The two essays, Louis Owens's, “The American Indian Wilderness,” and Aldo Leopold's “Thinking Like a Mountain, from A Sand Country Almanac” share some common elements. After exploring these two essays it will be apparent that both authors used similar rhetoric. Both authors come to the final conclusion that when mankind tries to control nature he is unable to see all of the unintended consequences of his actions and he usually makes the wrong choice. If we let nature run its course and choose to work with nature, then we will both be better off. Both essays take place with a mountain watching in the background. The mountain is described as having personal attributes. Owens gives life to his mountain by describing it as “the Great Mother” with “shoulders”, while Leopold's mountain is able to think. Meanwhile, in both essays the mountain is in the background taking everything in. Also, both authors start out with a certain way of thinking about nature and then, after having eye opening experiences, each author reconsiders his views and changes his direction.
Owens's essay is about an experience he had while he was working as a seasonal ranger for the U.S. Forest Service. The Forest Service planned to remove all of the man-made items from the forest and Owens was commissioned to remove an eighty year old log shelter house with a collapsed roof. The shelter was located in northern Washington in the Glacier Peak Wilderness in a place called White Pass. Owens describes White Pass as being located “just below one shoulder of the great mountain”. This was not just any mountain, it was the mountain the Salishan people named Dakobed, which means Great Mother, the place of emergence. This would be equivalent to the biblical name of Eve meaning “the mother of all”. This mountain is where everything came from and where everything began. Just as a mother cares for her child, this mountain is majestically standing there watching and caring for everything. Owens makes it come to life by claiming that the mountain has a shoulder. Owens camped at the location for five days while he dismantled and burned the shelter and then he replanted the area. The area where the shelter previously stood had been returned to its “original condition” and Owens felt very self-satisfied with his accomplishments. Just as he was a half-mile into the eleven mile hike back to his car, he encountered two women who were at least seventy years old. The women informed Owens that they were on their way to visit the shelter house their father had built for berry picking eighty years before. After Owens informed them that he had been sent to burn the shelter, he continued on his eleven mile journey. Owens describes how this encounter changed his views:
“In embracing a philosophy that saw the White Pass shelter--and all traces of humanity--as a shameful stain upon the “pure” wilderness, I had succumbed to a five-hundred-year-old pattern of deadly thinking that separates us from the natural world.”
Owens realizes that the shelter was a part of the ecosystem and the mountain was capable of looking after its welfare. Owens closes his essay with the following:
“Unless Americans, and all human beings, can learn to imagine themselves as intimately and inextricably related to every aspect of the world they inhabit, with the extraordinary responsibilities such relationship entails—unless they can learn what the indigenous peoples of the Americas knew and often still know—the earth simply will not survive. A few square miles of something called wilderness will become the sign of failure everywhere."
Owens reached the conclusion that in order for us to survive we need to be one with nature and not be in control of nature.
Leopold's essay starts by describing how the howl of the wolf sends a tragic message to everyone who hears it. Leopold paints the picture that everyone and everything would be better off without the wolf, but the mountain takes a different view:
“Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf.”
Here again the author brings the mountain to life by claiming that it “has lived” and that it is capable of listening and perhaps even of having an opinion. Leopold expresses that he also viewed the wolves as a nuisance to society until he witnessed a wolf die. While he was in a group eating lunch on a “rimrock”, a pack of wolves appeared below. After eagerly shooting six or seven wolves he describes the encounter that changed his views:
“We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes—something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then,and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.”
Notice again that the mountain takes on human characteristics with an ability to think and also that at this moment Leopold changes his personal view. The author then tells the reader that after most states have gotten rid of the wolves that there is now an abundance of deer. As a result the mountain side is trodden with deer trails and most of the edible brush and seedlings are ruined. The leaves of every tree are removed “to the height of a saddle-horn”. The mountain is not able to grow enough food for the deer and tragically many die of starvation. Now just as the deer feared the wolves, the mountain is in fear of the deer. Leopold ends his essay with:
“Perhaps this is behind Thoreau's dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world.Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men.”
In conclusion, each one of these authors could have used the others final remark as their own ending. By changing wolf to cabin, Owens could have ended by saying: “Perhaps this is behind Thoreau's dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning of the cabin, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men.” Similarly, Leopold could have ended by saying “Unless Americans, and all human beings, can learn to imagine themselves as intimately and inextricably related to every aspect of the world they inhabit, with the extraordinary responsibilities such relationship entails—unless they can learn what the wolf and the mountain knew and often still know—the earth simply will not survive. A few square miles of something called wilderness will become the sign of failure everywhere.”
Works Cited.
Owens, Louis. “The American Indian Wilderness.” Saving Place: An Ecocomposition Reader. Ed. Sidney Dobrin. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2005. 68-71. Print.
Leopold, Aldo. “Thinking Like a Mountain, from A Sand County Almanac.” Saving Place: An Ecocomposition Reader. Ed. Sidney Dobrin. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2005. 68-71. Print.
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