Dwellings: The Living World

The earth is made of every single molecule in the air, every breath an animal takes, every wind that blows, every rain drop that falls, every leaf that falls from a tree. In today's world, many people take advantage of Mother Nature, and give no respect to wilderness and earth. Oil mills are constructed and land is torn apart to make more room for the industrial, modern world. Many humans have forgotten about the beauties of nature, and are not concerned by the fact that Mother Nature is slowly dying. Our societies have begun to grow apart from the earth and the non-human world. In Donelle N. Dreese's essay, The Terrestrial Intelligence, he refers to Linda Hogan's collection of essays and believes that "her book, with all its stories, recreates the life of the natural world that has been objectified, and it redefines non-human creatures that have been negatively stereotyped" (12). Reese analyzes Hogan's essays and comes to a conclusion that Linda Hogan is trying to get the message across that humans, animals, and the earth are all connected one way or another, and that no matter how hard we try to detach ourselves from Mother Nature, we will never escape this relationship. Even though at times it seems as if humans have completely broken off from Mother Nature, there is still a connection there that not many people take notice of. Linda Hogan believes that humans are slowly killing the land, animals and even their own people, and by doing so, humans are trying to detach themselves from their roots, the Earth.

There have always been different views of the world; Mother Natures view and the modern persons view are only two of them. Many humans will never understand why Mother Nature and native Indians view the earth...

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... a human hand has not been in everything. But those were only dream of peace...a sanctuary where a dream or life wouldn't be invaded" (119). By not paying attention to what they are doing, humans have robbed the earth of her beauty. There are not many places left where no man/woman has been. We must preserve our earth in order to survive. Hogan refers to the word rake in order to explain what needs to be done. The word rake means to clean up and mend what we have broken and torn apart. She states that a rake is used for "smoothing over the broken ground, that healing of the severed trust we human hold with earth" (153). A rake helps us realize what we have done and what we need to do to fix it. By detaching ourselves from earth we are just hurting ourselves and everything around us and something needs to be done soon in order to continue to exist.