Final Presentation

For the end of the semester, one of the last things in the class was a group video presentation. I partnered with Merrill, and the two of us have done multiple things together throughout the semester: we were in the same group for the lead respondent activity and were in the same canoe on the class canoe trip. In the end, we did our presentation based on themes we discussed in class and did it as a voiceover with pictures on the screen.

            The link to our video is here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0LbxOgBrjc

            This was also our justification for our video overall:

During this semester both of us feel that we learned quite a bit about nature and how we position ourselves in it. Throughout the semester as a class we’ve discussed multiple themes concerning nature and its wellbeing, as well as how human nature shapes or affects nature and how nature in turn affects us. With everything we’ve discussed and experienced in class with the class readings and trips to the Nature Center and canoeing on the Trinity River, our interest piqued concerning the theme of human manipulation of nature. This is because even in our everyday lives we have lasting impacts on the nature surrounding us and we wanted to reflect on this point more in depth.

As we thought about the format of our video, we thought it would be easier to discuss themes with a voiceover instead of trying to decide what kind of content to have as a background. We also pulled from our shared experiences, as we have done multiple things throughout the semester together in addition to the shared class experience; for instance, we were in the same group for the lead respondent activity where we discussed Abbey’s thoughts. Our video may not have a specific entertainment factor, but we thought our reflections about this theme were worthy of a more serious style of video.

Abbey used his gift of writing to argue that preservation of our national parks is of higher importance than making them accessible to more of the public. Our class discussion on this subject make us think a lot about what accessibility should look like in the parks. Every park in our country, national or otherwise, experiences some degree of a human imprint, but just how big is that imprint allowed to get before it starts destroying nature?

Wendell Berry addressed a different point related to our manipulation of nature when he discussed our attempt to constrict wildness to the boundaries of parks. To many of us, once we think of nature preserves we think the problem is fixed because we’ve portioned off a section of “wildness.” We thought it was interesting that we read Berry’s thoughts after going to the Nature Center. We wanted to remind the class about discussions we had with the Nature Center staff about what wildness looks within the grounds of their land, and how in some ways they are forced to “tame” wildness for the sake of park maintenance and accessibility. For example, the Nature Center has different trails and paved roads weaving through it, connecting the public to nature but also dividing nature into manmade sections. These roads and spots such as the observation deck, which we helped clear, allow a bigger portion of our population to experience nature. But was Abbey right? Is even our own Nature Center creating possibilities to experience nature at the cost of nature itself?

Even as we reflect on both sides of this argument throughout our video, we are left wondering, where do you draw the line? In our video script we question what rights we have to manipulate nature, and whether this manipulation is worth it, because in order for people to desire to preserve nature, they need to know what they are preserving.

As we state in our video’s conclusion, we feel that this class has stirred in both of us a greater appreciation of nature, and also a greater awareness of the dangers it faces every day. We both feel as though moving forward we will be better advocates for preservation, and will try to educate the people around us about the importance of keeping wildness wild. We hope that our video reminds the class of this all-important topic, and leaves them with some important questions to answer for themselves.