Wrap-up

What to say about this class? From Cronon, to the nature documentaries, to video games, and everything in between, we explored nature and its portrayal in various forms of media. More amazing than the number of things we've looked is quite possibly our lack of an answer to the question, just what is nature?

Is it something within the realm of human thought and control, or is it something beyond our abilities to comprehend? Is it a benevolent deity that provides for all of our needs, or is it a destructive force that we fight with our lives? Is it something we follow, or something we oppose?

I remember in high school, the process of finding an answer on multiple choice tests involved the process of elimination, and there would usually be a choice that reads "all of the above." We've never really ruled out any of options that nature can be, and it is tempting for us to pick the answer "all of the above."

And that's not necessarily a bad choice. After all, nature can be whatever we choose it to be. Moreover, perhaps the single definitive thing we've learned isn't what nature is, but where it is. Nature is everywhere. It sounds a little cliche, a la children's TV shows, but I think I speak for everyone when I say that this class, like any good class, has made us more aware of the topic at hand. And to recognize that nature is in places we've perhaps never thought to look before--the farmer's market, video games, our backyards--is a really profound statement.

Lastly, I'd just like to say thanks to all who made up our class, and good luck on future endeavors!

~Tim Yu

Prius as a Status Symbol, and Nothing More?

I don't like hybrids. I'll start with that. They aren't the least bit fun to drive. In some ways they are downright scary to drive. There is no physical connection between the brake pedal and the wheels. If something goes wrong, or the car shuts down, you will drift to a stop, and that is the best you can do. People seem to drive them horribly, for whatever reason. I can't tell you how many times I have had a Prius ten feet from the back tire of my motorcycle, on the freeway.

Priuses have been marketed with more efficiency than the actual car. The silly "cheese wedge" shape has become synonymous with "Green." In fact, the main reason that the Prius outsells other hybrids is that it looks like a hybrid. Toyota has been able to convert the Prius into a status symbol which portrays the owner as "Forward Thinking" or "World Minded," but most of all, "Green." In fact, in a 2007 survey of Prius buyers, 57% cite “Makes a Statement about me” as a reason for buying a Prius. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/04/business/04hybrid.html) That is nearly double the percentage interested in “Higher Fuel Economy” (36) or more than double for “Lower Emissions” (25). “Distinctive Styling,” in other words, the “Cheese Wedge” hybrid design, also ranked highly, at 33%.

In the article, several customers are quoted after buying Priuses.
“I really want people to know that I care about the environment,” said Joy Feasley of Philadelphia, owner of a green 2006 Prius. “I like that people stop and ask me how I like my car.” Mary Gatch of Charleston, S.C., chose the car over a hybrid version of the Toyota Camry after trading in a Lexus sedan. “I felt like the Camry Hybrid was too subtle for the message I wanted to put out there,” Ms. Gatch said. “I wanted to have the biggest impact that I could, and the Prius puts out a clearer message.”

I cannot imagine being that pretentious with a car. Those owners show the same level of “Snobbiness” as charactures of owners of high end executive cars. I can’t help but think about the “Are you an environmentalist, or do you work for a living?” bumper sticker we talked about in class. Priuses have made being “Green” a status symbol.

In reality, Priuses do not offer as significant energy savings over other cars as they are purported to have. They also require more resources to build, and therefore energy, to build. Even disregarding that fact, they are still a new car, and therefore have to be built. That takes resources, which would not have been used if the old car is kept. The gas mileage isn’t that much better either.

In the US, we think in terms of Miles Per Gallon, rather than in terms of Gallons/100Miles. Because these are reciprocals, this creates a skewed perspective, which assists in marketing. For example, 14 to 20 MPG, which saves twice as much fuel over a given distance as the improvement from 33 to 50 MPG. Every year, the average driver will travel about 10,000 miles. In a Prius, we’ll assume that it gets 45 MPG, which is 2.22 Gallons/100 miles. During the year, that corresponds to about 222 gallons of gas used. My 1995 VW Jetta has about 150,000 miles, with many more to come (at least 100,000), gets 30 MPG on the freeway. That is 3.33 Gallons/ 100 miles, and 333 Gallons a year. So the Prius only saves about 100 gallons a year. That may seem significant, but compared to the amount of energy used to make a new car, that is nothing. For the purposes of this post, I will assume that energy is roughly proportional to cost. If a new prius costs $25,000, it would be a fair estimate to compare that cost to about 1000 gallons of gas. In the ten years that you own the car, it could save about the cost of the car. However, the Jetta cost less to start with, at about $17,000, and will last for at least twice as long. So, at 15 years old, and 150,000 miles, it would be “Greener” to keep the car for another ten years, and not relegate it to a car crusher.

In addition, the batteries for a Prius are made from nickel, mined in an area of Canada so devoid of life from the acid rain caused by smelting, that NASA used it for training for the Apollo missions. Conventional, non-hybrid cars, such as clean diesels, or well tuned petrol engines do not have this unfortunate component. Diesels in Europe comply with stricter emissions laws, and can still return nearly 70 MPG.

When trying to do your part to keep the world clean, think about what you are actually doing. If your old car works, keep it. Do the math. If you want that status symbol, buy some “Carbon Credits” to show that you care. At the very least, those don’t cause acid rain.

Rhetoric R1B Present and Future

It is hard to believe that we are coming to the end of this class; it feels as if we have only begun. Well, i guess this class is just the beginning for me. When I entered this class in January, I have to admit I was a little surprised by its loose format. I had expected this class to be very structured, controlled and quite honestly boring. I know that sounds weird, especially considering that my major is Rhetoric, but I only choose this class for its time i.e. not for the topic. I was actually dreading the first day with a passion because I worried that this class was going to be run by crazy hippies who wanted me to be a tree hugger. It's not that I didn't have respect for nature; it's just that I never really had any interest in the rhetoric of the environment; all I cared about was law and politics. Luckily for me however; I was wrong. This semester in Rhetoric R1B has been extremely interesting. I have learned more about the environment and how I interact with it than I ever could have thought imaginable. What I remember most about this class though is the readings. Besides the boring readings in R1A, this was my first academic class which required non textbook based analysis and I was happy to find that I actually enjoyed the readings we were assigned.

Here are my top five favorite readings:

5. Ch. 1 and 2 of Dumping in Dixie by Robert Bullard. THis reading was the most interesting of all of our readings, because it made me think of nature in a completely different way. Prior to this class, I would never have thought that a nuclear wasteland could be nature.

4."Domesticating Nature on the Television Set" by Greg Mittman. Anything written about television or technology instantly interests me and as such, this was a fun, quick and memorable reading.

3."Sharing Suffering" by Donna Haraway. Although I didn't appreciate this excerpt initially, over time I found that Haraway's way of thinking had begun to influence me and my choices.

2."In Camp on the North Fork of the Merced"by John Muir. John Muir has to be one of the most interesting people we learned about in this class.

1."To Build a Fire" by Jack London. I chose this reading as my favorite not because of what it taught me about nature, however rich it was; but rather because of the style of writing the author employed in it. I remember getting chills (no puns intended) when I first started to suspect that the guy might die, and when he did, I was absolutely shocked.

More surprising to me than the fact that I enjoyed the readings however, was that I actually learned some valuable skills and information from the readings and discussions in this class. At first, I didn't really think that this class was going to give me any new rhetorical skills, but as the class progressed, I found myself picking up multiple new tricks and catchphrases to deploy in my arguments. The WA sessions and readings also provided me with some amazing examples and information on how to write better.

Overall, however, my favorite part of this class was most definitely my classmates. Despite the fact that I talked way too much, my fellow classmates accepted me and, unlike many of my previous English/debate classes, they actually listened to my arguments.

I will truly miss everyone in this class and regardless of what I do or become, I will take the lessons I have learned in this class on with me into my future and use them as best as I can .

Captain Planet and Toyota Prius: Well we are Doing Something to Help...Right?

Both Captain Planet and Toyota Prius claim to be "Eco-friendly". However it was made clear that event though Captain Planet and the Prius had the title they did not mean that the result and effects of these two products were truly improving ecological state of the planet. Captain Planet actually shows that humans can't improve the ecological issues alone and need some sort of magic rings and a supernatural being (Captain Planet) to actually have an impact in the improvement of the environment crisis. Then for Prius it is not as gas efficient as it states and it also creates a lot of chemicals that harm the earth. The list goes on, on how these products only have the title and don't necessarily do or have the result as expected.

It was also made clear that they both were advertised as such because people are more likely to by or watch something that claims you ll make a difference or you will help fix an issue. They feel as if they are demonstrating they care. What I found interesting however that the buyers of these two products are the same type of people. They are types of people that want to feel like they are helping improve a popular issue without doing the work. They do it because they feel the societal pressure to do something that will helps the environment, but don't see the actual positive or negative effects.

If they truly cared why is it they just go along with the advertisements and buy a Prius, or just let there child watch Captain Planet just because of the title thinking your actually teaching your child something without putting the effort. When this happens instead of helping they are perpetuating the cycle of environmental destruction in a indirect. It is until we stop having the mentality of- I am doing something don't judge me- to actually caring and taking the time to research what we actually consume and support that there will be a advance in the ecological issues.

Pandora on Earth?

Last Friday I finally got the chance to catch up with pop culture and watch Avatar. My friends have been raving about the movie and telling me that it was super legitimate and worth watching not one, not two, not three, but maybe four times--all in IMAX. When I first watched the trailer for Avatar, I thought that the plot was going to be as cheesy as how they usually make the nachos in movie theaters. In my head, it just sounded like a guy who wanted to prove himself, joins some corporate endeavor, thinks he's some double agent with the natives on this new planet, falls in love, and joins his lover dearest. What I didnt realize was deep the movie was. It definitely incorporated a line out of the cliche book with urging us, humans, to really take care of our environment. But, in reality, I took away so much more from this blockbuster than just that.

The film's protagonist is Jake Sully, a paraplegic former Marine, who is on the planet Pandora where a corporation is mining a precious mineral called unobtainium. After a fiasco occurs, Jake is separated from his group and ends up being incorporated into one of the native tribes living on Pandora. The tribe's spiritual leader instructs her daughter, Neytiri, to teach Jake the ways of their people. From there, Jake sees just how impressive the way that the tribe interacts with nature. They describe it as a "neural network" where all of the Pandoran organisms are interconnected. When they hunt for food, they say a few prayer-like phrases after slaying the animal. When they walk through the forest floor, their steps light up the ground. When they go home, their home sweet home is a tree. When they go to sleep, palm-tree-like fronds wrap themselves around their bodies. Pandora, although CGI-enhanced, seemed like such a magical world. I wanted to live there myself, despite how childish that might sound. It made me think if this "magical world" was possible here, on Earth, and if it is a place we really would want to live in.

Even though everything is so brightly colored, pure, and appealing on Pandora, I feel that we won't be able to reach that environment ourselves. We have reached a stage where we rely so heavily on technology and we are so wrapped up in work that nature feels like a separate entity from our daily lives. Vacations and retirement are points in time where we can connect to nature but they are merely points in the future that we yearn for. I'm not advocating for us to unearth what we have built and go back to the basics and retreat to the forest and live our lives there. It's just that after watching Avatar, I wonder if we, as an entire tribe if you will, would be happier if we saw ourselves as a piece of nature; the notion that our souls and our existence is an extension of Mother Earth. The movie conveyed that the natives on Pandora are beyond the idea of eco-friendliness. Instead, they truly appreciate and honor nature for what it provides for them. If we saw ourselves as a part of nature, some more consciousness would go behind our actions. Demolishing forests to build metropolitan landscapes and exploiting nature as money-making tactics would all seem sickening if we saw nature more as something living with us and a part of us. I was taken aback at the feeling of disgust and anger when I watched the corporation pellet bombs and bullets at the indigenous tribe on Pandora. I felt like I was watching a human being tortured. It goes back to what we read and discussed in class about incorporating nature into our lives and seeing it in a new light where work goes hand-in-hand with nature. Maybe we need a paradigm shift where we not only see nature as something we need to give back to but as something we need to learn to live with and form a stronger appreciation for that bond between all living things and nature. Maybe then we will have Pandora on earth and I wouldnt wish I was ten feet tall, green-eyed, and blue.

Response to Manufactured Landscapes

When I first heard/read that we were watching a film called, "Manufactured Landscapes," I didn't think much of it. I didn't give much thought as to what "manufactured" might mean and as for "landscapes"? The word just brought to mind something scenic--vague, I know, but I wasn't thinking very deeply on the title.

That's why when the movie began I didn't have very many expectations. I remember the beginning shot, though (who wouldn't? it was an annoyingly long shot). As the camera moved through the factory in China, I kept on thinking, "When is this going to end already?!" Was the evocation of this emotion an accident or was that the purpose of the directors? And if it was purposeful, why would they choose to do that? To bring attention to the congruency of the working environment? Random thought: the Great Plains. Like how the Great Plains is (from my limited knowledge) grass for miles on end, it's the same way with the manufacturing factory? I really don't know. Maybe that was one of the "landscapes" they were going for? It would make sense since it was also a "manufacturing" plant. It'd be nice if someone could enlighten me with why they thought that they would use such a long first scene.

The other scene that caught my attention (and this one from actual interest instead of boredom!) was, as Crystal already mentioned in her post, the scene of the recycling... area. I don't really know what to call it, but this radically changed my view of what recycling is. In my mind, my image was that recycling was done in a plant... somehow. I never really worked out the details in my head. But to see people living in that industrial waste? It shocked me. The photo that shocked me the most was probably the one of the old woman sitting beside First World recyclables. My first thought was, "Did that stuff harm her health?" For all I know, it very well could have. It was just disturbing. Even though we're told all the time to recycle (especially her in Berkeley), looking at where our waste goes... is just disturbing.

Does recycling really make for a "better world"? Maybe. For our sphere of the world, at least, it takes away some of the guilt--but for the ones where these recyclables go to? I don't know... you could say that it helps their economy, but I just... really don't know.

Edward Burtynsky's photographs

For those of you who are interested in looking at more of Burtynsky's work, here's a link to his web site.  As I posted in my comment to Crystal, do you think the way that his photographs render these "manufactured landscapes" beautiful and almost abstract detracts from his environmentalist message?

Manufactured Landscapes

Britain's national newspaper, The Guardian, started off their review on "Manufactured Landscapes" by describing the film as "a magnificently handsome documentary, worth watching alone for the re-creation of massive-scale works by Edward Burtynsky." However, even as I watched this documentary with a room full of classmates, I felt really taken aback and "alone" without having the heed The Guardian's advice of viewing the film alone--just me, myself, my popcorn, and I. As I watched the camera capture the seemingly never-ending factory aisles and mountains of waste that showed that the sky really was the limit, I realized how a landscape could be manufactured.

When I first thought about the title of this documentary, I thought it was a total paradox. How could people manufacture a landscape? I suppose that this made me realize all of the previous inclinations I had about nature; the fact that I did link "landscape" with the "ideal" form of nature where beauty was hidden behind the palm tree fronds and embodied in the towering waterfall that escalated down a soft beige rock that was free of blemishes. However, just sitting there and digesting the photos that Burtynsky captured made me realize that China was manufacturing, among numerous other products, landscapes. The grandeur of the factories and the scale the labor force reminded me of nature as a force to be reckoned with.

Also, I noticed the beginning of a long string of ironies encompassed in this documentary. For example, despite the obvious economic progress that China is making, the rising country is producing an immeasurable amount of byproduct that felt like it is actually going backwards in terms of the environmental goals that the general global community has been setting out. In addition, after realizing what these third world countries have to do with recyclables, it blew my mind to think that China produces the same products that goes back to them as waste. It's as if one man's trash is the same man's treasure. They are producing so many consumer products on such large scales and probably making a lot of profit, but these products comes back full circle to them as toxins to their citizens and communities. I also never thought that I would ever feel even slightly guilty about recycling. I had never given an afterthought to what happens to the bottle that I simply toss in the recycling bin. Instead, I assumed that I was doing my part and helping the environment. Now that I have seen it from the perspective of the people receiving these recyclables, it makes me think that we are just passing our burden onto these less fortunate countries.

After viewing a segment of this documentary, I really appreciated the different perspective it gave. I saw a larger part of the big picture and how some of the assumptions I made regarding environmental responsibility and sustainability doesnt fit so well with what really happens. Even with this realization I feel like there are still so many unanswered questions. For instance: does progress always come with such a high price tag? how can we make sure that fulfilling our responsibility doesnt impose a negative burden on others?

Examine Some Parts of Food Inc.

In class last Tuesday, as most of you know, we watched a good amount of Food Inc. I'm going to discuss just some of parts of the movie that I found to be rather interesting and try to explore some of these a little more than what we were able to see or discuss in class. If anyone has read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser then they may have noticed a lot of the similar points that he expresses both in his novel and in the book such as domination of the meat industry by a few corporations ,the cruel conditions of animals prior to being slaughtered for our consumption, and the consumption of tainted meat leading to death.

The First issue that should be brought up are the cruel living conditions of animals prior to being slaughtered for us to eat. As most of you know or probably have seen, these animals live in crowded spaces most often living in their own feces. Both crowded living spaces and having to stand in their own feces increase their likelihood of getting sick, and if one animal gets sick the odds are it will happen to others as well. As Food Inc pointed out there are instances, more frequently than we think, in which these sick animals are also slaughtered with the healthy ones and the spread of diseases just contaminates all the meat, but I'll discuss this later in more detail. One thing I'd like to point out was a commonly viewed clip which also appeared in Food Inc of a sick cow being pushed by forklift because it couldn't move on its own. These conditions must be put to end in order to ensure healthier meats for consumers.

The issue of the meat industry from slaughtering to packaging being dominated by a select few companies is definitely a serious issue. The most important reason why this issue is so serious is because the large number of animals being slaughtered in one facility increases the chances for meat to become tainted. As Food Inc pointed out, most of the meat we eat doesn't come from just one animal. For instance the ground beef that we eat in our hamburgers, either fast food or at home, is likely to come from hundreds even thousands of cows that are killed in a slaughterhouse. Thus the likely of eating contaminated meat increases because if one cow is infected with E. coli once it is killed and it's meat in thrown in with the rest it all becomes contaminated.

Lastly, I'd like to address the tragic instances in which people have died eating tainted meats. In Food Inc we hear the testimony of a woman about the death of her son Kevin who ate a hamburger at a fast food restaurant and about a week later died; the cause of death resulting from tainted meat. If anyone is interested Fast Food Nation details multiple cases of this in which Schlosser gets rather detailed in one case a boy's brain melts, he gets dementia, can't member his mom or dad, and dies less than a week after being diagnosed. This issue is a direct result of poor living conditions of animals which make it more prone to getting sick which in turn leads them upon being slaughtered to spread the disease into thousands of pounds of meat. The simple solution to solving this problem is to enforce stricter policies on the meat industry. Seems simple, however as Food Inc pointed out many of the top people at the FDA were former heads of meat industry corporations. Another problem is the power these corporations have by lobbying in Congress in order to ensure these policies don't become implemented. These corporations also have bought out politicians by financially supporting them when election times shows up.

The meat industry is a ruthless and cutthroat. As Kevin's mom stated in Food Inc, all she wanted was an apology and they wouldn't even give her that. This only further illustrates what kind of industry people are trying to battle in order to ensure safer more healthy meats to eat. Anyway, I hope this helps some folks out by explaining a little more in depth some of the issues from the movie. I'd highly recommend reading Fast Food Nation if anybody hasn't; the book will at least make you stop and think about what you eat even if you don't change your eating habits (like me), but its beneficial just to get an idea of where activist are coming from.

----Jordan Rodriguez

Hey guys and gals!

In my effort to find an object for the upcoming project I read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. I won't actually be using it, BUT I encourage the rest of you to at least look up information on the novel and to look at the plot/political message in light of the film we watched in class, Food Inc. It's surprisingly eerie how similar the topics addressed in each work are. I'd be curious to see what the class may think about the similarities (keeping in mind that The Jungle was published in 1906). Does how little our food mechanization system has changed since the industrial revolution scare any of you?

Anyways...food for thought ;)

Jordan Willis

Farmer's Market

Instead of having class today at 9:30 AM, we had a field trip to the Farmer's Market near Shattuck Ave. that is open from 3 PM to 7 PM on Thursdays. Unlike most markets and grocery stores, the Farmer's Market is a small, outdoors market with many vendors that mainly sell organic produce that are locally grown and very fresh. The vendors were very kind and willing to answer any questions about their products. There were also some vendors that allowed people to sample some of their products, for example yogurt and strawberries. I think this method of advertising their products is a great way to show how much better they taste in comparision to the local grocery stores.

Although my first visit to the Farmer's Market was in the blazing sun, overall, I felt a relaxed atmosphere while I was visiting each stall. Parents could bring their children with them as they shop for fresh goods and there was even a person entertaining a group of kids. The Ecology Center seemed to be a great source of information, which I did not find useful initially until I asked them if they knew which foods were in season.

Organic Stories

In this week’s reading we got a chance to look at selected chapters from Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Perhaps one of the most interesting chapters that we read from this book was chapter nine, which was titled, “Big Organic.” Pollan sums up the importance of this chapter in one sentence, “the word ‘organic’ has proved to be one of the most powerful words in the supermarket.” Though true, it is beginning to appear that the word “organic” itself is not enough these days. As Pollan described in his story on his trip to Whole Foods, foods today come with stories attached to them that paint a naturally idealistic portrait in which the animals are in a pure state of bliss before they are slaughtered, processed, and packaged. Though the demand for organic foods is high, it would seem that consumers are demanding even more, the comfort in knowing that the animal meats they are buying are from animals that were “living in beautiful places” and were “free from unnecessary fear and distress.” Addressed in the later chapter concerning Pollan’s pig, perhaps this demand is to push away the disgust instinct that humans associate with dead and processed meats, or perhaps it is another instance of humans attempting to idealize nature for their own aesthetic benefits. Whatever the incentive may be, the fact of the matter is that grocery shoppers don’t want an image of factory assembly lines when they are buying their meat, but prefer to think of animals on open fields under the care of a local farmer before they are led into the slaughterhouse. Pollan reveals later on in this chapter, however, that these ideal stories may paint a different picture than reality actually reveals. “But the free-range story seems a bit of a stretch when you discover that the door remains firmly shut until the birds are at least five or six weeks old¾for fear they’ll catch something outside¾and the chickens are slaughtered only two weeks later.” Perhaps in the food industry ignorance is bliss.

The statement that ignorance is bliss when it comes to the food industry is shown best through Pollan’s experience with hunting and “cleaning” a pig. As Pollan and his hunting guide were processing the pig, Pollan began to have trouble being able to imagine ingesting this animal. “And yet now the prospect of sitting down to a meal of this animal was unthinkable. Pâté? Prosciutto? Ventricina? Just then I could have made myself vomit simply by picturing myself putting a fork to a bite of this pig.” This is the image that markets and food producers attempt to avoid by making the idealistic stories mentioned above. Our natural instincts have deterred away from hunting and preparing animals to buying and cooking meat, so even thinking about killing and cutting an animal open brings about the disgust instinct that should only be associated with eating things that would be detrimental to our health. It is interesting to notice how our natural instincts have changed and how our society has changed to adapt to these instincts, keeping the natural aspect of killing and preparing meat behind a closed curtain

Sam's Post

      This past week, I was thinking about themes and issues that kept coming up in our readings and class discussions. The main one that’s covered over and over is the issue of whether civilization or even humanity is a part of or is compatible with our cultural views of a perfect nature. But one thing that’s been prevalent in some of our materials that has had little discussion about it is that much of humanity tries to recognize things within nature that resemble us, not necessarily whether we’re compatible with the environment. I’ve especially seen this in the search for similarities in regards to the family unit.
      In the excerpt from the Teddy Bear Patriarchy, the author Donna Haraway describes how the stuffed gorillas at the American Museum of Natural History resemble “a natural family of close human relatives”. Even though that is not the focus of her book, she still acknowledges that one thing people are bound to notice that the gorillas are very closely related to us. In fact, she even points out that Akeley wanted to kill only as many gorillas as it would take to form a “natural family,” and also took pictures of a group of elephants that obviously represented a “perfect family.” This sentiment is again reflected in the Cold War 1950s, where “Americans upheld the nuclear family as a safe haven,” and the shows of the time like Adventure capitalized on this, showing instances in nature that reflected the perfect family, and equating the Soviets with animals like bees that abandoned their mates and had no sense of family. We also see this need to look for the family unit in the films we were shown in class, like the Disney film that portrayed the polar bear family that everyone “awwwwwed” at. Again, we see the family unit, and we are engrossed, especially when that unit includes two playful cubs.
      The question I have is why we are so intent on finding the model family in nature, even when nature is a artificially constructed entity like the taxidermy exhibit at the Museum. It appears to be a constant theme over time, but why is it so important? During the Cold War, people were afraid and could find solace in shows like Adventure, but Akeley lived during the late 1800s and early 1900s, and today we aren’t scared of the Russians and don’t need to find solace. I think that maybe the overall reason we look for the family in nature is to equate human society with animal society, and draw comfort from the idea that sometimes nature seems to reflect us instead of us always having to reflect and become more like a perfect wilderness. In other words, maybe our constant seeking of the family unit is a way of ensuring that we in fact are “natural” beings just like animals in nature, since we both divide ourselves into family units, and are therefore closer to nature than might otherwise be imagined.

The Description of Animals in "The Land of Little Rain"

One of the most striking and interesting chapters that I found in Austin’s “The Land of Little Rain” was The Scavengers, particularly because of how she described the different animals of the desert and how they interact with one another in this ecosystem.

I was, however, interested in one line in particular, which was when Austin described how different animals feed off of the carrion that they manage to find when food sources may be scarce. She stated, “Once at Red Rock, in a year of green pasture, which is a bad time for scavengers, we saw two buzzards, five ravens, and a coyote feeding on the same carrion, and only the coyote seemed ashamed of the company.”

What interested me the most about this line was how Austin managed to describe the interaction of the various animals living together. I think that it is quite unusual to observe such a variety of different species of animals feeding and sharing a single piece of food. Usually, it would be suspected that only animals of the same species would even consider sharing food because many would probably be inclined to be territorial to what they manage to find.

This also touches on a discussion point that was brought up, which is that Austin may sometimes humanize her description of nature especially in this particular chapter. This could be noted in the above quote in how she described the presence of the coyote eating the communal piece of food. She described the animal as being “ashamed of the company,” and this may be because it is the only animal in the group that is not a bird, and therefore may seem out of place.