Understanding Places

Foster Parrots- The New England Exotic Wildlife Sanctuary has become a new home of mine over the past year. I volunteer here every Monday and always get excited when it is bird day. I look forward to cleaning up the very messy animals as well as feeding them. At first glance they can be intimidating and are always loud and many ask why birds? Well, birds outside of their beauty and high intelligence, are freedom. To fly means no obstacle can stop them. Their whole perspective is one from the sky. Here these birds are cared for, because many people think they are a fun pet. They are beautiful, but can live to 80 and is the equivalent of caring for a 7-year-old. In the readings, especially in Kingsolvers, it talks about a place such as the forest being a place of inspiration and importance. I do agree with that, but I would also say what makes a place is the inhabitants.  Kingsolver states she loves to keep to her hollow and is as content there more so than anywhere else. It is not only the place that she talks about, but also the brief interactions with neighbors and the animals that come by. A place can have beauty and feel special, but what really helps in understanding places is how everything works. How animals use the trees for homes or to find food. That like the birds there is a pecking order and you do not leave your perch and hop onto another’s unless you want to overthrow the order.  In Williams, he states “place+people=politics”, as well as living in place with our neighbors. He understands too, that a place can be beautiful, but the inhabitants are what makes it so much more wonderful. His main points seem to be how people have altered the landscape and the fights on how to use lands. There is a movement to save what is still left and around before the damages of the industrial age, but there are the “sagebrush rebels” who are fighting to allow more and more wilderness to be tamed. Used for their cattle and to allow themselves to continue their way of life. In truth, it is hard to say who is just, how important is it to protect nature Vs protecting the people. Obviously, both need to be considered and recognizing the importance of nature for the rebels and recognizing the importance of the rebels to the EPA. Not only is nature beauty, but it provides for our existence; it gives us water, protection, and resources. We need to realize that we are part of nature and we are allowed to use it, but we need to use it with respect and care. To comment back on place+people= politics, I feel is a blank statement. This essentially means people gathered in a place will argue over how to use it. All politics is is just people deciding the best way to live.  As much as we have separated ourselves from nature, we have only become more dependent on it. Now more than ever is a time in which we need to rethink the importance of nature and how to live.