Environmental Literature: February 25th

“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.” –Terry Tempest Williams
The land is covered in ice and snow again. It was sunny and nice for a bit there and then bam. In a matter of a couple hours we went from seeing grass to several feet of snow. So very tired of this. Would be nice if Mother Nature would just make up her mind already! I wish I had more to say about the land I am observing but all I really have to say is that it is not changing. The critters are hiding and it is covered in snow.

This past week we read a couple stories involving the pollution of our land and the chemicals we pour into our food. We also watched Food Inc. which I had never watched before but I do have the book “Fast Food Nation” which I believe is what the movie is based from. I find our production of food fascinating and disgusting. I used to be a vegetarian for a spell there when I was younger due to the way we treat the animals we use for food. I know there is a large debate on why it should matter how we treat an animal that we raise specifically for food, but I still stand by the idea that every living being should be treated with respect. I wasn’t raised in a household that thanked god for our food before meals, however I feel like we should recognize the sacrifice the animals make for us. Might sound a bit crazy of me, but that’s the way I see it. I feel like we have such disconnect from what we eat and the process in which it comes to our table that it’s rather scary.

When we raised meat chickens and turkeys it was gross the way we have manufactured their genes. We have changed the way a chicken grows and its overall health to suit us. I would complain to my mother that it was horrible for us to send these chickens to the butcher, but the reality was that our society has changed the formation of the chicken to the point where they could not survive much longer. The chicks you are able to buy that are not regular egg layers have had their genes manipulated. They grow so fast and so big that their poor bodies could not even keep up with them. By the end they could barely stand and just looked miserable. Why do we find it alright for scientist to manipulate the genes of an animal in this way? I think in part it is not that we find this ethical at all, but we do not understand the way we manufacture our food. We do not think about where our food came from or how it was treated or maltreated. It is a product we buy at a store for a set price with a pretty label on it. By the time it reaches us it is no longer the animal it started at in our minds.

We only raised poultry for a couple seasons before we stopped but when my mother would have me deliver a bird to someone I would tell them I was there to drop off Snowball or Fluffy and no matter who it was they would get a sad look on their face. It amused me because once I put a name to the bird the realization that it was in fact an animal came across their face as if they did not know it before. Sometimes it made me wonder if they knew where those eggs I was also delivering came from!

I find it interesting how little we know about what we put into our bodies. Such as how we have apples and tomatoes year round. Why do we not think about the fact that it is not normal for us to have these year round? There is a season for everything, but we no longer eat by season. We are now able to manufacture food how we want, when we want, but should we? Much like most ‘advantages’ in technology we have always asked if we could and never seem to ask if we should.

“No single ideology can ever heal the wounds of this world” -Paul Hawken

Snow! with a side of snow...

Environmental Literature: February 18th

“We differ from other creatures, partly, in our susceptibility to monstrosity.” –Wendell Berry

I can see grass this week. I know, amazing! The snow has now melted. I hope it will stay away, but I have my doubts. This past weekend, my baby brother Joe and my friend Ron went out and played in the snow. The sun was shining bright and therefore it was relatively warm out, on the other hand the snow was still piled high. It was pretty much perfect weather for playing in the snow. Joe asked if he could go out and play in the snow and I said to go for it. Ron and I ended up following him out to play too. I am a wimp though so I mainly took photos. Joe and Ron tried carving a cave into a big pile of snow but it was rock hard so it ended up with them throwing snow balls at each other. Not sure which one of them had the advantage. Little Joe was able to climb on top of the snow piles and throw snow down on Ron. However, Ron was able to take shovels full of snow and toss them on Joe’s head… It was great fun to watch and my brother had a ball!

I remember those days where I would see a pile of snow or dirt and then want to jump in it and play. I wonder why we lose that. Or does everyone? I used to spend as much time as humanly possible by the river behind our home. My friends and I would dig in the mud for the clay and get filthy but have something that sort of resembled a bowl by the end. We would sit there with sticks over the water with sting on the end fishing, even though we knew there was no way a fish would bite a string with no hook or bate. We would wade through the creek and rivers and make little make-shift houses with old sheets and pretend to live there. We created our own world in those woods. We created a simple world, one that consisted of just us kids, the woods, the water and the animals. Those days playing in the woods are some of the happiest of my childhood. I do not know how or when I lost the ability to play that way. I do remember coming back to visit my old friends a couple summers after leaving that home and they wanted to go play in the creek again. We went out to play and something had changed. I went from wanting to dive into the filth of the natural world to becoming afraid of it. They teased me, of course, but I could not help my fear.

I wonder when that transition occurred to make me fear the outdoors that was once a magical world to me. I see it with my brothers. Sam sees the outdoors as an uncomfortable place whereas Joe sees it as a place of adventure and happiness. Does a lot of it have to do with our age or our individual personality? Maybe part of it is that we are taught to fear the ‘wild’. To this day I am terrified of snakes, even ones I know are completely harmless and I know this fear comes from our society teaching us to fear them. I still wonder why my attitude towards nature seemed to change so dramatically from childhood to now.

“But learning is inevitable if one is open to the risk of making mistakes.”
- Carl Anthony and Renée Soule

Environmental Literature: February 11th

“The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.”- William Coffin

It is still snowy. All this snow is depressing and monotonous. It makes my life feel like my life is depressing and monotonous. I love snow, the first week. I am completely over it now. I feel everything, even weather is best in moderation. If only we lived in Camelot! I love the idea of a legal limit to the amount of snow and being able to control the weather like that. (I am now singing that song in my head.) I wonder how much the weather and winter really affects our moods and feelings. I know after awhile the cold and snow seem to drain me. The birds disappear in the winter and the trees look dead, even the people appear to hide in the winter. Winter is a lonely time of year.

I enjoyed the reading this week by Wendell Berry The Making of a Marginal Farm. It reminded me of the family farm. Particularly the line “To attempt to make a living from such land is to impose a severe strain on land and people alike.” The farm was a stressful place for our family and a cause for many arguments and heartache. I try to remember mainly the happy parts of it, but there were a lot of sad parts too. A farm is a lot of work! It is a lot of stress! There is also a bunch of death and loss in farm life that people do not think about which can also get to you. It would be great if the old movies and television shows were the real case of farm life, but it is not like that. If one thing is going right then something else seems to go wrong, much like the rest of life.

I honestly have nothing happy to speak of today and I guess that is alright since the world is not always a happy place, but I feel as if I have said all I should for the day.

“The true remedy for mistakes is to keep from making them.” –Wendell Berry

Environmental Literature: February 4th

“Everything we receive from nature comes to us as a gift”- Richard Nelson

I see snow. No matter where I look all I see is snow right now. Nature decided we should take a break from the hustle and bustle of our lives for a few days this week. Although my cats loved having me home for so long, I can’t honestly say I enjoyed it. I hated having my routine disrupted. Plus I worried about my mom.

She lives in Southern Indiana on sixty acres in the middle of nowhere, literally the middle of nowhere. The first time I went down to visit her and her husband after they moved there they had to have me follow them back to where they live from the closest gas station twenty minutes from them. The roads are not well marked, if they are even marked. You drive through tall trees and the roads curve around the rivers. Every so often you come across a drive that goes to a home, but for the most part you do not see evidence of other human beings. It’s like driving through a scene from a scary movie when some teenagers get lost and murdered. Well, my mom’s husband has been gone this week and so she was there by herself without electricity. Even her giant four-by-four diesel truck could not make it out of there this past week. They have a wood burning furnace so as far as heat for her she was good. However, they have Alpacas, Llamas, Horses, Dogs, Cats and some other critters that needed to be fed. Nothing bad would happen really, I just worry too much.

I am grateful to live in an apartment complex where they shovel my sidewalk and take care of the drive. I prefer it that way. Over Christmas break I got stuck at my mother’s because they are too far into the woods for the roads to be cleared well. I went even more stir crazy there than I did this week. I did have my brothers though and that was nice, for a bit.

When I think of nature, I think of the country. When I think of the country, I think of family time. Some of my best memories with my family are times on the farm and in the country. Times spent playing board games, playing outside, playing with the animals and just enjoying the moment with each other.

My brothers and I regard country living in different ways. I like it to some extent, but would prefer not to get too dirty and I enjoy the calmer animals, like the Cats, Alpacas and Horses. It is nearly impossible to get my brother Sammy to go outside, let alone get dirty but he enjoys the inside Dogs company. Then there is my brother Joe who often times is covered in dirt and is a true farm boy. He is the one that digs in the dirt, climbs the fences and walks barefoot on the gravel. He loves the animals and they love him. He adores the country and I will not be surprised if he lives in there when he is older. I feel that not everyone belongs in the country and not everyone belongs in a city. Each of us is unique and therefore we each fit best in different atmospheres. I for one know that I belong in a city!

“Wildness puts us in our place. It reminds us that our plans are small and somewhat absurd.”- Barbara Kingsolver