Mary Austin In The Scavengers By Mary Annie Dillard

On my first day on campus at University of Colorado Boulder, my friend described the hike she wanted to take me on. She told me how beautiful the sun setting behind the mountains was, how perfectly the leaves seemed to fall off the trees showing the start of fall, and how cute the chipmunk was that scampered past her feet. Starting as early as writings from Henry David Thoreau, nature is described and viewed in a romantic sense. We seem to ignore the parts about destruction, pollution, and disturbance, the darker aspects of nature. From a realist point of view, nature is represented as cruel and brutal. Furthermore, human impact exhausts natural resources and leaves waste behind. Annie Dillard in Fecundity crushes the common idealistic conception
Austin says, “Death by starvation is slow. The heavy-headed, rack-boned cattle totter in the fruitless trails; they stand for long, patient intervals; they lie down and do not rise. There is fear in their eyes when they are first stricken, but afterward only intolerable weariness. I suppose the dumb creatures know nearly as much of death as do their betters, who have only the more imagination” (Austin, 137). She describes nature as a sort of merciless balance; the weak do not survive and the “scavengers” succeed. The cattle are not smart enough to know when they are dying and the scavengers feed off their death. Similarly to Dillard, Austin is covertly mentioning the circle of life. As one creature dies, another can live. In this case, nature is “natural” and is completely self-sustainable, regenerating and repopulating based on this cycle. Another concept Austin mentions is the human role in nature. She says, “Man is a great blunderer going about in the woods… There is no scavenger that eats tin cans, and no wild thing leaves a like disfigurement on the forest floor” (Austin, 139). Humans are the external force that wreak havoc with nature. They disrupt the balance by leaving a trace and do not respect how it is. Humans view nature as a material resource at their disposal, when it truly belongs to no one. They believe they can conquer nature by
He says, “Truly, I doubt if one could wish a better hell for one’s enemies than some of the wretched chambers here, where men rove about like troubled spirits in a purgatory of man’s devising; nor any mental state worse than it which most of these victims of Mother Nature find themselves. As the bottom nothing but darkness and thickness of wit, and dullness of feeling…”(Dreiser, 190). Through strong descriptions, Dreiser shows us the misery that can be nature. The men working here cannot help but to be stuck in this hole. Humans are so focused on industrialization, profit, and luxuries that they do not stop to think how it destroys nature. These factories and mills, in turn, become the disgusting aspects of nature that we hate to see. Similarly to Austin’s ideas, Dreiser touches on how humans see nature as a resource, not something untouchable. Dreiser says, “The ground under your feet is discolored by oil, and all the wagons, cars, implements, machinery, buildings, and the men, of course, are splotched and spotted with it” (Dreiser, 189). Humans build their factories, pollute the grounds, and walk all over nature. It is a caste system where the “unintelligent” are stuck at the bottom. Imagining nature as repulsive crushes the common romantic views; it becomes the untalked about and the ignored aspect that we do not even try to