Caroline Dillard Outside Reading 2: 2/7/23 (Man and Nature)

I recently read Man and Nature by Marsh in which he discusses, in length, the lasting negative impacts Humans have had on the land, plants, and animals. We disturb the land by domesticating, exploiting, deforesting, irrigating, ditching and damming all for human needs. Unlike animals we act with foresight to a end product. We do not act on instinct like animals and therefore we over exert nature past the balance. Native plants and animals exist in nature with the balance but we have evolved to push nature past that limit because of our intellect of the future. We interact with nature in a mediated way, while animals interact with nature in an immediate way. Humans alter the landscape and nature cannot return. Reading this puts the way humans describe progress and civilization in a harsh light. We degrade nature all in the name of human progress and innovation. For years nature and natural resources have been seen as an economic commodity to be exploited. I appreciate that in the world we live in now, people have more compassion towards the environment. Reading this makes me think about my own hometown. Every time I go back to my suburban hometown, a new stand of trees has been cleared for new houses. It saddens me to see wonderfully tall trees be knocked down and habitats lost.