Walden; or, Life in the Woods

     Reading this excerpt by Henry David Thoreau was genuinely very interesting to me. I've grown up in such a fast paced society and I am now immersed in a technologically advanced world, so many of the concepts that Thoreau discussed were somewhat foreign. A large focus of this excerpt was on the house in the woods that Thoreau built himself, which is meaningful on a lot of levels. He initially decided to venture into the woods because he wanted to experience the true beauty of life and of the world, as well as solitude. On page 19 he 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." I think taking on  this task is courageous and admirable because it seems that few people experience what it is to really live. There is a part where Thoreau says that when he had to do his cooking outside and there was a storm he would sit under some boards and watch his loaf of bread bake. He would sit there for hours enjoying the moment, not reading or knitting, nothing to distract him. I have led such a fast paced life, it took me aback to think about simply sitting and doing nothing but thinking. It sounds like his time in the woods was life altering because it showed him many things that ,today, most humans never allow themselves to see.                              
    In "Walden; or, Life in the Woods" Thoreau also talks about college education. His theory maintains that college students are not getting an education by merely reading and talking about topics, they are lacking the one thing that truly teaches; experience. "I mean that they should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?" I have thought about this before in regards to college. I wonder if we should be paying all this money to prepare ourselves for the "real world" when we could be actually living in it. I think Thoreau has found the real meaning to life; simplicity. It is something that a lot of people currently have no appreciation for. 

The Summer Day

As someone who usually rolls her eyes when a poetry section is announced, I was surprised by the connection I felt to "The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver. This poem deals with many different topics, all of which revolve around life. The author raises questions of creation, death, prayer, and talks of how to best live her life. I like how she focuses on more than simply human life, but she asks who made the world, the swan, the black bear, and then concentrates on the grasshopper. Mary Oliver uses diction to personify the grasshopper on page 737, "who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her winds open, and floats away." That part made me feel as though the grasshopper was more than an insect, but something that has a life to fulfill as much as any human being. This poem just flows so naturally, it places the reader right next to Mary Oliver as she observes all of these things. I found myself wondering right along with her, because I too have so many unanswered questions. The most amazing part to me was the end lines, "Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" I couldn't help thinking that Mary Oliver was spot on when she called this life precious and wild, and that her wisdom probably comes from her connection to the world around her. 

Is This Kansas

    In her essay "Is This Kansas" Eula Biss examines the reality of college by telling her own experience as a professor at the University of Iowa. The author uses irony and diction to uncover the truth behind many aspects of college, especially the nature of the students and living in a college town. She opens her essay saying that the longer she stayed in Iowa City, the less she understood the rituals that took place. One quote I thought was particularly striking was on page 132, "I would often wonder, during my time in that town, why, of all the subcultures in the United States that are feared and hated, of all the subcultures that are singled out as morally reprehensible or un-American or criminal, student culture is so pardoned." 

    Eula Bliss used conversations with her students to expose the ugly truth about college students. In one of her class discussions some students agreed that it would be a good idea to send all of the gay people in America to one state where they could be together and send their children to schools that would be " separate but equal." This shocked me, to see such stupidity and ignorance in my peers. During her last year teaching at Iowa, Eula Bliss experienced a storm in Iowa City. A tornado touched down and destroyed a thousand houses, pulled down trees, traffic signals and power lines. "In the dark silence after the storm the streets filled with students carrying plastic cups of beer and digital cameras, wandering past the live wires and the gas leaks, and lighting cigarettes. Some students dragged a couch into the street and sat on it, while some others gathered around cases of beer in a parking lot." In the midst of a disaster, the students acted as if it was some kind of free entertainment. This essay shows that the younger generations are loosing respect for their environment as well as their education. Instead of focusing on school, they are drinking their way through college, as Eula Bliss points out. 

Refuge: An Unnatural History

    "Refuge: An Unnatural History" by Terry Tempest Williams is a wonderful example of the complex relationship between humans and  the environment they live in. The excerpt we read demonstrates how the environment can be intertwined with many aspects of our lives. The author does a great job of using different stories to show her deep connection to Utah, the place she has lived her whole life.                                                                       
    In the beginning of the excerpt Terry Tempest Williams focuses on the changing water level of Great Salt Lake due to climatic changes. Starting in September of 1982, Great Salt lake started to rise due to storms and continued to do so because of heavy snowfall and unseasonably cool weather. She explains that during the years that the water levels rose, people in Salt Lake City were anxious for many reasons. The airport would be underwater at a certain point, farmers were experiencing damaging flooding, and the Southern Pacific Railroad was working to keep tracks above ground. For Terry Tempest Williams, however, the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge flooding was her biggest concern.                                 
    After establishing the importance of the water levels, Terry Tempest Williams explains her relationship to the burrowing owls that she is worried about. On page 742 she says "there are those birds you gauge your life by. The burrowing owls five miles from the entrance to the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge are mine." One day the author and her friend went to the refuge to see if the Great Salt Lake had flooded the owls home and what happened was, to me, the most important part of the excerpt. During the car ride there, they talked about the loss of intimacy with men and nature. Terry Tempest Williams said she was not sure she had ever felt rage, only powerless and sadness. When they arrived they saw that the mound was no longer there, but instead a Canadian Goose Gun Club building. It was then that Terry Tempest Williams wrote "restraint is the steel partition between a rational mind and a violent one. I knew rage. It was fire in my stomach with no place to go." 
     It was the connection to her environment that allowed her to care about something so deeply. The mound being destroyed showed that the world we live in has stopped appreciating the beauty of the environment. I enjoyed reading this because I thought it was an interesting way to see the environment. The environment is more than just where we live, it is also apart of who we are.