While reading different essays addressing the topic of nature, I came to the conclusion that they all shared the idea that being outside can make an impact in everyone no matter if you believe you only belong in a city or forest because it can bring you serenity and show you all the amazing things you wouldn't be able to see anywhere else. In Wendell Berry’s essay “An Entrance to the Woods,” he states that people can use the quiet of the woods to forget all their problems. Berry wrote “One is that, though I am here in body, my mind and my nerves too are not yet altogether here. We seem to grant to our high-speed roads and our airlines the rather thoughtless assumption that people can change places as rapidly as their bodies can be transported.” Nature has a way to transport ones mind and spirit elsewhere while the body is left behind on earth as we travel deep into thought. Adding on to that idea, the essay “A City Person Encountering Nature” by Maxine Hong Kingston the author explains that nature is a giver of peace and patience with its slow cycles that may frustrate people, but help keep a sane mind. Society is fast paced, making everyone feel that they need to keep the same pace in order to get things done, but we don't realize that although our bodies are moving and pushing, our minds are exhausted and cannot keep up with the fast pace. Kingston wrote “Preferring the city myself, I can better discern natural phenomena when books point them out; I also need to verify
Since the beginning of time, man and nature have coexisted with one another. Before civilizations began and industrialization spread, all that was in the world was nature and man. Both Edward Abbey and Ralph Waldo Emerson, viewed nature as something which made us complete as a person. Abbey claims nature both “bore us and sustains us”. They believe we owe everything to nature. Nature has provided us opportunities to grow and prosper as an individual, yet what Abbey and Emerson failed to recognize is the importance of community. Both men believed one could truly understand himself by escaping society and pursuing the serenity of nature. This theory has its faults, for while moments of isolation may be beneficial in renewing one’s self, other
In Walden (Where I Lived & What I Lived For), Thoreau travels to a place not far from the rest of the world, but to him he “did not feel crowded or confined in the least. There was pasture enough for my imagination” (Walden 66). By escaping the real world he is able to come to terms that everyday was a new adventure. “Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself” (Walden 67). Thoreau connects to nature by spending his time in the woods to live deliberately and to learn what nature had to teach us or offer us. “We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep” (Walden 68). Thoreau says that it's doesn't take extreme measures or far distances to connect yourself to nature and escape the real world. Letting nature teach you what they have to offer can allow life to slow down and really enjoy what life has to
In his book, The Nature Principle, Richard Louv talks about how nature is a natural resource to many of the problems we as humans are facing today, if we would just go outside and take advantage of it. Louv talks about how we (as American’s) have increased our use of technology vastly in the last ten years. While this is not comply bad, it does have negative effects on our physical, emotional and spiritual being if not kept in check. Louv goes on to share that, “the more high tech we become, the more nature we need” (Louv, 2011). Think about a time you have sat in your office for hours on end, working on your computer, at last lunch time came and you went outside for just five minutes because you forgot something in your car. In just those few minutes of going outside, you might have noticed a slight increase in your happiness level. Can you then venture to understand how this could be applied to children, or even increased with taking more time to enjoy nature? Richard Louv challenges his readers to not only be in nature, but to live with nature (Louv, 2011) .
Nature is the accessible feature that brings an individual back to his center of life.
The beautiful blossoms that bloom in Californian spring, the summer daisies alongside the cooling lake, long after the summer the trees have lost their leaves entering autumn to fresh white snow out in the mountains. Nature is able to show us its true beauty without any falseness and modifications. After all, is it not ironic how people go to museums to look at paintings of colorful flowers, green hills, and clear water streams; those are beauties that can easily be observed in real life outside of the urban environment which are surrounded by them, or how people buy recordings of the calming sounds of nature, similar to what you would listen to at night in the woods or smell nature aromas of the candles. What we are doing is trying to mislead our minds and pretend to think that we are in the woods but are instead cornered inside our small, well-furnished, and full -with-technology apartment.
Thoreau wished to open the minds of many revealing the importance of nature “Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails” (Thoreau II). In the quote, Thoreau discusses how he learned to live deliberately in nature encouraging other members of society to do the same. He has learned that it can lead to harmonization with oneself, to
Nature in its tranquility provides a calming sensation away from the buzzing city life. The ability
> This was an important point made in the article as it places emphasis on how interaction with the environment can increase a person’s overall well-being: physical and mental. Many clinicians that I know will communicate to their clients the importance of engaging in nature to reduce depressive symptoms; they communicate that mental grounding and nature activities will improve self-confidence and provide clients with a sense of altruism and purpose.
Through removal and technology, humans have started to become isolated from the wilderness and the nature around them. This view distinctly contrasts with Thoreau’s perspective. “Though he [Thoreau] never put humans on the same moral level as animals or trees, for example, he does see them all linked as the expression of Spirit, which may only be described in terms of natural laws and unified fluid processes. The self is both humbled and empowered in its cosmic perspective,” states Ann Woodlief. The technologies that distract and consume us, and separate us from the natural world are apparent. Many people and children ins cities have seen little to no natural-grown things such as grass and trees. Even these things are often domesticated and tamed. Many people who have never been to a National Park or gone hiking through the wilderness do not understand its unruly, unforgiving, wild nature. These aspects, thought terrifying to many, are much of why the wilderness is so beautiful and striking to the human heart. “Thoreau builds a critique of American culture upon his conviction that ‘the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality,’” pronounces Rick Furtak, quoting Thoreau’s Life
Children have to be raised and taught to love and grow from hardships of life that will always come through in our world. Nature can show that there is still hope after war and loss. As a rainbow comes out after a storm. Lessons that can be learned from nature are more valuable. As Thoreau says, “ I went to the woods because i wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if i could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” Thoreau lives through simplicity and through his own doctrines that nature and natural life is the most educational and the only lifestyle needed to survive in this world. He says that he went to the woods to discover what he had not yet lived referencing that there is more to life than what society puts out there. There is a deeper life and deeper meaning than what most people live. Thoreau gives many reasons he chose to live in the woods to find a deeper meaning. He says, “ I wanted to live deep and suck out all of the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life..” Our society can become very overwhelming and in those moments it's important to take some solitude and realize what life is really about. Nature allows us to learn and take in every moment at our own pace. Nature isn’t a test score judging how “smart” or “decent” we
For many people, the word punk brings to mind similar images of grungy looking teenagers who are wearing dark, ripped clothing held together with safety pins and chains which displays some sort of offensive symbol or saying. They are probably also wearing a leather jacket and Doc Martens, sporting an unconventional hairstyle such as a brightly colored Mohawk or spikes, and listening to loud music. For the most part, the images people think of as associated with the word punk are a pretty accurate representation of how people who were part of the punk movement looked. Though most people can describe what punks are supposed to look like, most cannot explain the purpose of the anti-fashion trend that most punks followed.
In American Literature many authors write about nature and how nature affects man's lives. In life, nature is an important part of people. Many people live, work, or partake in revelry in nature. Nature has received attention from authors spanning several centuries. Their attitudes vary over time and also reflect the different outlooks of the authors who chose to discuss this important historical movement. A further examination of this movement, reveals prevalence of nature's influence on man and how it affects their lives.
What is an urban revolution? Why is it important for cities to have one? What are that factors that cause these revolutions? In the articles The Urban Revolution by V.Gordon Childe, The Right to The City by David Harvey and lastly, What Type of Public Transit for What Type of Public? by Kafui A. Attoh, displays the different ways the residents in a city react to the social inequality and human rights.
The urban environment that I live in is my nature. My nature is filled with birds, cats, grass, and flowers. It may not be as abundant with mother nature’s resources compared to most places, but it still provides me with an experience of nature. Nature is not limited to just what we see anymore. However, you must use your senses to truly achieve the full experience of nature. In nature, you must smell the wonderful odors from the flowers, you should use your sight and observe the natural beauty of the ever-changing sky, touch the rough and jagged bark of the trees, and hear the spectacular songs of the birds that fly above you.
In this book Lynch defines that performance of the city can be measured by reference to its spatial form. But the quality of a place is depends upon combined effect of place and the society which occupies that place. Here Lynch sets up new dimensions for performance in his own criteria. Author also expresses his approach on size of the city, conservation and growth, planning practices and utopian models. The dimensions which are demonstrated in this book may not be fully perfect but of course they combine all social values as well as physical values. Lynch believed that these described dimensions must cover all features of all forms of the settlements and all these dimensions should be usable where values are different.