Nature: Your Next Vacation Destination!
John is an accountant at a major office in the city. He works his 9-5 every weekday and spends time on maintaining his humble 3,000 square foot home on the weekends. His wife, Jane, rears their children, Jack and Jill, while John is away. John loves his family and enjoys his job but, like most hard working men, he strives to get away every now and then.
Every few months or so, John rounds up the family for a vacation. They pack their cameras, game boys, iPods, lunchables, you know-the essentials, and pile into the car. John drives his family for hours away from the city; he has worked hard for this holiday.
John parks the car and wakes up his sleeping family to reveal their destination: a wildlife reserve! Jack and Jill explode from their seats to marvel at the natural beauty. The towering evergreen trees serve as a stage for the magnificent, snow-capped crags in the distance. A rustling on the forest floor can be heard, and if they look carefully, they might just see a deer! John presents his family with entry passes and guidebooks to the nature trail-their adventure is about to begin. And to think that the hand of man has never touched this pristine mecca of natural beauty!
Sound too good to be true? That's because it is. We may think, or rather hope, that there are still places on this planet that have not fallen to the will of humankind, but the truth is that there is not. We may also think that there's bound to be a place in the remote wilderness that has been unchanged and unspoiled since the dawn of time. Another whammy. As heart wrenching as it seems, there are in fact no such places on Earth. But what about Yellowstone? Well ever since the US government was nice enough to relocate the Miwok Indians to a display "Indian Village," Yellowstone has been sterilized of all traces of modern man in an effort to pull the proverbial wool over the eyes of visitors.
So is this the future of nature-eradicating all elements deemed "invasive" and locking a forest in ecological stasis until a cataclysmic event erases the pristine? At this rate, yes, but is that such a bad thing? The beauty of "nature" is that it is never pristine and always changing. The idea of a picturesque landscape is purely pastoral and has no real ecological value. The importance of a system cannot be measured in hues and tones, or worse, dollars and cents. Perhaps these pastoral stasis generators are to remain as theme parks for those who need to escape the city. After all, most visitors to national parks and nature reserves do not know (and most likely do not care) what happens to the environment, as long as they can be fooled into thinking that it somehow matters.
