... The slight breeze chills in the crisp morning air as she trudges up the steep incline of the grassy hill, toes of her hard soled leather riding boots sinking into the grass - damp from morning dew - as she digs in to keep from slipping. She pauses a moment at the top to look over the wooden fence at the pasture beyond. The horses stand idly in the morning, tails flicking the occasional fly, heads pointed to the ground either lipping at foliage or muzzle deep in a hay bale. It is a lazy morning.
The girl removes a halter from a wooden post of the fence, and moves to unlock the gate and enter the gelding's pasture. She closes the door behind her, halter on one shoulder, wandering towards a bay thoroughbred gelding with a dark mane and tail. She whistles softly, and his perk up as he lifts his head to look at her, attentive. One hoof stamps at the ground. A smile plays its way into the soft lines of her face as she walked within arms reach of him and pats him on the neck as she slips the halter over his head and secures it. He stamps again and tosses his head as she finished attaching the lead rope to his halter - food awaits in the stable, and he is eager to eat. This is the routine.
At the slightest pressure on the lead the bay gelding follows the girl. She leads him through the pasture, past the run-in that shelters the horses when it rains, around the large half-eaten hay bales. As she rounds the corner with the bay gelding at her shoulder, the ground trembles and heaves as a thunderous mass of deep brown muscle surges past, a hands breath from colliding with her. The girl's heart leaps into her throat as she looks up at the darker horse, another thoroughbred. He is the epitome of equine, nostrils flared in the cool air, sides expanding from his morning jaunt - ears upright and alert as his minute twitches and shifts of weight ripple through his muscular body, from shoulders to hindquarters. He is beauty, he is power, he is speed. His attention drifts away for an infinitesimal instant, and he rolls forward with sound and fury, rearing up before roaring into a gallop - again mere breaths from the girl's chest - vanishing into the back of the pasture as the clamor of his hooves echoes into the still morning. ...
I count myself lucky to have had many 'thrilling/magical/enchanting engagements with the non-human world' in my life so far. My all time favorite family vacation (well, until visiting Italy this past spring) was one to Shenandoah National Park. I still remember looking out from the top of a precipice with my dad, after hiking a long mountain trial through the forest and being absolutely floored by the beauty of the valley below me. During my study abroad semester in Jordan, I saw breathtakingly desolate expanses of desert with great red monoliths of tableaus rising from them; grand mountain ranges with fear-inspiring drops and canyons, and some of the most verduous plant life I have experience.
None of these suited my purposes, though. Nature is beautiful - but all of the sites I have seen border the humanist perspective. What did these great vistas do for me? They inspired me. I found them thrilling, magical, enchanting. In most all of the respects immediately above, I was a tourist, traveling to these sites to enjoy them. The first vignette, however, was a powerful - frightening - reminder of my humanity. I was the girl in the pasture. The darker gelding - we call him Junior - who galloped past could have trampled me in that moment. In that instant, he was in control. It was a powerful reminder of balance. Humanity prides itself on its intelligence, its creativity, its ingenuity. We forget that, despite all of that, we are essentially weak. We are not faster, bigger, or stronger than many species on our planet.
We should concern ourselves with 'saving nature' because we need to be reminded that our world is one of balance. Human beings are just another mammal - granted, a mammal that has taken control over much of the world, and proliferated it in a way I don't believe any other species has - but we are a part of the cycle, and even up until now there has been little respect for that fact. 'Nature' has existed for millenia before humans appeared on the earth, and will no doubt continue to - in some form - long after we are gone. Why do we, as humans, believe we have any right to interfere with the natural order as it has existed since the creation of our planet? Sometimes we need to be reminded of our place in order to concentrate on putting the natural world back into balance, if that is even possible with all the irreparable damage that has been done.
I count myself lucky to have had many 'thrilling/magical/enchanting engagements with the non-human world' in my life so far. My all time favorite family vacation (well, until visiting Italy this past spring) was one to Shenandoah National Park. I still remember looking out from the top of a precipice with my dad, after hiking a long mountain trial through the forest and being absolutely floored by the beauty of the valley below me. During my study abroad semester in Jordan, I saw breathtakingly desolate expanses of desert with great red monoliths of tableaus rising from them; grand mountain ranges with fear-inspiring drops and canyons, and some of the most verduous plant life I have experience.
None of these suited my purposes, though. Nature is beautiful - but all of the sites I have seen border the humanist perspective. What did these great vistas do for me? They inspired me. I found them thrilling, magical, enchanting. In most all of the respects immediately above, I was a tourist, traveling to these sites to enjoy them. The first vignette, however, was a powerful - frightening - reminder of my humanity. I was the girl in the pasture. The darker gelding - we call him Junior - who galloped past could have trampled me in that moment. In that instant, he was in control. It was a powerful reminder of balance. Humanity prides itself on its intelligence, its creativity, its ingenuity. We forget that, despite all of that, we are essentially weak. We are not faster, bigger, or stronger than many species on our planet.
We should concern ourselves with 'saving nature' because we need to be reminded that our world is one of balance. Human beings are just another mammal - granted, a mammal that has taken control over much of the world, and proliferated it in a way I don't believe any other species has - but we are a part of the cycle, and even up until now there has been little respect for that fact. 'Nature' has existed for millenia before humans appeared on the earth, and will no doubt continue to - in some form - long after we are gone. Why do we, as humans, believe we have any right to interfere with the natural order as it has existed since the creation of our planet? Sometimes we need to be reminded of our place in order to concentrate on putting the natural world back into balance, if that is even possible with all the irreparable damage that has been done.
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