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__**How We View Nature**__

**//What nature means to me://**
Nature is regarded in today's society as essential and precious, because nature that is taken care of well shows that the society is well put together. Nature plays a massive role in our lives because it produces the air th at we breathe and it is very inspiring to artists. We define nature, or wilderness, as something that is not man made. This nowadays is not much anymore, because in these days just about everything is man made. This is very upsetting when we think about it, because everthing in todays life is made by man. This is not how God intended it to be. Everything should have just been left the way that it was. If human beings did not make things to alter with the earth, nature would be perfect. As we can tell nowadays, nature almost nowhere on earth is perfect, this is a result of our own stupidity. I myself truly believe that nature now should not even be called nature, and we should start treating the earth with respect so that one day our kids will live in just as good of an environment as we did It is not fair for our children, and even their children to live in a world that they describe nature by urban areas. That is not right for our children, and we should stop it immediately.

**//How do we treat the environment?//**
We as human beings treat the environment very poorly. The environment is very good to us, it gives us clothing, food, shelter, things to read, and many other very useful things. In return, we should be treating the environment in the highest regard, and also with much more respect than we are treating it now. If you were just to type in environment on Google, you would find many, many articles about how we treat the environment, is not only affecting our lives, but also how it will affect our children's lives, and even their children's lives. Just about everything we do as human beings, is in some way affecting the environment. We do this without even realizing that we do it. It's things such as Dad takes his car to work, and Mom takes the children to school. This may not seem like much, but it really is horrible for the environment. It would be much better if the Mom would drop off the Dad at work, and then take the children to school. This would save much pollution going into the atmosphere, and every little bit helps. The environment is so great to us, gives us as humans so many leisures, the least we could do is in return, try and waste as least we can, and carpool everyday. If every single person just did that little bit more, then everything would be much better off for everybody.

==**//Using the two initial texts, explain how our society views and should view/use/treat nature and wilderness. Citing examples from the two texts create a piece that states where we are today with our understanding of nature and it’s use and influence on our lives. Take from the many things we discussed to illuminate your point.//**== Our society views nature as something that is endless, or ongoing forever. Nature is very significant to us, and we take it as too much of a joke, because we only have one chance to not ruin it, and so far that is not working out too well. It is a necessity for our well being as humans. Without it, this would be a crazy world. In the two texts that we read in our Norton's book, "The Encounters with the Archdruid" and "The Idea of a Garden", these situations fold out in both. In the Encounters with the Archdruid, the two main characters, which are Dominy and Brower, they each want to do something different with nature. Dominy is for building dams, whereas Brower is completley against this. Neither opinion is wrong, but I believe that Browers opinion is much smarter for keeping nature the way it is supposed to be. Not that this means that Dominy is wrong, but maybe if they found a midpoint between buliding a dam and not building a dam, like maybe building a small dam. Also in The Idea of a Garden, in a small town, a huge storm blows through and completley destroys all of the beautiful nature in the town. This is very devasting for the little town because they base just about everything around their beautiful environment. The arguement happens when the Nature Conservatory comes along and fight over what to do about the disaster. The one option is to let the environment/nature grow back and be all natural, whereas the other idea is to plant artificial trees so that the environment grows back faster. This is a very tough decision but in the end the right idea would be too let the environment grow back by itself so that it is all natural. The main concern though for many groups is that humans only care about their own benefit, and make decisions around themselves to better their own future.

**//From the three creation stories' point of view, what is the position of nature in our life?//**
The creation stories form Genesis, Pima, and Iroquois are all unique in their own way. Each one has its own culture and what it believes nature and the environment is. In Genesis, God talks about how we should take advantage of what he gave us on earth, we should use it to our advantage. Every single person has their own interpretation of this. Many westerners believe that this means that they should use it for only the good of them, and use all of it because that is why it is there. In Pima's creation story, God is a much different figure, it even says he made many mistakes when making humans. Also it shows us that God even said that if we change things too much, we will destroy ourselves. This is very true because as of right now that is exactly what humans are doing, we are destroying our own planet, or what we like to call home. The Iroquois story is about the earth that is made up of a female spirit, indicating the maternal society of Iroquois, and the twin brothers created everything on earth. The good spirit created useful species and the bad spirit created barriers for humans. The distinction between good and bad is whether we can use it or not. In the end the good triumphs, but the bad does not disappear but hides as a evil spirit, indicating the potential of evil rising again to power and taking away the natural resources. All three of these creation stories were both good and bad. They all had a sense of God saying not too take things too far, but they each had a flaw of God also saying it is there so therefore it must be used. Each one can be interpreted differently by each individual, which can be both good and bad in each way.



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Cotton Mather:
Cotton Mather was a puritan who attended Harvard College at the age of twelve and graduated in 1678. He was the eldest son of Increase Mather and the grandson of Richard Mather and John Cotton. Like Benjamin Franklin, Mather found great satisfaction in doing good works and organized societies for building churches, supported schools for the children of slaves, and worked to establish funds for indigent clergy. He believes that wilderness or nature, it something of the devil. He believes that everything out there that we do not about about is pure evil caused by the devil. Part of the reason why he thinks like this is because he is a Puritan but also a big part of why he thinks like this is because of the salem witch trials. He played a role in this, and he believed that people that went into the unknown became evil, or in this situation, became witches. Also Puritans are huge followers of God, and they believe that the devil is very evil, and he is out to get all of them. Therefore they believe that nature is not a good thing.

Jefferson's notes on Virginia:
When I read jefferson's notes on Virginia, I read Query # 1 and Query #3. Query number one was about the boundaries of Virginia. Jefferson wnt into great detail about the boundaries of Virginia. And rightly so because it is very important for everyone back then to have none where exactly land was no longer the state of Virginia. After he deeply describes every single boundary, he says "These boundaries include an area somewhat triangular, of 121525 square miles, whereof 79650 lie westward of the Allegany mountains, and 57034 westward of the meridian of the mouth of the Great Kanhaway. This state is therefore one third larger than the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, which are reckoned at 88357 square miles." This shows us just how big Virginia was back in those days.

Query number three was about Sea Ports. This was a really short entry by Thomas Jefferson. mainly all he says is "Having no ports but our rivers and creeks, this Query has been answered under the preceding one." Which he is telling us that there are really no main sea ports, and so therefore the only places that can be used for seaports are rivers or damns, etc.

Irving- Rip and The Legend of Scooby Doo
Rip Van Winkle is a story written by Washington Irving. Rip lives in a village with his kids and wife.But he has a huge problem, his problem is that he is always willing to do things for other people. Som people think that this is a good thing, but too much of it is a bad thing because then you will have nothing for yourself at the end of the day. In the text it tells us about he never had a stable enough job to support his family and this is obviously a bad thing. He never has a stable enough job to really support his family, his kids always have to wear old, baggy, and ripped up clothing. Also they never had great meals because there was no money to get that good type of food. One day, Rip went into the woods and came across a knome who offered him a strong liquor. He drank the liquor and fell asleep for twenty years, when he awoke, he woke up to a foot long beard, and his dog Wolf had left him.

In Scooby Doo's and the Legend of the Sleep Hollow, Scooby and the gang are at a halloween party in a mansion. This mansion just happens to be haunted by The Headless Horseman. The Headless Horseman is roaming around the grounds of the mansion looking for his head that he lost during the revolutionary war when his head got taken off by a cannon ball. He goes around every night looking for a head to replace his head that he had lost many years ago. The gang wants to find out wether there is actually a Headless Horseman or if someones behind this mystery.



**Crevecoeur: Letters From an American Farmer**
Letters from an American Farmer was published by Jean de Crevecoeur in 1782, it was written before the American Revolution. Crevecoeur's main focus in his book is how America is a free society. He is impressed with the way everyone is allowed to have their own religion, and how there aren't hundreds of rules and laws telling people what they can and cannot do.It is amazing how we went from a small colony in Jamestown in 1613 to almost 2.8 million people living in the United States in 1780. Crevecoeur also talks about how many different backgrounds can live together peacefully, people from all over Europe migrated to the colonies, and almost all of them prospered. He writes very highly of the colonies, and is impressed by how the use of nature helps the colonies prosper and become a successful nation. I really enjoyed reading this because we have also been talking about the colonies in History, and so it was pretty cool to find out why the colonies were so successful back in those days. They used nature to their advantage because they used all the plants and things and made products out of them and sold them for money such as tobacco and food.

**Emerson: Nature Essays**
Ralph Waldo Emerson was a very successful poetry/short story writer. His first essay called "Nature" was published anonymously. It did not do very well, it only sold 500 copies at the time, but his ideas in the essay were very imaginative and creative and well thought out. He talks about how the foundation of transcendentalism, a belief system that espouses a non-traditional appreciation of nature. Just about everyone had been raised believing that Nature was created by God, or in the Native Americans case, the Pima creation story. He believes the only way we can really understand nature is to study it. He thought that instead of just seeing a plant or something in nature, and immediately thinking it was made by God, we should at least experiment with it and see if it isn't something that could have been made by weather or nature itself. He states in his essay, "First, the simple perception of natural forms is a delight," and, "There is still another aspect under which the beauty of the world may be viewed, namely, as it becomes an object of the intellect." (6th ED 490) These two quotes are saying that viewing nature is not something we should view lightly. We should enjoy the beauty of Nature for what it really is, and not just something God created.



**Benjamin Franklin: "Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America"**
Benjamin Franklin starts of his passage with a controversial line, "Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs." Franklin does not see the Native Americans as savages, he just has not seen anything different such as their customs, beliefs, and way of life. These are all much different from how the colonies like,they do almost everything differently. He says that "there are no cultures where at least some people are nice, and at least some are rude." (6th ED Franklin). He then writes that it is not good to call another group or culture "savages," because it is false generalization, which is funny because he started off by calling the native americans savages. He thinks that even though they are different, we should still respect them because they have just been brought up differently, all people are equal. They have a different system of living than we do, for example He says that there are no prison systems, and the men who are the smartest are chosen to make speeches, the women must memorize these speeches, then pass them on to future generations. This is obviously very different then the colonies ways because they just write everything down so that it can be remembered later, and also the colonies have prisons. Even though it is different than our culture, it is in some ways more civil because there is no fighting, and everyone lives in peace. Franklin says that the savages are just as civil as other cultures and we should not view ourselves as better than them. The British did not like the Native Americans, and Franklin did not want the same attitude from the Colonies towards the Native Americans. He wanted them to be different than the British, because they were not the same, the colonies were more acceptive of different cultures and people.



Nature in Huckleberry Finn:
Nature plays a huge role in Huckleberry Finn. One of the biggest examples of nature playing a role in this story is that Huck and Jim heavily rely on the Mississippi River. They rely heavily on the river because they are trying to escape to the south for their freedom. At times the Mississippi is an advantage for Huck and Jim, and at other times it is a disadvantage to them. Also they really need nature because they both eat all the food they can get in the nature such as fruits and things. Besides that they use the canoe and other materials which is made out of wood and other scraps. Nature could also be very harmful to Huck and Jim because in one of the earlier chapters, there is so much fog that Huck and Jim lose each other and do not meet up until a long while after. This could have potentially ended up a lot worse because they could have lost each other forever and had to do everything alone. Earlier in the story we read that Huck is not the biggest fan of society, he prefers to be outside in nature doing something. He did not like being at school or at home; he overall just prefers the outdoors. Therefore nature plays a huge role in Huckleberry Finn and nature is the one of the main reasons why Huck and Jim survive. It would be impossible for either of them to survive without these main things in nature. They need food, shelter, and water in order to survive and escape to the south. All these things that Huck and Jim use for survival is all part of nature which is necessary for both of them. Also I think that Huck enjoyed being free and that is part of the reason why he ran away. He liked just being alone and being able to think and he was never able or allowed to do that. It is necessary for all children to do what they want and Huck was not allowed to this so he decided to run away which is a very smart idea, it is something that I myself would have done if I was in Hucks situation. Overall nature is a big contributor in this novel and I think it will continue to play a huge role in the rest of the novel.

Urban Wilderness
The urban wilderness in this book makes it hard for Maggie. The society does not have morals or they do not know what is right from wrong, which is essential for a community to keep growing and improving. I believe that the author, whose name is Stephen Crane, is talking about how his hometown, which is New York, was when he was growing up in it. We can tell from the way that he talks about Maggie and her life that New York back in his day was very much not a great place to be. It had crime, corruption, and overall it just was not a safe and comfortable place to live. As this story progresses, the two main characters which are Jimmie and Maggie obviously get older. As they get older Jimmies life is taking a turn for the worst. He starts to believe that everyone in the world hates him. He then becomes a driver and brings food to different stores and such. One thing that adds on to the urban wilderness is that Jimmie is a very careless driver so he often gets really close to hitting a pedestrian or knocking things on streets over. Maggie has a very tough life surviving with her mother that is always drunk. But then one day she meets this man named Pete, and she thinks that he could be her ticket to a better life. But then one day Pete just all of a sudden leaves her for another women. After this happens Maggie is in shock and does not know what to do. She has no other option but to start living off the streets and this is horrible. She pretty much does everything that a homeless person does everyday. This is truly experiencing true urban wilderness. She has to find food, shelter, water and many more things in order to survive on the streets. The last time we hear of Maggie is when she was walking on the riverbank and she is being followed by a fat disgusting homeless man. It is safe to assume that she was probably raped and killed that night. All of this fits into the bigger picture of wilderness, becasue both in nature wilderness and urban wilderness, the two are very similar. For animals it may be hard to survive nature wilderness, but for us human beings it is much more difficult to survive urban wilderness.