using nature or living natural?

Cronan and leopold are people that, from what i can tell from their readings, think like minded right along with me. The thing we call wilderness is a man made fabrication, would the very grass and trees that lie in our backyards not still be there if our place of inhabitance was not on the same acre lot? Our impact on the world is no lesser walking on the blades of grass of urbanized land than of the uncivilized, what we consider wilderness. "For many Americans wilderness stands as the last remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease,

has not fully infected the earth. It is an island in the polluted sea of urban-industrial

modernity, the one place we can turn for escape from our own too-muchness. Seen

in this way, wilderness presents itself as the best antidote to our human selves, a ref-

uge we must somehow recover if we hope to save the planet. As Henry David Tho-

reau once famously declared, "In Wildness is the preservation

of the World."' But is it? The more one knows of its peculiar history,

the more one realizes that wilderness is not quite what it seems. Far from being the one place on earth that

stands apart from humanity, it is quite profoundly a human creation-indeed, the

creation of very particular human cultures at very particular moments in human

history. It is not a pristine sanctuary where the last remnant of an untouched, endan-

gered, but still transcendent nature can for at least a little while longer be encoun-

tered without the contaminating taint of civilization. Instead, it is a product of that

civilization, and could hardly be contaminated by the very stuff of which it is made.

Wilderness hides its unnaturalness behind a mask that is all the more beguiling because it seems so natural.

As we gaze into the mirror it holds up for us, we too easily imagine that what we behold is Nature when in fact we see the reflection of our own

unexamined longings and desires. For this reason, we mistake ourselves when we suppose that

wilderness can be the solution to our culture's problematic relationships with the nonhuman world, for

wilderness is itself no small part of the problem." (Cronan) Sorry for the long quote but such an example of the identity of wilderness is impossible to be left unspoken.

"Individual thinkers since the days of Ezekiel and Isaiah have asserted that the despoliation of land is not only inexpedient but wrong. Society however, has not yet affirmed their belief. I regard the present conservation movement as the embryo of such an affirmation." (leopold land ethic) Leopold is an outspoken person that knows the dangers of how we function no more than you and I, but is unafraid to voice the lack of aid in the deceleration of the decomposition of what we deem natural. Leopold later goes on to present the idea that we need to live off what the land provides us not what we deem the land is indebted to give us. His ideas suggest that we should let the natural succession of wilderness take its path as we take ours and when our paths cross, we should live with the mindset not to conquer what we can not understand. "Thinking like a mountain" (Leopold)

With that said I looked for a service project that was not a common run of the mill task. I decided to show the community around me that the very things they use that are acquired from new resources can be acquired from the land without detriment. I with the aid of my roommate Bryson went to our churches property to be built on in the near future, that is currently wooded, to harvest it of its natural and dead but useful resources. Bryson and I spent a day gathering and chopping up lain trees to be turned into useful fire wood to be given to the community and the people of the church. It was a hard task but I convinced Bryson to do this with me without the aid of a chain or a powered saw. Bryson and I spent the day working hard but were able to realize the beautiful things the wilderness "next door" has to offer. This realization came about because while working Bryson and I made conversation about how wilderness is not a place of intangibility but the idea of letting natural things take its own order.

From this project I learned that thinking like a mountain is not a hard task but a necessary mindset. People will go on to live life but if we slow our degradation in any aspect it would make the world of a difference!

i have a written note by the assosiate pastor of the church describing my project and will bring it to school tom... if your not there i will bring it on thurs for the final