Thursday, September 3, 2009
Humm: hard to get back into the groove of things...
Nature: that is something hard to write about sitting at a computer screen in a plain room with the inexcuseable sound of keys clicking and ringing in my ears derailing my thoughts. Modern day, solitude is something hard to find. Even in nature the presence of our time is with us. Though our clothes we are connected, though our thoughts we are linked and though our actions we are separated. Now-a-days it has become difficult to free your mind, and self from the confines of society. Yet living in Telluride, we 'being the public' are immersed in a society that has come to overlook the nature surrounding us. The average Telluridian can step out their door and go about their day without being blown away by the abstract forest and foliage that surrounds us. We need to open our minds eye and recognize the extravagance that surrounds us, as Emerson has directed us to do. Historians have told us to learn though our past experiences, yet with a future that is changing by the second shouldn't we be learning new ways and moving forward. Nature is a realm where we are allowed to find a place all our own and to develop new ideas separating us from our ancestors. Nature is a place to be celebrated, who knows by the rate the world is expanding the aspects of nature the way that it is may be something that we have to teach future generations of though stories rather then first hand experience. Take advantage of what we have while we have it.
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I agree, living in a place where nature is at its most beautiful does not necessarily make us more aware and appreciative of it. We become blind to what we know is always there. We are even ignorant of the fact that we no longer see nature around us, which makes it that much harder to take a look around now and then.
ReplyDeleteGood post, Amy! I appreciate the way you note the irony of our setting (writing about nature while apparently surrounded by its opposite) and the outset, and then proceed to make both a strong case for a greater 'openness' to Nature (very Emersonian, that) even as you 'admonish' us to seek out new approaches to the age-old questions that Emerson raises, approaches that are necessitated by what seem to be an unprecedented threat to Nature (one Emerson certainly would have had a difficult time imagining).
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