Sitting at our cabin and enjoying a rainy day, which kept us inside, I am reading Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose.
It is striking how Thomas Jefferson’s vision of America stretched far more than a hundred years into the future. His views of a continent not yet entirely known in his time were well ahead of their era.
Looking over the property, thinking about all this timber that has overtaken this former pasture, I get a view of the rural, agricultural America that one of our greatest Founding Fathers imagined — a land that, in many places, keeps going back to its primordial beginnings: the raw state of a rain forest, inhabited by a vast variety of fauna.
I am thinking about the impact an owner has on his land — the mutual respect between the human and the natural elements, the spiritual connection one establishes with their environment.
In our endeavors, we humans tend to transform our places into environments that best embody our dreams, our aspirations, and our understanding of the world.
But would it hurt to adapt to the place more than you would adapt the place to your liking?
words-of-mine 