Mason's+Page

= **NATURE. Then. Now. And Why does it matter?** = Based on conversations with friends and fellow students and teachers, I have come to the conclusion that nature is seeing a growing sense of respect and an awareness that hasn't been present in American culture for many years. This rise in awareness has been the result of a new awakening of what it means to consume and the cost of expansion. To do that we need resources, to use those resources we need to build and use energy. Through this system we consume, and consume we do. Oil, timber, coal, Iron... the necessities of our advanced and industrialized civilization on our small spec of rock hurtling through space. This awareness of just how finite our world is, is a real wake up call if we wish to see the next generations proposer...and learning how to be sustainable is the challenge that we now face. Going green, recycling, clean energy, and environmental awareness are the crucial points for society in the coming years if we want to still have nature be as wonderful and inspiring to the mind as it had been for thousands of years.
 * How the People around me view nature:**

Nature is always subjected to the whims of politicians and land owners and has gone from the beauty of the world to the annoyance of human expansion. Mother Earth has become humanity's earth. Nature is either in our way or being taken away. It is always a struggle to preserve or restore land. Nature shouldn't be an obstacle to our ever growing needs to survive, but rather a balance should exist between humans and nature, a give and take relationship that fosters awareness and protection for environments and ecosystems. We should let nature survive; forests, river valleys, and entire ecosystems should be used to our benefit but not for our consumption. Balance is needed to make sure that there is enough left, and possible growth, so when the next generation of humans is in charge they will have something left that is green and beautiful as opposed to just staring at skyscrapers and urban housing over what could have been a river valley or part of a forest. If nature disappears, we will too. On our current path there will be nothing left and we will be in an environmental crisis, or even a resources crisis. I believe that nature should be used, but not consumed by us to ensure that there will always be nature left on Earth. True nature would be going to a place where humans can feel the same as the animals that live around them, as part of the nature without feeling attached to society or any level of man made needs like money, or the need to be globally connected while in nature. My overall view of nature is that if we do not respect nature, the earth will eventually die and we will too if we let that happen. But __**WE**__ are part of nature too and we live as mortals on earth. The earth can survive without us, but we cannot survive without earth.
 * What Nature is to me:**

Modern society takes for granted what many people have been fascinated with since the arrival of humans. Nature to us is just another commodity to be used to our whims, but many people don’t understand the real sacredness of nature on Earth. Nature is used in everything we make or produce, using the natural materials to build and expand over the face of the earth. But even if it seems that it is a god given right, we do need nature in order to live and the argument arises of what we should use, and what we should save. This argument can be seen in the chapter, The Idea of a Garden. After a natural occurrence in a park forest where some of the trees fell and it became a mess, the town and Nature Conservatory fight over what should happen next. Nature could take its own course but the desire for what is good for us humans is more important than protecting the nature that is left. This is a modern dilemma that we face. What do we do with what we have left. Our current methods of mining, waste removal and storage, drilling, and deforesting are pushing the Earth closer and closer to the point where we won't be able to survive on the planet. What we call nature is really just an illusion of what it used to be. Exotic trees and plants are not nature, it's just eye candy to the people that don't get a chance to experience true nature… the forests and great plains, vast and dangerous areas that many people see in a picture, but would never really go to. I had the chance to be in nature as part of a nature walk that was very helpful in finding the inspiration to determine my own definition for what was nature and what wilderness was. As we hiked uphill and downhill in the cold and through the streams of previous rain water I found myself feeling as if the things of the material world and also those of our society didn't really matter. Sure an awesome game was coming out in just a few days but I realized that while I stared out over the valley through the mist and low clouds, it became apparent to me that I felt no longing for that new game or the homework that I might have had. I found wilderness to be a separation of mind from society, a place of peace. Nature takes away the human conditions of stereotypes and social behaviors as I hiked with my class and found that nature and wilderness are both important because they provide a place where we can let go of our stress and have time for self-reflection. Even to go as far as to have a conversation with another person that doesn’t have to include the worries and stresses of life in school or at work. This was where the mind can simply tune out all outside troubles and a person has the time and the setting to think to themselves and soak in the smells, sights, and sounds. From this, I have learned to understand to some degree why many people who disregard society or write about the effects of nature on the human mind write about nature take the stances that they did or do. The unfamiliarity of the forest and the fear that man constructs within their mind only pushes away nature, when we should be embracing it in the modern age. We should be going green on all fronts, because there isn’t anything to fear from nature other than there being none left. This demands preservation or conservation.
 * How I Feel Society Views Nature:**


 * WATER supplies across the US:** http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/rt

Preservation or Conservation? Do we use nature to our needs or do we put it aside. Brower and Dominy argue on their respective sides of this issue in Encounters with the Archdruid as to whether dams, the source of both water and electricity for many areas in desert or dry areas should be used to produce the electricity needed for cities or wether or not the rivers should be left untouched. Brower and Dominy represent both ends of the spectrum, Brower is a preservationist while Dominy builds dams for the use of cities and people, or a conservationist. He supports bottling up what there is as opposed to never even touching it. Dominy says that he can build a dam where ever he pleases because God had given humanity that land and they could tend to it as needed for their prosperity. Brower claims that his view is foolish and he should understand the consequences of his actions and how they affect the rest of nature. But they are not the only ones with the same argument, their different views are models for most people. Would you build a dam or leave the river alone? As mentioned in the book, when asking a classroom of children, the answer is almost 50-50. This can be seen throughout struggles in the older members of society as seen in The Idea of a Garden and even in our society today when it comes to going ** GREEN. **
 * Encounters:**



__//**CREATION!!!!!**//__

Genesis, the Christian creation story tells that God had given all of earth to man, to make sure that they populated the planet and that all livestock, animals, fish, and birds were to be under human rule. Even in the earliest of the ideas of what nature means to humans, the story of creation for a large religion states that Humans have an unalienable right to rule over nature. However, it does not say as to how, or how humans should treat nature. This serves as an early root and is evidence to the nature of human treatment of the environment and the question of what nature would ultimately become in the minds of growing civilizations. A supernatural right to rule and expand over all parts of the earth where everything is created in the perfect state. Everything that god creates is an ultimate ideal of perfection, boosting the human perspective of whatever they were doing, or would do with nature was based on god's ideal of perfection. Humans however, are flawed in many ways and creation stories of other cultures aren't afraid to show that we are, in fact flawed.

Genesis isn't the only one...

The Pima's story of creation is far different from Genesis as the Pima creation story is one of many attempts and flaws. The Doctor of the Earth, Juhwertamahkai, is creator of his entire world and everything that occupies it. However, he has successive attempts to create a world in which everything functioned correctly, yet he ends his world four times seeing that the humans continuously flawed. This story is on the other side of the spectrum from Genesis, giving a lesson that shows that only those who are responsible enough are the ones who are granted the privilege to live. A lesson that could hint towards human interaction with nature. A very human lesson of responsibility.

The Iroquois have a maternal creation story. The world is formed from the twin sons of the the maternal creator. One spirit is good and the other of evil. They fight until the evil spirit is forced to go into hiding when the good spirit wins out over his twin. The evil spirit had tried to prevent the humans from utilizing all of the things that the good spirit had created to nourish the humans and allow them to survive. The story teaches moral of caution and control, that if one is not careful in the world they may be tempted by the evil spirit and become wicked.

This is applicable to how we treat nature from the lessons of both the Pima and Iroquois creation story. Genesis simply tells us that we are perfect and so is the world that god had created and its our duty to expand all over the globe. Unfortunately is leaves no room to say how we should treat the world and however we treat it is right because we are perfect, so nothing is wrong. The Pima and Iroquois teach that cautiousness and responsibility are guiding lights in how we live day to day and how we SHOULD treat nature, or we might be pulled astray or even tainted by evil or corruption.


 * THE GREAT WRITERS OF NATURE:**


 * Cotton Mather**

Cotton Mather's view on nature is one of many evils. He believed that the wilderness was the workshop of the devil and a place of pure evil where many evils rule where man does not. His perspective came directly from the Salem witch trials in which many people had been accused of being witches for going out into the forest to do devilish work. He also grew up with a Puritan background, thus strengthening his views of following the will of god. Seeing these strange activities outside of the borders of the towns this lead him to believe that wilderness is a terrible thing of great evil where no god exists, but rather the devil. He mentions that the people of New England are a people of God and that when they came to settle they had taken land that prior to their arrival, had been the territories of the Devil himself. At this point in history, the new world was still an unfamiliar place that was feared... and the unknown is a great motivator. However, Jefferson would put Nature into perspective as something to be proud of and have pride for, because nobody else had what America had to the same level or beauty.

__A brief history of the Salem Witch Trials__: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/brief-salem.html

While many view nature in its quality, Jefferson views it in a quantitive way. He looks to see just how much raw resource we have and take into account all of the things that separate the US from its European counterparts. He looks to prove that the mountains and the rivers that the US has are better than anything the Europeans have wether they are for looking at or for their ability to transport large amounts of goods. Wether it be military, mountains, rivers, streams, lakes, forests, population etc. Jefferson looks to put the US in a quantitative view as to see how much it really has to offer. He looks to prove that the new country has something that nobody else has, looking to find something worth identifying a people with. In Jefferson's case, he looks to America's natural worth to separate America from Europe and add pride to the American identity with the nature that belongs to them. Yet, there was still difficulty understanding and making peace with the Native Americans. A great American thinker, Ben Franklin would write... way ahead of his time that Native American culture wasn't just a hoax. His insight into understanding other complex cultures and how they treated nature was way ahead of any other thinker of the day.
 * Jefferson's Notes on Virginia**



Yea, we all know this guy. He's what we find on our 'green' or in simple terms, our money. Although he was a famous revolutionary, he was also a contributor to many famous works on early America that deal with nature. In his "Savages" piece, Ben describes the nature of one group of human's prejudice against the unknown, or in the case of the Native Americans who are misunderstood by early Americans and other settlers. In a time where calling a Native American a savage would be commonplace, Ben believes that they should be respected. He states that we see our society as "the perfection of civility," that we are the paragon from which all others should try to emulate. A hundred years of mistreatment of the Native Americans came swiftly through the colonists and the new settlers assumed that their primitive life style was savage like when Native American culture was just as or if not more complex and rich than European culture.
 * Ben Franklin**



Just like Jefferson, Crevecoeur writes from a foreigner's perspective on America and what it has to offer, and comparing it to Europe. He describes what it is like to be an American. It was written before the American Revolution yet published after the war in 1782. He writes about the freedoms that Americans experience that that citizens of European nations do not. He writes of America's good roads, navigable rivers and an easy government that doesn't restrict the freedoms of the people. He also looks to the many different peoples, immigrants from all over the world that come to experience the many freedoms and experiences of living in the "New World" and experiencing the world upon which the USA would be built from.
 * Crevecoeur: Letters from an American Farmer**

Rip Van Winkle is a kind man who is very generous to the people around him. He is willing to help others all around him but he cannot come to helping himself or his family. His wife nags him of his failure to help with the crops or other around the house jobs seeing that Rip has little or no money and his children have to wear torn and tattered clothing. His kindness to others does not help his family and when his wife nags him he simply grabs his rifle and goes into the woods with his trusty companion, his dog Wolf. One day Rip decides to venture far into the forest where he meets a gnome with a strong liquor and he gives Rip a drink where he goes into a deep sleep for 20 years only to return to his town with a beard and without his dog to see that the entire town had changed and that nobody had remembered who he was except for one woman who remembered him from when he was young.
 * Irving- Rip Van Winkle & Scooby Doo: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow**

By the time of Irving, many writings of nature having to do with god and demons had subsided as culture moved away from medieval and early culture mottos and beliefs. Irving, a great writer of his time uses the gnome to explore the idea of the fantastical as well as the unknown. He puts his culture of the time into perspective of how nature moved away from the bible and more towards home grown legends and fantastical creatures such as the gnome in the forest. Culture was moving towards the fantastical.

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Scooby Doo: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow actually references Irving's story about Sleepy Hollow. A place where the people seem to enter a strange trance from which they never awake and many stories of strange acts done by people. One of the legends tells of a Revolutionary soldier that lost his head on the battlefield and became the headless horseman, his head replacedb y a pumpkin who would come out at night in order to find his head. This pulls the idea of the supernatural into our society and in how we view nature.



Ralph Waldo Emerson takes a perspective that moves completely away from any creationist belief. Emerson believed that studying the bible and reading about man's past experiences with God was unoriginal, and that one would have to venture forth and find a new original experience with God.He looks to connect the real, in his case nature, to the abstract, God. In this is he is looking to find a personal truth to which he can have a personal experience with god. Emerson states that abstract truths are the best because they make us search for a deeper understanding. He believes that only the child and the poet understand the true beauty of the world as the poet leaves nothing unseen, everything is observed. The child makes nature special as well. "The sun illuminates on the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heard of the child.” (494) This quote explains how the brilliance of the sun is taken for granted by the average man every day, yet the child makes it special by taking in the heat that the sun gives off, and seeing the brilliance and marvel of the giant firry object in the sky illuminating everything around the child. Emerson finds this mainly intellectual and personal view to be his truth to the world seeing that "This delight of man and vegetable is both surprising yet not unknown as man and nature share a common connection since man is no less a part of nature than any other creature on earth." We are one and the same. We are part of nature just like every other creature on the planet and to understand nature we must go into nature to find the deeper truths and have an original experience with the abstract.
 * Emerson: Nature Essays**



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Nature plays a very motherly role in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It can be both soothing and relaxing, helpful and guiding, or dangerous and unforgiving. Huck and Jim find throughout their journey the many moods and emotions of nature that shape their adventures down the Mississippi. Huck describes their stay on their raft as a place where they can relax because nature allows for them to feel free when they are on the river by themselves with nothing to bother them and nothing to keep them mentally restrained. It keeps them cool, calm and collected whenever possible. A mother would comfort and let its children feel relaxed and the sense of freedom. Nature's second positive aspect is that it is helpful to Huck and Jim as possible opportunities to gather supplies may come from previously wrecked boats or to fish the wide river for food. The river nudges and carries Huck and Jim in the proper direction of their adventure as they use the nature that they are given, the river, to reach one of their many goals, Cairo. Even though the river is helpful, it can also hinder their progress and rip apart Jim and Huck as its currents can swell and its rapids and dense fog can pry Jim and Huck apart and hurt or possibly kill those who are not careful enough to know how to deal with the wild storms that can churn the waters of the Mississippi. Huck and Jim are fortunate enough to be returned to one another as they battle the rage of mother nature and the fury that can demoralize those who dare stand up to her. And finally, nature can be unforgiving in Huck's adventures. A mother's unforgiving attitude can cause those affected to question their actions to seek out inner answers to why they are unforgiven. Huck and Jim's superstitious views is nature's way of watching out for their backs and when they have done something that has brought them pain, they ask for forgiveness to seek out a solution to making nature calm and guiding and positive once more.
 * The Role of Nature In Huck Finn**

The Chicago World Fair was a one time party and a showcasing of humanity's great achievements in all areas of art, food, and manufacturing and industry. The fair had an unmatched beauty and grandeur that not even the French, the previous fair holders, could match. Its record setting buildings and impossibly large scaled buildings and fountains were to the common visitor of the fair like a child staring down the largest piece of candy it had ever seen. Holmstead, the designer of the park incorporated the richness of American land, the lake, the lagoon, the peaceful settings surrounding the massive buildings to make the fair feel as intertwined with both the massive American architecture prowess, and the beauty of America to show off a truly American fair. The introduction of modern building techniques, making building bigger, faster, and stronger was a revolutionary style of buildings that would reshape architecture of cities and buildings in the coming century. But even with the massive elegance and splendor that surrounded every aspect of the fair it wasn't known to the average people the danger of the buildings. The immense beauty of the classical styled buildings was built to look, but not to last. They're largely wooden and iron bar construction as well as the use of Staff, a building material used to mimic the appearance of white granite, concrete, or marble gave the impression of to visitors that the park was built to resemble classical styled buildings. While impressive, the buildings had been put up with great haste, making them problematic when it came to safety, an example being the ice building that burned down after a fuse sparked and lit the wooden framing on fire. The other issues with the fair, were the pricing, and getting from exhibit to exhibit. The magnificence of the park only got as far as a visitor could travel. The immense distances from building to building or from one place to the other made it extremely difficult to see everything, making the fair extremely limited for one day visitors to see as much as possible. The other issue was pricing, the entry fee was 50 cents, and then seeing exotic attractions could cost even more, and then the expenses just for food and drink could empty a man's wallet. This made the fair extremely difficult for people to visit over long periods of time throughout the day or even to visit more than once. Overall the fair was a great and monumental success for both America and the city of Chicago, a time and place when the world could come together to show off what they had to offer and see new cultures and experience the never before seen parts of the world.
 * 1893 Chicago World Fair**

__The Urban Jungle__
In //Maggie A Girl of The Streets,// the author depicts the time of the "urban jungle" a place in cities and towns where immigrants especially, have difficulty adjusting to life in a setting and society where the justice and laws of civilized life can cease to apply. Maggie, experiences first hand how life can be so difficult growing up in a tenement house in New York City. Among the difficulties of her family's circumstances, she is no stranger to the beatings and the horror that occurs both young in her life and later in life. In the urban jungle, life is constantly an emotional struggle, an example being Maggie's mom cursing her out and saying she's the devil's child. Her life is also a physical struggle, finding a way to survive and make a way in her world. However, compared to Jimmie, who gives into the hardships and corruption, Maggie is both beautiful, high spirited and in some ways naive. Pete, a bartender now, begins to date Maggie and gives her a taste of bourgeois life. She ends up staying with Pete and presumably sleeping with him until Pete is convinced by a woman, Nellie, to leave her. Maggie's world falls apart in an abrupt turn of events, showing how whimsical the urban jungle can be. The hardships found in the urban jungle form a rough society in which common law and justice is usually met with brutal force, just like how the police have to come in swinging their clubs in order to break up fights in bars or out in the streets, one of which Pete got into with Jimmie. These awful conditions end up turning Maggie into a prostitute who is later killed, forced to be an outcast and ends up a victim of the urban jungle when she is later found dead. The book shows the stark contrast between life outside of the Bowery and inside of it, and the ways that its cruel and twisted corruption and kill those that are naive or different from the rest.
 * Maggie A Girl of The Streets**

=__**The Great Gatsby**__=

F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby, is one of the greatest pieces of American literature and reflects on American land and literature. It depicts the social high life of the American dream; the rich living their lives with wealth and power and bending social rules to live how they feel or want. The social gap between the rich and the poor, like East Egg, West Egg, and the Valley of Ashes all depict the geography of The Great Gatsby. West Egg and East Egg are sanctuary for the rich while the land that lays between the two is a breeding ground for immorality. This invites a sort of social wilderness where a person may require the skills to be able to separate the lies from the truth, and know people for who they really are. Nick finds difficulty of this, as he comes from the West, making it harder for him to adapt to the attitudes and lifestyles of the East, thereby depicting a sense of difference between the East coast and the West coast, and not just East Egg and West Egg. This also helps reflect on how Tom and Daisy, as well as Jordan act as they are all westerns living in the East and account for their actions and messes by saying that they aren't used to the customs of living in the East. Thereby giving them the excuse to do as they please then fall back on their 'unfitting' nature to Eastern lifestyles and money. The Great Gatsby also shows the class of wealth from within itself and how the rich use their wealth to reflect on American land. West Egg, a place for renters and summer homes, have the rich that make up who they really are in order to party or too fit in with the people that live there, like the people in East Egg who actually live in the East but still use their money and power to bend social rules and live how they please.
 * The Great Gatsby and American Land**

=__Koyaanisqatsi-Life out of balance__=

This movie shows a correlation between American Land and nature by contrasting the wilderness of real nature against the rise and fall cycle of society that has become an endless and stressful cycle of building and destroying and leaving behind the messes that humans have created. The created materials and commodities of modern life pull us away from our natural roots and keep us insulated in our modern iron and glass cities and our urban environments that dictate how we move and where we move in life. Koyaanisqatsi also reveals the mechanical organism that we have created by showing our the constant flow of cars in and out of cities fuels the technological era that we live in and fuels our cities to continue to grow while leaving the old and the broken behind as shown in the tenement houses and old projects around the cities being destroyed.