The road to preservation has always been a difficult one. With a rapidly changing world the environmentalists have to present their way of thinking in a manner that is appealing to the modern age. Edward Abbey and David Brower faced this challenge in their field as they worked to persuade others that the development of nature is not always the best option. Edward Abbey’s area of focus was national parks, monuments and forests, and how industrial tourism is hurting their pureness. He explains the problems with industrial tourism and how it can be stopped in the way of removing cars, stopping road building and encouraging more active park rangers in National Parks. David Brower takes a different approach by combating acts of developments as they occur. He manages to go head to head with Charles Park, Charles Fraser, and Floyd Dominy, three men with goals of development in various parts of nature with their own beliefs on development and how it should be handled. As Brower and Abbeys life are analyzed their similarities and differences become more apparent and it becomes obvious that they had very similar mind sets.
Drafted to the military and then going to the University of Mexico Edward Abbey was a man of various backgrounds. After getting his master’s degree he started working for the National Park Service at the Arches National Monument where he gained his interests in nature and natural preservation. He took notes and sketches of his findings and used them for his book, Desert Solitaire
In his book Desert Solitaire, Edwards Abbey talks about the development verses preservation. Initially his tone seems appreciative and happy as he describes his job and where he lives. He talks of the time that he was a park ranger and paints th...
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...t preservation. They all believe that nature and its resources are to be used for the benefit of man even if it disrupts nature at the same time. These anthropocentric beliefs are strictly against the views of Abbey and Brower they ensure that that message is received by the people.
In the books Desert Solitaire and Encounters of the Archdruid the views of two Edward Abbey and David Brower are challenged by an ever so changing world. Whether is the industrial tourism taking place in the national parks or the damming of the Glen Canyon River, these men were part of an ever so changing world that needed a reassessment of the importance of natural preservation. While not always successful they managed to get their messages across, that nature is a vital part of our world and its preservation is essential to the quality of life human beings.
Although Leopold’s love of great expanses of wilderness is readily apparent, his book does not cry out in defense of particular tracts of land about to go under the axe or plow, but rather deals with the minutiae, the details, of often unnoticed plants and animals, all the little things that, in our ignorance, we have left out of our managed acreages but which must be present to add up to balanced ecosystems and a sense of quality and wholeness in the landscape.
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 my generation, I am able to catch what is relatively the tail end of this slow extinction. And to be quite honest, I had not devoted a moment of thought to this phenomenon until I read Leopold’s passages. In fact, I am always the first one to compliment a new highway project that saves me five minutes of driving or even a tidy farmstead as I pass. Now, more than ever, my thoughts are in limbo. It was just last week when my dad pointed out an area off the highway that displayed miles of slowly rolling cornfields. His reaction was to the beauty of the countryside. Mine was to question his. I found myself thinking about all of the hard work that created that beauty, and then how much more beautiful it was fifty, a hundred, or even two centuries ago. Only the mind’s eye can create this beauty now, and that is exactly why Leopold’s concerns are validated.
In his journal, Thoreau muses upon twenty years of changes in New England’s land and beasts. He lists the differences in plants and animals, comparing them to past accounts and descriptions. He questions if the growing human presence has resulted in “a maimed and imperfect nature.” Cronon believes that this is an important question to consider. He points out that although changes do happen in nature, it is not so easy to determine how they changed. He is also not sure if Thoreau’s description of “a maimed and imperfect nature” is the correct way to refer to ecology, since it is by its essence, a fluid system of changes and reactions. Cronon does not deny the impact of
Desert Solitaire aims to draw attention to the activities of a man voluntarily isolated in nature. It seeks to identify the strife that Abbey faces with modern day human’s treatment of his nature. As such, the argument that Abbey poses in one his earlier chapters Rocks is, that the Modern Day man is destructive and cannot be trusted to preserve nature as is.
In Emerson’s “Nature” nature is referred to as “plantations of god” meaning that nature is sacred. Also mentioned, is that “In the woods is perpetual youth”(#) conveying that nature keeps people young. Therefore, these excerpts show that nature is greatly valued by these transcendentalists. Transcendentalists would likely care significantly about the environment. In contrast, nowadays nature is often and afterthought. Natures’ resources are being depleted for human use, and the beauty of nature is also not as appreciated by modern people as it was by transcendentalists. The threat to nature in modern times contrasts to the great appreciation of nature held by authors like Emerson and
First of all, Edward Abbey admits to being a certain bias and that he is a, “butterfly chaser, googley eyed bleeding heart and wild conservative.” So, in other words he is intending this article to be read by environmental activist who will support his opinion and the action that he is trying to take. Edward Abbey worked as a seasonal park ranger for Glen Canyon National Recreation Area back in 1967, so of course he would be against any environmental action taken to change the canyon. He stated that before the damnation of the canyon that there were streams, waterfalls, plunge pools, and plenty of wildlife. Now you can only find that on a small scale and that these thing...
Environmentalist and desert-lover, Edward Abbey in his essay “The Great American Desert” warns readers about the perilous dangers of the American deserts while simultaneously stirring curiosity about these fascinating ecosystems. He both invites and dissuades his readers from visiting the deserts of North America through the use of humor and sarcasm. In this essay, he is rhetorically successful in arguing that the open spaces of the undeveloped deserts are sacred places in need of respect and protection through his clever use of pathos and logos.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Nature.” The American Experience. Ed. Kate Kinsella. Boston, Massachusetts: Pearson Education, Inc., 2005. 388-390. Print.
“It is a vision, a dream, if you prefer, like Martin Luther King’s, and it means clustering on a planetary scale.” (Nash) In Historian Roderick Nash’s essay entitled “Island Civilization: A vision for Human Occupancy of Earth in the Fourth Millennium,” Nash not only proposes the ideology of Island Civilization but also challenges readers to be informed of the rights of nature. Gaining insight on the options of preservation and nature from masterminds like John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and Wallace Stegner. Nash devises a plan of action for Earth during the fourth millennium. Realizing the illustrate of our worlds “wilderness” Nash educates on the ways in which the natural world will evolve one thousand years from now.
Muir’s wilderness is rooted in the idea of an aesthetically pleasing natural scape given they fit into certain criteria such as, “ none of Nature’s landscape’s are ugly so long as they are wild” (Muir). The attachment of this emphasis on an aesthetically pleasing landscape was partial truth, which drove people out the national parks. While these places where indeed wild and beautiful, Muir sold the masses on this idea of all nature being pristine and pure, when in reality that was not the
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.
One of the predominate themes present in Desert Solitaire is the conflict between civilization and the wilderness. Abbey introduces this motif at the beginning of his memoir at personal level. On first day of his employment with United States Park Service Abbey describes the first pair arches that he encounter. The sight of massive fifty foot boulders impresses him and he makes a conceptual comparison with the human altered monuments on Easter Island. This comparison troubles Abbey because civilization has tainted his ability to objectively view nature outside of “humanly ascribed qualities (Abbey, 1968, p. 6).” Abbey struggle to eliminate this anthropocentric premonitions continues when he encounters a pair of gopher snakes mating. Abbey wishes to observe closer but is reluctant because he was “stung by a fear too ancient and power full to overcome (Abbey, 1968, p. 21).”
Leopold’s view is a glorified dream at best. While most people do acknowledge the need for some type of ecological consciousness, the one illustrated by Leopold is far from probable. Today’s society is overrun with the desire for speed and convenience, and driven by competition. Asking the busy world to stop, step backward, and work the concerns for such things as soil, rocks, or oak trees into its contracts and agreements is a foolish notion. It has come to be that to most individuals, the sight of a city skyline that is bustling with business and life is just as pristine as the sight of a natural forest.
Tourism is a typical activity of fashion that the public participate widely and it has grown in importance over recorded human history. Innumerable articles refer tourism as “the world’s largest industry”; policy-makers, analysts, and scholars often speak of the size of the tourism compared to that of other industries (Smith 2004: 26). These series of misleading statement, together with the mass media’s reports (out of context), make the idea that tourism is a single large industry branded into many people’s minds. However, in this essay I will demonstrate that it is a simplistic and misleading idea, which should be replaced by the plural term, “tourism industries”. Moreover, tourism is not the world’s largest industry, but largest service sector.