Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Outside Reading #2: Adin Katz



I had the opportunity to read a piece by Douglas Christie entitled The Wild and The Sacred which opens with a section that talks about the disregard people have the wilderness through an anecdote concerning Headwaters Forest in northern California.  The Pacific Lumber Company is trying to cut down these colossal fantastic trees and the people of the area have come together to form a protest.  I discussed this in a section of my paper as an example of communitas where people have lost their social structure and are here connected through a mutual goal of saving the wilderness.  At one point in the reading the author quotes a drummer who states that the people and the forest are sharing one heartbeat which struck me as extremely interesting.  This is due mainly to the fact that we have become so isolated from nature since the industrial mentality set in. these people at this protest are aware of the importance of the wilderness and how it must be protected so that people do not lose it forever because despite its great power it still is fragile compared to our destructive might.   I discussed in my journal about landscapes of the sacred Lane’s idea of space and place and the need for a balance of both.  Here we see where place is attempting to disrupt this balance and thankfully people are there to oppose it unified in the knowledge that wilderness is necessary just as much as place is.  

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