“Get lost in nature and you will find yourself” (Anonymous). I believe that this sounds like something Annie Dillard would say. Dillard is famous for her pieces about nature. She believes we have many lessons to learn from nature, and that if we lived more like animals we would have better lives. This is particularly the case in her story “Living Like Weasels”. I disagree with Dillard in this sense. Unlike Dillard I believe that it is our civility that makes us human, and has allowed us to grow as a species. In my essay I will tell you about my own encounter with nature, how we can learn from nature, and the disadvantages of being wild.
To begin, I will tell you of my own experience with nature. Once when I was younger there was a family of rabbits that lived in a hole in my backyard. There was a mom and
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three babies. The babies were young and their fur was not yet fluffy. Their ears were gigantic; nearly a third the size of their bodies. I found their den on accident when i almost stepped in it. The mother was gone; she was most likely foraging for food. I was entranced by the little balls of life as they lay curled up, asleep in a pile of fur. There was something about the innocence of the bunnies that grabbed my attention. They acted just as a young child does. They were dependent on their mother but also curious. As they grew, they left the hole more. I would often see them chasing each other around bushes and trees, and hiding whenever they were startled by the slightest noise. One day the mother left and never came back; the babies were only weeks old. At such a young age it seemed cruel to force these helpless creatures to fend for themselves. I was worried until I realized this is what is supposed to happen. The rabbits are left on their own far sooner than a human baby. They have the natural instinct to survive which is a part of being wild. This experience taught me that people do not lie the same lives as animals, and that nature is a beautiful thing. My next topic is how we can learn from nature.
This topic closely relates to Dillard’s ideas. She believes we would all live better lives if we were wild like the weasels in her story. Although I disagree with her position, she does make very valid points. In the concluding section of her story she writes “I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go…” (Dillard 122). When she says one necessity I believe she is referring to the necessity to survive. Animals such as weasels and rabbits do not want things that they do not need. They simply take what is essential to their survival and nothing more. Annie believes that this would be the best way to live. She wishes to “...learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical sense and the dignity of living without bias or motive” (Dillard 121). She is speaking of her longing to be wild. She wishes to live as animal; without anything pushing her other than her instincts to survive. To recollect, Dillard makes clear connections to her desire to be wild in her writing and uses many real life examples to add detail to her
writing. The final topic is the disadvantages of being wild. Humans are a civilized race, which i consider to be advantageous over being wild. Wild animals have much harder lives than humans. Animals are left on their own by the mothers at a much younger age. For example, immediately after giving birth the mother of the rabbits I mentioned previously will leave the nest and only return for a few minutes each day to feed her babies. Another reason being civilized is better than being wild is the less than desirable living conditions. The majority of people live indoors where they are protected from the elements and their predators. Animals are forced to live outside where they are exposed to weather and predators. To relate to the rabbits again, they live in holes in the ground which hardly protect them from the below zero temperatures that can occur in the winter. Since people do not have to focus as much on surviving we can think more about things we want rather than what is necessary for survival. We have evolved into a society where everyone has their job to make things work, and we have even become so efficient that we can help those that can not provide for themselves. To convene the ideas discussed, people have better lives than animals due to the way we are raised, our living conditions, and how we have evolved to think of things other than survival. To conclude, while living wild does have its benefits, the negatives far outway the positives. The author of “Living Like Weasels”, Annie Dillard, would disagree with this statement considering she believes being wild is better. I have discussed my own experience with nature, hat we can learn from nature, and the disadvantages of being wild. Although I believe being civilized is better than being wild, I do understand that having a combination of the two is the best option. One must find a way to balance living in a human like manner without completely ignoring their wild instincts.
How could the reader benefit from reading this essay? The author want to make people realise the importance of nature and wants people to preserve environment by saying trees and animals. The author also wants the audience to realise how the people generations before us use to live without the facilities that we have in today’s world.
Cronon, William “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995, 69-90
In the “Interior Life”, Annie Dillard discusses the minds process of realizing the difference between imagination and reality. Dillard begins her narrative by recounting the childhood memory of an oblong shaped light that invaded her room every night, terrorizing her with the possibility of death. Beginning at the door of her bedroom this “oblong light” quickly slid across the wall, continued to the headboard of her little sister Amy’s bed and suddenly disappeared with a loud roar. Oftentimes it returned, noisily fading away just before seizing her, meanwhile Amy slept, blissfully unaware. Continuing on, Dillard describes the unforgettable discovery of the connection between the noise the oblong light made and the sound of the passing cars
the idea of the wild and its importance and necessity of human interaction with the wild.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Nature.” The American Experience. Ed. Kate Kinsella. Boston, Massachusetts: Pearson Education, Inc., 2005. 388-390. Print.
The wild is a place to push yourself to the limit and take a look at who you truly are inside. “Wilderness areas have value as symbols of unselfishness” (Nash). Roderick Nash’s philosophy states that the wilderness gives people an opportunity to learn humility but they fight this because they do not have a true desire to be humble. Human-kind wants to give out the illusion that they are nature lovers when in reality, they are far from it. “When we go to designated wilderness we are, as the 1964 act says, "visitors" in someone else's home” (Nash). People do not like what they cannot control and nature is uncontrollable. Ecocentrism, the belief that nature is the most important element of life, is not widely accepted. The novel Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer depicts a young boy who goes on an exploration to teach himself the true concept of humility. Chris McCandless, the protagonist, does not place confidence in the universal ideology that human beings are the most significant species on the planet, anthropocentrism.
At one point in our lives as human beings we began to draw mental lines between ourselves and nature. This is something that has gradually been increasing throughout their years. Most people do not seem to notice all of these constant changes simply because we are used to the type of world we live in now. I believe that in order for somebody to understand what's happening these negative changes need to affect us as individuals. For example, many people don't realize cutting down trees to build businesses will eventually cause the world to be unsustainable. Nature is something very necessary. "Wilderness" in old English was something that had its own will, just like you mentioned in paragraph three. The Wild is a place where wild undomesticated animals should be allowed to roam
Man has destroyed nature, and for years now, man has not been living in nature. Instead, only little portions of nature are left in the world
From the lone hiker on the Appalachian Trail to the environmental lobby groups in Washington D.C., nature evokes strong feelings in each and every one of us. We often struggle with and are ultimately shaped by our relationship with nature. The relationship we forge with nature reflects our fundamental beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. The works of timeless authors, including Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard, are centered around their relationship to nature.
Many years ago, people saw the wilderness as a savage wasteland, but today, it is viewed as “the last remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease, has not fully infected the earth.” (Cronon) He discusses this changed point of view by stating the difficulties that society will have rectifying environmental ailments if it stops viewing wilderness as “a dualistic picture in which the human is completely outside the nature.” (Cronon) This is understandable because humans rely on others to create opinions, and they do not know how to form their own thoughts and solutions to issues such as environmental ones. Therefore, it is with great importance that humans begin to learn how to formulate their own thoughts and share those personal thoughts with others, such as sharing solutions about environmental
In “Living Like Weasels,” the writer, Annie Dillard, is talking about weasels by describing some of their living habits and narrating her sudden encounter with a weasel which made her change her mind towards the real meaning of life. In her essay, Dillard is comparing weasels’ life with humans’ life, and in some parts she is favoring weasel’s life over our life since they live freely, but our freedom has been limited .
Does wilderness exist? To many people, this would seem to be a very meaningless question. Of course wilderness exists. But, coming from a student who decided to enroll in a class called Humans and the Natural Environment: Impacts and Moral Obligations, this question has become one that has almost thrown my world upside down. Before we can answer the question, we must first know the definition of wilderness is this, “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man is a visitor who does not remain.” Because of my recent class periods and readings, I believe that the concept of wilderness does not exist, and that it is not useful. Throughout this essay I will explain why
Many people wonder: what is the meaning of life? What is the human purpose on this earth? At least one time in our lifetime, we all look at ourselves and wonder if we are living our lives the way we were meant to live them. Sadly, there is not a definite answer to the principles of human life. Every human comes from different backgrounds and different experiences throughout their existence. Each person is different, each with different emotions and reactions to their surroundings. People strive to uncover the secrets to the meaning of life. In reality, humans are given the desire to live the way we want and have a critical thinking mind, unlike animals. In the essay Living like Weasels, Annie Dillard believes we should live more carefree and instinctual as weasels, but what we were given as humans is a gift that no other creature has – free will and choice to shape our own lives.
However, some only have this appreciation due to the fact that the nature provides a service to them, usually involving an escape from the busy reality that many deal with constantly. Perceptions of nature include an oasis from the stresses of real life, and for that reason, support the protection of certain pieces of land. In William Cronon’s essay, “The Trouble With Wilderness,” he claims that modern interpretation of wilderness is “quite profoundly a human creation” (Cronan 1). This phrase underscores the notion that humanity created the conception of wilderness as something particularly special and enchanting, and that the definition is not inherent. Even many people who are considered to have valued the environment to the utmost degree were actually acting this way due to their own human-centered uses for the natural world. For example, one of the sole reasons Theodore Roosevelt spearheaded the movement for a National Parks System is not due to his appreciation for the natural world, but because he was an avid hunter (NPS.gov). If urbanization would have continued, without preserving many areas of the United States, the ability to hunt in the United States would be very difficult if not impossible. If humans did not understand wilderness as “the remote corners of the earth,” that supply an “experience of wonder and
My family and I rarely went on outings; my parents were always busy or at work. Likewise, family trips or vacations were something my parents could not afford. The first time I ever fully experienced the beauty of nature was when I went on a week long trip with my fifth grade class to an outdoor school. This was the first time I went on a real hike and the first time I was really in the middle of nature. Walking through the forest, listening to the birds chirp and the graceful movement of the leaves in the wind changed my perspective. That week, I realized how much beauty there was to discover on Earth. My relationship with the environment started during that trip in fifth grade as I realized that the world is such an immense place full of things to admire and unearth. It was something wholly new to me. I fell in love with the