I like living surrounded. I am in awe of a vast emptiness just 10 miles from my front door. I like seeing the snow covered mountains, existing as silent fortresses in the distance. I like the colors of life, the trees, the sagebrush covered hills, and the clear icy water. On my drives to school I feel as if I’m moving through a work of art. It doesn’t feel like that when I drive through a city. We live in a place surrounded by the unconstructed and the unassembled. We live surrounded by an unfeigned natural grandeur. We live surrounded by what feels like a vanishing phenomenon. It seems that in so many places unlike the Wood River Valley the natural is becoming surrounded by the fabricated. In Berkeley, California, I didn’t live surrounded. I lived in an urban sprawl, and if I felt inclined I could go find a caged wilderness. The natural was surrounded by, to use Bob Marley’s words, “a concrete jungle.” It was pathetic and depressing. Is there a point to this nostalgic ode to the wilderness of our valley, perhaps not? But it brings up many questions: should civilization be kept in check? At what point does that natural world have equal rights to those of human infrastructure? And, besides the obvious need for farmland, and trees for oxygen, does the human species even need the natural world? Is it just a luxury we can enjoy on an all expenses paid vacation, or is it perhaps a necessity of survival? I cannot help but marvel and what surrounds this place. I am humbled everyday. And maybe it is just that. Could it be that the mountains, the lakes, and the trees are there to humble us, to remind us that there will always be silent fortresses, just existing, looking down solemnly on the tribulations of man? Or maybe not. What do you think?
- Casper Brun