In those swamps lay an army of frogs
defeated. Concrete lots, overhead sidewalks
connect the parking dots, purifying destruction.
Shining glass, showcasing unchecked capitalism
on the buffed floors. Robots sweeping, manning
surveillance cameras. Sterile yet void of authenticity.
The throne of the shopping mall kings and queens.
So fresh and so clean, clean.

I wake up and look to the east,
the mountains I see for my eyes are a feast.
So grand, so tall, so long, so vast,
and over the course of time they last.
Alone, I venture into the wild expanse,
with nothing but my shirt and pants.
The landscape strikes me with wonder and awe;
my mind was saturated with the beauty I saw.
I feel so insignificant in this mountainous land,
as time flies by, alone I stand.
To describe what I see, the words I lack,
perhaps it is time to journey back.

~Cliff, Mike, Elsa

Folks of a town on an old rail line
Thought to make the town square very fine
Put our town on the map,
The next great tourist trap,
What we need is a big ball of twine!

“Lost in Lower Manhattan”
Oh, night, all these headlights, this grid it seems so right.
From high in the sky, we know exactly why, from order you can’t go awry.
Central Park: with its perfectly-measured marks,
Old Penn Station: on-time trains giving off sparks.

South of canal, chaos ensues!
The grid disappears and subway stops
are nowhere to be found.

My friends and I would make trails, hike creeks, and dam them. In the Fall we would admire the foliage, and in the winter would sled and burrow in the snow. Sadly, as I grew up, the natural environment began to lose its appeal to me. I would swim, do homework, or relax, all of which hindered the amount of time that I was able to spend in the natural environment. I guess that the land ethic that I hold now comes from the childhood nostalgia I have for a simpler existence with the landscape. I want to be able to go back to a place where I can find so much in the landscape, for it truly was integral in my upbringing. My appreciation for land is thus mimetic and illusory in the sense that it comes from my imagined perception of the land, rather than its physicality.

I think that fun is a key aspect for kids to develop a land ethic. Their practice of what Leopold considers “right actions” will at first not explicitly ethics. Over time they might develop into a land ethic, but as children, I would say we don’t think enough about all of the implications of our actions to be able to call them ethics. I remember as a kid I was really short, too short, in fact, to be able to reach the light switches in my house. My dad understood the importance of cultivating good habits early on, though, and so fashioned a stick for me with a piece of wood on the end with which I could reach the switches to turn off the lights when I left a room. It meant that I felt empowered by being able to do things that taller (read: older and cooler–my brother and sister) people could, but I also had a new toy that made something like saving energy fun. If several people were in a room, I would rush to be the one to turn off the light when we left.

While a land ethic most definitely must include more than just simple energy-saving practices, this example shows that, at least for me, childhood experience and parental influence both play a crucial role in making the development of a land ethic later on possible.

My favorite place is my hometown- Mercer Island, Washington. Although Mercer Island is similar in some ways to many other suburbs, it’s location in Lake Washington, beautiful views of the water, mountains, and Seattle, and plenty of evergreens make it unique (especially from the landscape of New England).

The relationship between people and the environment in which they live seems complex and intriguing. I want to learn more about this relationship from a geographical perspective and also reflect on my personal interactions with the environment.