), companies are flooding the airwaves with commercials that tout themselves as green.

"Everybody's got an angle," said Jim Coleman, director of Ohio's Tomorrow, an advocacy group that wants to reduce global warming.

"I think it's tremendous that the business community is the one leading this.

Experts tie this new "greening" of America to several factors, including:

• Soaring gas prices that created a market for hybrid cars and revived efforts to replace fossil fuels with alternative energy sources.

• Some scientists' linking of Hurricane Katrina to global warming.

• The Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which brought worldwide attention to climate change.

• The reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that say greenhouse gases must be reduced by 2015 to prevent everything from famine to animal extinction.

Andrew Hoffman, a University of Michigan professor who studies business response to environmental issues, said the United States is riding the third wave of environmentalism.

The first began in the late 1960s, when environmental disasters including Cleveland's Cuyahoga River fire helped spur the first Earth Day and the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The second began in the 1980s, with concerns about a hole in Earth's ozone layer and a toxic chemical leak in Bhopal, India, that killed thousands of people.

This latest resurgence, centered on global warming, "is an environmental issue like no other," Hoffman said.

"It ties into so many other issues, like national security and national competitiveness."

Another big difference, Hoffman said, is how businesses are responding. Instead of fighting change, many are embracing it as a way to cut costs or make more money.The nation's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, plans to cut its greenhouse-gas emissions 20 percent over the next eight years and said it will design new stores that use 30 percent less energy.

The company also started a campaign last fall to sell 100 million compact fluorescent light bulbs, called CFLs, each year.

In April, the do-it-yourself giant Home Depot announced that it would offer more than 2,500 eco-products, including all-natural insect repellents and plants in biodegradable pots.

"We want to get ahead of an emerging trend," said Jen King, a Home Depot spokeswoman.

Environmental advocacy groups say they are benefiting from this new green wave.

The Sierra Club said its e-mail newsletter has grown from 150,000 subscribers in 2004 to more than 600,000 today, spokeswoman Orli Cotel said.

"It used to be that if you wanted to live a green lifestyle, you'd have to invest in really expensive technologies, like (solar panels)," Cotel said. "These days, anyone can get involved without making really drastic changes."

Then there is the carbon-offset industry.

Several companies offer investment stakes in projects that reduce carbon dioxide. The idea is that you might have a huge house or car that requires burning a lot of fossil fuels, but you can offset that pollution by buying the credits.

Alexia Kelly, a policy analyst with the nonprofit Climate Trust, which sells offsets, said the credits are more than a way to reduce guilt.

"We look for things that make permanent reductions" in carbon dioxide, such as restoration of an Ecuadorean rainforest, Kelly said.

But will all of these efforts really save the planet?

Hoffman said he expects that Congress will cap the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that power plants and other companies emit.

"When it subsides, the world is different than it was," he said. "Prior to 1970, the idea of national regulation on the environment didn't seem reasonable.

"Now here we are, and it makes perfect sense."

a whatchamacallit

So I was thinking about our discussion, and the role language plays in defining our perception of the world, in particular of nature. I began to wonder about the word "nature" itself. If we had no such separate word for "nature," would we still have the concept of it being separate from us? I began to wonder if there existed other cultures and languages that do not even have this capital N word Nature to name that over-arching "other," and if not, if it was a culture that would not perceive the same divide that we do. The Google search for "languages that do not have a word for Nature" proved a bit unyielding (due to the nature of the word nature), but I did come up with a site "The Origin of the Word Nature: How Nature Entered the English Language" http://www.suite101.com/content/the-origin-of-the-word-nature-a85523

It was unexpected to me that the site focused more on the evolution of the word nature as meaning that sort of underlying and driving essence of everything, rather than this separate entity to be combated, controlled, or preserved that we have created with a capital N. I guess I just keep coming back to the same: we are nature just as anything else is; there seems nothing to me that is not nature. I suppose our species may be a very anomalous one with all sorts of peculiar habits and trajectories of development, and even maybe too maladaptive to be kept in the evolutionary pool indefinitely, but it does not alter that nature is us and we are nature. I like the idea I once heard that we are nature with consciousness, undoing itself. Not that I like that practice, but I think it a paradox to be dismantled after its recognition.

Another site I stumbled into: "Wildlife Promise: 50 + Nature Words Taken Out of Dictionary" http://blogs.nwf.org/arctic_promise/2009/03/endangered-words-nature-terms-taken-out-of-dictionary.html

Following the same line of mind that words allow us to hold concepts, this is terrifying. At this rate the next generation of youngin's will all be robot-brains, slaves to screens, and word for word losing the quiet and tender sensitivity to nature that has marked childhood. Of what images, colors, textures will their nostalgia be?

Naked Self

Abbey says on page 6 that "I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with a non-human world and yet somehow survives still intact, individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock." This idea is indeed a paradox. It seems to me that this "brutal mysticism" which he speaks of has to do with the traditional conception of the soul; the fact that one has his own "selfhood" in which he retains a distinct identity that sets him apart from other souls, aluding to God's creation of man as distinct individuals with distinct personalities. In this sense, I would agree that we are not the same, but the change in perception which I frequently vouch for is for one to consider himself not separate, but rather one with nature. How is it possible to "merge" with nature and subsequently retain the same individualistic perception of oneself, in the sense that nature and man are separate? The very purpose of realizing oneself in nature is to retain the unity of self in nature. Even though Abbey gets "up close and personal" with nature, I still don't feel that he arrived at the unity that Emerson and Thoreau purported in their writings.

Tangible vs. Transcendent

The thing I have been struggling with most is the fact that every time I try to keep my thoughts grounded in order to think concretely about nature, I always end up on that intangible realm and am left feeling like I just can't DO anything about it. I hate that feeling! I set out to read the next few chapters of Desert Solitaire this morning and was so intent on discovering the meaning behind the "Desert" and thinking about Ed Abbey's point for writing this book to begin with, yet every time I examined my thoughts, I realized that they drifted toward that ephemeral realm of the "I'm just human, what possibly could I do - I don't think I could do anything that would matter."

But I think that just might be it: the idea that we ARE human and we live and breathe in the natural world. This world is as much a part of us as we are part of it. (We're all made from dust, our bodies will decay and fertilize the earth, etc.) How am I doing at staying realistic so far? (Ok don't answer that...)Obviously the point is that we must do something, the question is WHAT.

I got to thinking this morning that maybe the desert, just as it is dry and empty and desolate and hot and arid - as Tien mentioned - is symbolic (here we go ;) of the state of mind that each of us find ourselves in in relation to the earth. Seriously: we keep finding ourselves concerned with this question of "what can we do?" "we don't know how." Well, how did Abbey look at the desert? He got right up in its face and lived with it, sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much so (think when he messed up the ant pile just because he didn't "particularly care for ants.") So I think maybe one of the ways in which we can address the problem with which we are faced - what do we do? - is to just get right up in its face and LIVE. Meet and see each thing for what it is, as you see it (Thanks Amelie, loved reading your post; I've often thought the same thing about perception) and make the concrete decision to make whatever small changes you can make that are within your power to make. This way, we won't feel quite so overwhelmed, all at once anyway.

So what are some small changes we can make? There are the obvious, such as parents reverting to cloth diapering, growing your own food, being less wasteful, etc. What about turning off the lights in every room that you are not using? Saves energy. What about turning off the water during the time your toothbrush is in your mouth? You might do this already, but I don't. Would save water. And believe it or not, speaking of water, your diswasher uses less water than hand-washing does. BUT, your diswasher also uses energy. So you see, like Abbey, we may not always be successful either. But we can try. And as they say, its the "thought that counts" (And the subsequent effort that counts, too).

Desert Don't Care

I'm having such a tough time deciding my feelings about Desert Solitaire and Abbey . First, I have to admit I guess I am bias against desert regions because I think it's dry, hot, and I don't particularly enjoy it there. I don't have a problem with the book and find Abbey's description of the landscape beautiful. I think the narrator and autobiography aspect of this book are what I'm debating about. First, my issue with Abbey is I have no compassion for him and I frankly don't care for him. Not to say that I don't like this book or that I don't like him, it's just something about his narrative or maybe his stories that I don't care for. I think it was Cait that said with nature we often get a romanticize version of it, and maybe that is why I'm not adjusting well to this book. There is just something about this book that as I'm reading it, I just get annoyed and I don't care about Abbey or his experience. I enjoy hearing about the landscape and animals, but as Abbey gets himself involved I become uninterested.

It might have something to do with Abbey's constant rambling or his self-righteousness or the fact that he thinks he has it so much better than us, but he is human. I also feel like his writing is all over the place and yes, he wants to talk about a lot and that is fine. I think he sometimes doesn't know or aware of what he's saying so that leaves me to not care either. But in his defense this could all be the framing of the book and the way he intended for us to view it. It's the desert, it's desolate, dry, it can seem empty, lonely, a bit crazy, or drive us a bit crazy. So at times, his writing style and narrative contributes to the wild nature of life in the desert and all the things going on with him and in his head. I I haven't finished the book yet, so many my opinion of him and his words will change. I'm trying to figure out if there is something specific that he wants us to get out of this or maybe this is what it is and we have to take it for surface value like him.

Grass

In Aldo Leopold's A Sand Count Almanac he mentions the replacement of wild tall grasses with cultivated strands. He uses the example of Kentucky Blue Grass. I had never really though about the fact that grass is an invasive species. It's funny to think how much time and energy people spend into manicuring grass.

I also realize that sidewalks were constructed so that people don't have to walk in the grass. So often people walk in the grass anyway. This kills several of the microorganisms that were living there. It's just strange that people changed the land by replacing everything with an invasive species that was more aesthetically pleasing, built sidewalks to protect that species, and now walk all over that species killing the organisms that people in effect put there.