I don't think all of your stuff was that much of a stretch. The whole road concept is pretty cool. A lot of your ideas seemed to point to the reading we did/idea I had in class about humans being terrified of death/nature/the "world" (human world) ending. We build town centers in a spot far from everyone else as protection, then slowly move out. Safety is a number one human concern, and by having a central location, we are able to cover our asses a little. My guess is roads were created by explorers and adventurers, even on a smaller scale. A large scale example is western expansion and manifest destiny stuff leading to highways and train tracks headed out that way. Smaller scale might be a guy wanting a farm, and then the road developing from his farm to the next, and so on.
As for the lack of paths and Eden stuff, yeah that's pretty not horrible. It has to do with the adventure stuff I was talking about, and how explorers created their own paths. To attempt to bring in the national park stuff, this might have to do with why Americans kicked native people out. If other people were living on the land, although not noticeable, the area still had an underlying sense of human contact, taking away from the spiritual connection many people felt. Eh? Maybe?
meh.
I would like to respond to buntaines post about roads. I agree with everything you said. When i first read the question you're question, i don't know why but i thought of the nation parks reading. To me, the thought of heading off to be in the wilderness is not completely what you're doing when most people are taking roads to get there. And the roads that are predefined show only the most pristine and beautiful landscapes, and leaves out all the less enjoyable parts of the park. I think of who built the roads and why they would make them in a national park? In the reading, the the park ranger was stuggling with this same question when people came to map out a new road. They said their reason for this was so that more people could have access to the national park. This seemed almost fake to me. Should't you go to the wilderness to see the true outdoors?
I have wetlands basically in my back yard, and there are so many restrictions regarding them. We had to go through this whole approval process to do construction on our house because the wetlands are protected land. There's sort of a gray area in terms of responsibility for the land, we own part of them, the town dictates what we can do on them yet the town does nothing to maintain them, take care of them, or check in to make sure people are leaving them alone. I have similar questions about the wetlands in my backyard as the ones you mentioned in your project, why does the town insist on protecting/regulating it when they never go there or do anything there?
Will Freedberg, I'm going to try to respond to your post as best as I can, but forgive me if take some liberties with it. I thought your question about the residents downstream from Mystic river getting some of stuff washed down by the dump was really interesting. Your points about the location of lower class neighborhoods in conjunction with lower class environmental locations is a connection i think we've been playing around with this mod a lot. This is definitely illustrated with New Orleans and the lower ninth. there was a reason that the poorest part of the city got hit the hardest when the levees broke down. Also in the reading about the Boston water system that we did (that Rachel Lev referenced), draws in some of the same points. most people that could pay for private water did and the people that couldnt were stuck with the cheap tap water.
I talked about this in my post and I think one of the major take-away things I've learned in this class is about who gets to experience what kind of environment. The notion that not everyone gets to experience " the pretty nature" and the ones who do have the means to do it. Likewise, often times those who are at the mercy of the environment when it turns ugly are people in the lower class (thats not true for everything, earthquakes in california don't discriminate whether they hit beverly hills or compton but its often that the shittier parts of town are shitty because of the environment. ) As we pointed out in the beginning of the course, which seems even more true now, I think the lens of environmental history can open up these type of discussions that we normally wouldnt connect with the "environment" but clearly the environment plays a much bigger role in it than we might have previously thought.
Isaac’ the accessibility of nature period is definitely of some value, although I think much more sentimentally than monetarily. If I privately own a property right next to a manageable piece of nature, I’m going to a) think that that makes my property more valuable and b) I’m going to use that said value if I ever sell that property. Look, you’re right next to your own little piece of nature, you don’t have to travel anywhere! It’s a little…..nuts, because you’re right, it’s not like the aqueduct is a portal to the African Savannah or anything, but it’s all about reassuring ourselves. I (and by I, I’m referring to the private land owner) want to know that I’m close to nature, and therefore I’m willing to pay more for a house that’s closer to the aqueduct. Maybe it's another form of human control. If you're closer to the nature, you feel like you have more of an impact over it, and it feels more like your own, even if its public. Personally I’d never pay a cent more to be closer to a natural piece of land unless it was something I’d never be able to experience anywhere else (say, the African Savannah). But an aqueduct? It boggles my mind just as much as it boggles yours.
Responding to AJ’s post: I think it is interesting that you related your questions about a brewery to the reading about water in Boston, especially because one of the reasons people were in support of clean water for everyone is that it would drastically reduce the amount of alcohol consumed. It wasn’t discussed in the water reading, I think it is also interesting that the immigrants wanted a place to get good beer, when clearly they would also want easy access to good water. It seems like this would be a group that would not necessarily have been on either side of the clean water debate. They would have obviously wanted clean water and would have had less access to it, because the immigrants coming in started out in the lower class. Then again they could drink beer instead or mix the dirty water with beer and not necessarily mind because it was part of their culture. They also came from a country where (as far as I know), there was no prohibition movement. It seems like the immigrants that helped found the brewery would have been on both sides of the fence of the water argument.
If the brewery was not shut down during prohibition, what was it used for. Did it still produce alcohol or was it used for some other purpose?
So, whats interesting about your comparison is that the hideous and desolate wilderness is something people then continued to explore and adapt to, whereas your ancestors were running away from land they felt betrayed by or afraid of.
I wonder how much suffering humans have to attribute to their environment in order to say they've had enough. I guess things have to be good and turn bad, like with the potato famine, for a human to feel they're being mistreated by their environment.
Because you think of urban slums, where the quality of living can keep a stasis of almost unlivable for tons of different environmental factors and last for longer than a life time- but if you're born into it, it doesn't seem like "betrayal" because its never demonstrated anything else.
I guess my question is why people kept settling if the land was so hideous and desolate. I guess there's the element of ownership, in that it wasn't (yet) THEIR land… meaning, the betrayal wasn't by a land the settlers owned. I guess you have to call an environment home before it can really betray you.
hey so i know this is late + Gigi already responded to it, but I'd like to backtrack to Olivia Becker's post
as Olivia mentioned and gigi corroborated, the removal of Mt. Auborn from the city calls in to question a lot of ideas/conflicts about accessibility. Yet the accessibility we keep talking about I feel is very literal, LITERALLY you needed a horse and carriage to get yourself out there and obviously this required finances that many others didnt (and, for the modern equivalent) still dont have. And in this respect, there is really nothing to argue beyond whether or not one is okay with finances as an "in" to anything--nature or otherwise.
Yet something I feel as if we as a class have touched a little bit on (but would like to explore further) is intellectual/cerebral accessibility. I believe one who is financially privileged can more readily appreciate the beauty of a serene lake because they can AFFORD (however you want to interpret that) the leisure time and distance from nature. While I'm sure if we were to take a day trip to the world of "A Hideous and Desolate Wilderness" we would actually find the 200 ft trees covered in snow and ice quite beautiful. Less so if it was our reality and we must survive with/from it. Only when your self-sufficiency is several degrees removed from literal land can one appreciate nature objectively.
In this respect, I believe that Mt. Auborn was in a city it would a) defeat the purpose of a "natural escape" (i.e "wealthy escape") and b) even if the semblance of a natural scene was produced, it would be looked over in the same way from the working class.
The wetlands issue is definitely a thorny one. I think it exemplifies some of the issues that came up around “who knows what’s best”- who gets to dictate how greenspaces should be used, managed, or developed. I know that a lot of big building-complexes (like schools) don’t just plow through wetlands because of drainage issues…. A couple of schools have actually had issues with flooding recently because they developed wet areas (water has to go somewhere- storm drainage, etc). But there are other concerns about pollution and how marsh water affects entire watersheds (read- drinking water supplies). So I wonder- if the State does so little with wetlands other than protect them from immediate development, should the government be responsible for them? If not the government, who? What do you DO with a wetland?
Also, interestingly, there are far more groups advocating the protection of wetlands in Massachusetts than the protection of uplands, woods, meadows, etc- not just because of the water issue, but for wildlife and recreation. And as much as I support that, I can’t help but wonder- why wetlands? Who or what decides what ecozone the government and other organizations should pick as a poster child for land conservation? I suspect there’s a practical reason why wetlands are most valuable in developed areas (rather than other types of undeveloped land), but I’m not sure what it is…. Anyone?
Well that was kinda self-involved and pointless but it’s eleven. Eh. Can’t always end on a strong note.
What Rachel said: "...assuming that his religious status had also endowed him with a clearer vision of land utilization. I think this is something we continue to see today, assuming that environmentalists, if given the chance, would know the "best" thing to do with our remaining nature..." made me think about how much more quickly environmental history seems to get at these kind of fundamental beliefs than other kinds of history, at least in classes that I've taken. In Afghanistan (with Doug) we studied the war in Afghanistan, which is obviously a really contentious issue, but in a way it's a lot easier to discuss the "should's" of historical issues like that than it is with environmental history, because people usually share pretty similar ideas of what's intrinsically valuable. Some people involved in the debate might value American life more highly than foreign life, but for the most part people agree that human life is the valuable thing there and it's just a question of whether the war does more good than bad for preserving it in the long run. And I feel like that's the case with almost all of the "should's" of traditional histories. But Environmental history also has this aspect where there's something inherently valuable in the study of the environment and the environment itself that's not just based on how it affects humans, which Worster talked about in the first reading we had. And maybe Pollan and Cronon would argue that the attitude that there's something intrinsically valuable in nature aside from how it affects us is an artificial, incorrect distinction, but the need to reconcile that attitude with the tradition attitude that nothing means anything with humans makes environmental history really hard nonetheless.
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