I grew up in Kenmore, WA, a small city outside of Seattle that borders the northern end of Lake Washington. A few minutes from my house lies Saint Edwards State Park, a park with dozens of miles of running, hiking, and biking trails that go down to Lake Washington and back through dense forested areas. […]

One thing I found particularly interesting this week was our discussion of Grid-Group cultural theory and the four different personalities and myths of nature of differing grid and group. It is easy to see this manifested in American culture especially with many examples of individualists and fatalists acting with respect to nature robust and nature […]

Starting off our textbook with Oostvaardersplassen and rewilding immediately puts this book in a contemporary environmentalist viewpoint. As Jim showed, this is a unique standpoint for a modern environmental studies or science textbook and sets our book apart. Exploring this concept of rewilding is an interesting way to show how our preconceived notions of nature […]

So far we have explored a wide array of new and old ideas dealing with the concept of the environment through scientific, political, value-based, classic, and contemporary mindsets. Covering so much in such a little amount of time resulted not with getting a good grasp on modern issues, but rather an expanded toolkit in which to […]

One article that really struck me was Christine Walley’s Where There is No Nature. Before reading this, nature for me existed in parks, in the wilderness of the mountains, and in far off jungles, tundra, and deserts. Nature definitely holds connotations of being pure, serene, untouched, and definitely separate from humans; it is something that people go […]

During this week’s readings, ecospirituality is an idea that really stood out to me. Particularly the excerpt we read from Ecotopia contained several very interesting ideas. We are living in an increasingly artificial world with our reliance on technology to provide knowledge, entertain us, and keep in touch with others. Ecospirituality seems to oppose this idea, […]

This past Friday we looked at how values affected the Foie Gras debate, a debate where the sole reasoning behind being against it is based upon valuing how animals are treated. I find this interesting because no one sane is actively supports poor treatment of animals, but rather those for Foie Gras have other issues […]