Starhawk's Our Place In Nature

Throughout history, humans have had a strong reliance on nature and their environment. As far back as historians can look, people have depended on elements of nature for their survival. In the past few decades, the increased advancement of technology has led to an unfortunate division between humans and nature, and this lack of respect is becoming a flaw in current day society. In Last Child in the Woods, Louv criticizes modern culture by arguing that humans increasing reliance on technology has led to their decreasing connection with nature through the use of relevant anecdotes, rhetorical questions and powerful imagery to appeal to ethos.

‘The sheer popularity’ of stimulating nature or using nature as ad space ‘demands that we acknowledge, even respect, their cultural importance,’ suggests Richtel. Culturally important, yes. But the logical extension of synthetic nature is the irrelevance of ‘true’ nature— the certainty that it’s not even worth looking at. (Louv lines 9-19)

Despite his inexperience at living off the land, Chris Mccandless managed to survive in the Alaskan wilderness for a time. His adventures across the United States contributed to honing his skills at surviving with inadequate supplies, little money, and few essential tools. Unfortunately This was not enough, and his inexperience on the finer points of outdoor living and general knowledge of particular subjects proved to create more challenges, and finally this inexperience killed him. Particularly, with his successful kill of a moose we see a perfect example of his ignorance, “Then on June 9, he bagged the biggest prize of all: “MOOSE!” (166.) His tendency to brashly tackle everything head on with will and determination ultimately led to his demise, “Overjoyed, the proud hunter took a photograph of himself kneeling over his trophy, rifle triumphantly overhead, his features distorted in a rictus of ecstasy and amazement.” (166.)

The interconnection between the human race and nature is complex, and can be interpreted an infinite amount of ways. Mark Jenkins’ ‘King of the Dirtbags’ and Wendell Berry’s ‘An Entrance to the Woods’ are both very similar in the ways they represent philosophical ideas regarding the relationship between the modern man and nature. Both literary pieces discuss the benefits of simplicity, and explain how mankind has a tendency to overcomplicate much of what they develop. The two authors also share the idea in their writings that the ability to adapt to different environments is a crucial trait in evolution and progression as a society. Another major concept that is prevalent in both of the author’s pieces is that man must be able to reach beyond his comfort zone to understand nature’s consistency throughout time.

Bryant writes, “Go forth, under the open sky, and list / To Nature’s teaching, while from all around‒ / Earth and her waters, and the depths of air‒ / Comes a still voice” (14-17). This quote refers back to the basic belief of the goodness of the natural world in this: while one has their highs and lows of life, nature will always be there to provide a “still voice.” At the same time, it motivates the reader to go beyond his or her own senses. Bryan also expresses the belief that all nature is important through lines 29-30 when he says that “The oak / Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.” Before these lines, the author elaborated on the being of a corpse in the ground, but he brings back its contribution to the rest of nature with this

“The most practical and the most feasible solution offered, and the one on which this paper will center, involves the schoolyard. The schoolyard habitat movement, which promotes the “greening” of school grounds, is quickly gaining international recognition and legitimacy.” This quote touches on the fact that currently our schools need to “greened” meaning nature needs to be implemented not on the sidelines of fields but rather right in the center for kids to explore. There are many studied showing how children’s connection with nature at a young age helps them have a strong connection with nature along with having better health and lesser chances of depression. There are many organizations such as the National Wildlife Federation, Council for Environmental Education, American Forest Foundation, Britain-based Learning through Landscapes, Canadian-based Evergreen, and Swedish-based Skolans Uterum, that have all expresses interest in helping out with this cause. A theory that is very interesting that relates to this issue is a theory by Edward Wilson from Harvard. He had a theory that he named biophilia. Basically what this theory was about was that all people are simply drawn to nature by their very instinct. This quote has a lot of truth to it. Almost all

They are alive poems” (15-16). The plants and animals have evolved and developed to fill specific roles and niches on the earth. People should not just use the plants and animals without regard for their place on the earth; instead, people should study the plants and the animals, learn from them, and in exchange, protect them from misuse, over-use, or destruction. This is important because “all is in motion, is growing, is you” (23), the speaker tells the listener. If the listener cannot learn from the plants and the animals, cannot protect the earth, or cannot relate to her fellow human, the fragile relationship between the environment and humanity is disrupted, and the growing stops. Without the growth, humanity will soon cease to be, because that growth is what makes humanity what it is, it is what provides the catalyst for people to think, to speak, to advance.

Humans are born from and return to earth at death; human beings and nature are bound up each other. Yet, the technological modern world has shaped humans to be oblivious of nature and the ethnocentrism has positioned human beings above all other things. Nature has become resources for people and nothing more than that. David Abram, the author of the Ecology of magic, travels into the wild, traditional land in search of the relation between magic and nature; the meaning nature holds in the traditional cultures. Abram intends to communicate his realization of the magical awareness of the countless nonhuman entities and the necessity of the balance between the human communities and the nature to the readers, hoping the Western technologized

Chris McCandless probably wasn’t the first to think, “When you want something in life, you just gotta reach out and grab it.” In the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer and the short story “Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, they both have the belief that by living off of nature and preserving it, the closer one will come to understanding the nature of nature.

"The earth's vegetation is part of a web of life in which there are intimate and essential relations between plants and animals. Sometimes we have no choice but to disturb these relationships, but we should do so thoughtfully, with full awareness that what we do may have consequences remote in time and place" (Carson 64).

Nature is the playground for every human. It is essential that we include nature in our lives; it keeps us on our correct path. However, if we dismiss ourselves from nature, we begin to stray from our correct path. We become engulfed in the distractions from the modern world . The only approach to appropriate this quandary is to break our pervicacious ways and return to peaceful serenity known as nature.

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.

In Nature & Landscape: An Introduction to Environmental Aesthetics, Allen Carlson proposes that scientific knowledge can enhance our aesthetic appreciation of the natural world. He draws a connection between technical know-how used in the context of natural landscapes and art history or criticism in the context of conventional art forms. In either case, the viewer would find relatively more meaningful experiences of aesthetic appreciation than if one looked at a painting or landscape without any prior knowledge about it. Carlson endorses this point within his larger Natural Environmental Model, which asserts that though the environment is not entirely of our creation, it does not mean that we have to approach it without any prior understanding.

Throughout today’s society there are several different cultural perspectives which form theoretical and practical understandings of natural environments, creating various human-nature relationship types. In this essay, I will describe and evaluate different ways of knowing nature and the impact of these views on human-nature relationships. From this, I will then explore my own human-nature relationship and reflect on how my personal experiences, beliefs and values has led me to this view, whilst highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each and reflecting upon Martin’s (1996) continuum.

As I left behind the somber forest, I now recognized an appreciation for nature that I did not realize I had. I now knew there was more to nature than just trees and animals, but also I found the