The American Geographies

In the article, The American Geographies, the author tries to make a distinction between the place that America used to be and the way it is now. Long ago, the indians inhabited much of the same land that is now filled with skyscrapers and factories. The indians had a different view of the land, they needed the land for their everyday survival. Everything they ate, the clothes they wore, the huts they built, all came from the nearby geography. They had a different idea of what nature is, of what wilderness truly is about. In today's world, we can eat strawberries any time of the year and never pick up a shovel. We can order goods from all around the world, and obtain them at a reasonable price. We can build large cities in the middle of the desert, build hotels over lakes, and build buildings many times taller than the tallest trees. We treat nature as a spectacle, something there for our viewing pleasure, not for its own reasons. When we go to a natural park, we expect to see lots of wild animals, but is that how nature really is. In the old vast forests, large predators had large tracts of land to roam, unbroken by a lacework of roads and fences. Zoo's are not a natural phenomenon, they are an alteration of the land. We now have the power to transform the land to fit our wants.