Seeing Beyond the Human: The Transcendental Power of Nature

Transcription

1 Eble 1 Eric Eble CP1 Sophomore English Definition Essay 5 December 2014 Seeing Beyond the Human: The Transcendental Power of Nature In a standup gig at the Beacon Theatre, comedian Louis C.K. discusses throwing away a candy Comment [EE(1]: Be sure that your heading looks like this with your name and the correct date on the left. Comment [EE(2]: Be sure that your title is the same size font as the rest of your essay. wrapper in a city, which causes his friend to ask him if he cares about the environment; Louis responds in saying, This is New York City; this is not the environment. This is where people live. New York City is not the environment; New York City is a giant piece of litter (Louis C.K.). While he comments on nature mostly as a joke (he later traces the piece of litter through its life cycle to a dolphin wearing it as a hat ), does Louis C.K. s response to his friend demonstrate any truth? I d wager that the Romantics and Transcendentalists would say so. Beginning in a period known by many as the American Renaissance, this artistic movement focused mainly on exploring individualism, idealism, simplicity, and Comment [EE(3]: I used Louis C.K. standup as my attention grabber and asked a question to spur my discussion of nature. Comment [EE(4]: Feel free to use first-person pronouns; try, though, to stay away from using I think / believe / feel imagination put (and still puts!) great value in the natural. Many of these writers namely James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Ed Abbey defined the environment as a setting with great power to help individuals transcend their surface-level perceptions. Though society has largely driven away many of its wild spaces, nature is still any wild, wooded, Comment [EE(5]: Here s my background information, answering the question, Who are the Romantics and Transcendentalists? mountainous even sandy and arid place that has this effect on people who can step away from society to explore the environment s mysteries. Before exploring its effects on individuals, I have to first show how the Romantics and Comment [EE(6]: Here s my thesis: I define the power of nature as I see it in comparison with the Romantics and Transcendentalists. Transcendentalists define nature. The father of this movement, Ralph Waldo Emerson, claims in Nature When we speak of nature, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet (Emerson). He then describes the charming farms of men around his land, but claims that none of them [own] the landscape (Emerson). Thus, nature includes Comment [EE(7]: Notice how I ve attributed the quote ( claims = strong attribution verb) and cited it. settings that don t include man-made objects and structures beautiful places and sites that no one can

2 Eble 2 truly own. These places influenced every Romantic and Transcendentalist author. Thoreau had Walden Pond; Abbey had Moab. I ve had experiences in the Red River Gorge in Kentucky, in Grand Tetons and Glacier National Parks, and even in the South 180 Trails in Mariemont that have given me a glimpse at such lands, mountains and rivers that no one can own, that provide me with a poetical sense like Emerson that allows me great peace. Just an hour of hiking or running on trails not only gives me great calm, but helps me to write most of my best poetry. Yet, such scenes have largely become less important in the world, particularly in America, a land Comment [EE(8]: Here s my first personal experience. While I ve shared a general discussion of my outdoor experience, you can use specific anecdotes for your support. blessed with a wealth of natural settings and scenes. Since the Industrial Revolution, humans have immigrated away from rural settings to the city; likewise, as the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) illustrates, more than half of the earth's original forest cover has been destroyed due to human activity such as agriculture, development and logging ( Good Wood: How Forest Certification Helps the Environment ). Thus, some would argue that humans have lost their connection with nature, that technology and civilization are separate from nature. Yet, Romantics and Transcendentalists wrote during the beginning of the this reduction of wilderness; one of them, James Fenimore Cooper, illustrates Comment [EE(9]: I ve used an outside source as support for this claim; you don t have to use outside sources, but they can always help. in The Deerslayer that humans take great inspiration from nature in their own creative activities. In describing the scene before his protagonist, Natty Bumppo, meets with the Hurons, Cooper shows the beauty, claiming, It was probably from a similar scene that the mind of man first got its idea of the effects of gothic tracery and churchly hues, this temple of nature producing some such effect, so far as light and shadow were concerned, as the well-known offspring of human invention (Cooper). Thus, according to Cooper, nature fosters another important aspect of Transcendental art: Imagination. As it inspires humans to create their own architecture and art, nature has an almost religious power. Emerson, Thoreau, and Abbey, though, defined nature beyond its effects on human creations. They each saw intrinsic value in observing nature in itself, not in any way connected specifically to human civilization. Emerson s vision of the transparent eye-ball who see[s] all and is part or particle of God goes beyond civilization: The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, -- master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am

3 Eble 3 the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages (Emerson). Thus, nature helps people find truth beyond what they d find in a city. Likewise, Thoreau says, I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life ideas, feelings, sensations beyond what he could experience in society, where we live meanly, like ants (Thoreau). Only in nature in Thoreau s case, the woods can people face the essential parts of their lives and find great meaning. I can certainly understand Emerson and Thoreau s valuing of nature, particularly in my return trips to the Red River Gorge, just about two hours south of Cincinnati. Having visited this area to camp and hike and enjoy campfires and the travels of the sun in the day and night, I often empty my mind and worries onto the trails and return to society with greater knowledge of myself and a desire not to go home, to stay in Kentucky and enjoy these venerable old mountains, which have been like a comforting friend who allows me to walk around his house as myself. Ed Abbey, author of Desert Solitaire, would likely scoff at my definition of the wilderness as a companion. As he says in The First Morning, an early chapter of his book about working as a park ranger at Arches National Park, The personification of the natural is exactly the tendency I wish to Comment [EE(10]: Notice how in this body paragraph, I ve combined two authors work and my own experience. You can definitely organize your paragraphs according to the three authors you ll use; that s your call. Organize as you d like! You ll just need 2-3 examples per paragraph. express in myself (Abbey). Abbey hoped to find beauty and meaning in nature beyond himself, to be able to look at and into a juniper tree, a piece of quartz, a vulture, a spider, and see it as it is in itself, devoid of all humanly ascribed qualities (Abbey). Thus, he hoped to eliminate any human influence even mental! on nature, claiming, I d sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse (Abbey). While I certainly respect (and enjoy the literary fruits of) Abbey s solitude, which he shared with Emerson and Thoreau, this is an area of nature s transcendental effects that I only experience in needing to run outside every day for exercise and release of stress. Otherwise, I enjoy nature best with my wife next to me. Whether we ve enjoyed state parks in Wisconsin, honeymooned at the Gorge, or explored her home state of Montana, I ve found greater truth about life with her by my side in nature. People s relationships grow through such journeys in woods, on streams

4 Eble 4 and rivers, through deserts, over mountains. And though people worry about diminishing forests, terrifying mountaintop removal for coal mining, and heartbreaking oil spills ruining the oceans, I look Comment [EE(11]: Notice how I ve given a general statement to broaden my focus; otherwise, I have been talking about my own experience in defining nature here. forward to sharing these effects of nature with my daughter in the future so that she can find the same joy that the Transcendentalists and Romantics taught me to locate in places as simple as Mount Airy Forest or as huge as Yellowstone National Park.

5 Eble 5 Works Cited Abbey, Ed. The First Morning. Desert Solitaire. Balantine Books: New York, PDF file. Cooper, James Fenimore. The Deerslayer. Project Gutenberg. 26 January Web. 4 December Emerson, Ralph Waldo. From Nature. Adventures in American Literature. Holt, Rinehart, & Winston: Austin, Print. Good Wood: How Forest Certification Helps the Environment. Natural Resources Defense Council. 13 January Web. 4 December Comment [EE(12]: Remember: You need a Works Cited page. You can use my citations below (I didn t use the textbook for Cooper, but you can), but remember that your work should be in alphabetical order be indented after line one for each source not include n.d. or n.p., which EasyBib includes. Include URL s for web sources only include entries that you cite in your essay If you need any help here, you can visit 5/ for help. If you have any questions, please let me know. Louis C.K. Environment. Online Video Clip. YouTube. YouTube, 16 March Web. 4 December Thoreau, Henry David. From Walden. Adventures in American Literature. Holt, Rinehart, & Winston: Austin, Print.