The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey

"They marched back the way they'd come, past the quiet, spayed, medicated machinery. Those doomed dinosaurs of iron, waiting patiently through the remainder of the night for buggering morning's rosy-fingered denouement. The agony of cylinder rings, jammed by a swollen piston, may be like other modes of sodomya crime against nature in the eyes of deux ex machina; who can say?" pg. 95
The detail in this passage gives a sense of how the author feels about machines. Refering to machines as a God, is very ironic. Abbey refers to the machine as spayed and medicated. Almost like a sleeping dog you don't want to wake. The machine seems to be resting and waiting for the mornings work. The words Abbey uses to describe this is very nasty and groteque. It's like the machine is this disgusting thing that is involved in disgusting acts.

American Adhan October 2001 by Maria Melendez

"Watch night spalling to the western edge

of invisible, its cool surrender

to the peach-colored breccia

of sunrise clouds (just water

that has lately collapsed

into form)....

The shattered world's particulates

fall everywhere around us;

the call to prayer means bowing

and facing them all."

This is an excerpt taken from Maria Melendez's poem American Adhan. The poem was written a month after America was attacked by the most devastating terrorists attack. This poem seems to be speaking of the fact that the towers are no longer visible and how sad and dull the sky seems. The clouds are now visible where before the towers would have been hiding them. The sky seems to be peaceful and so normal considering the recent damage. You can still see scattered ash and smog that has fallen everywhere in the city. It is time to pray and face our enemy. I also feel the title has a strong significance to this poem. An American Adhan. A struggle between two cultures.

"There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace." -Aldo Leopold

What I find amusing about this quote is how much truth there is in it. The society we live in today has too many commodities handed to them. We(society) have began to take all for granted. Most of us do not bother to grow our own crops and spend our days laboring in the field; instead we pay someone else to do all the hard work for us, and we just learn to take and take. When do we ever actually take time to realize that all of our possessions, from our food on the table to the roof over our heads, took hard work to build and make. It can be assumed that this is why our country is in such a health crisis with obesity Plenty of older folks and generations had to work their land to eat, build their own homes, and walk to the nearest store. Now, there is not one person who is willing to do all of that. And if there is, society tends to look down upon them and frown, wondering why he just doesn't use the easy button.

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Muir- My First Summer in the Sierra

"Now comes sundown. The west is all a glory of color transfiguring everything. Far up the Pilot Peak Ridge the radiant host of trees stand hushed and thoughtful, receiving the Sun's good night, as solemn and impressive a leave-taking as if sun and trees were to meet no more. The daylight fades, the color spell is broken, and the forest breathes free in the night breeze beneath the stars." Pg 183

When I first read these lines it reminds me of how beautiful sunsets are. Sunsets are something that is bigger than humans and hold a reminder to how small we are in this world. The language Muir uses in describing this sunset is phenomenal. He calls the trees radiant as in shining with light(sun). I can imagine the sun light being bright in between the rows of trees. Sitting and watching a sunset can be peaceful for many of us and how he personifies the trees as being hushed by the sunset's beauty. He also calls them thoughtful as if they are letting the sun have it's moment of beauty. Even the trees see the beauty in the sun and hold their breath until it disappears and is taken over by a night breeze. I found this small paragraph to be full of imagery and I can just relate to how much beauty is in small things we take for granted such as sunsets.

Stegner-"Beyond the Hundredth Meridian"

pg 256
"What destroyed the Indian wasn ot primairly political greed, land hunger, or military power, not the white man's germs or the white man's rum. What destroyed him was the manufactured products of a culture, iron and steel, guns, needles, wolen cloth, things taht once possessed could not be done without."
This is taken from Bernard DeVoto's,"The Course of the Empire". At least, if i understood the citations correctly. As I continue reading I realize that Stegner believes that the Indians were not intentionally exterminated. What he believes is that it is the culture that destroyed them. The assimilation to the American or white man's way of life. They died not because they were destroyed but because they lost some of their identity in accepting what the white man had to offer. Indians had a way of life before any white man came to their land. They didn't need anything that that the whites had to offer. They had their own culture and own way of cultivating the land. The white man may have offered them what we know as accessories or luxuries that they did not need. They did not need them at least until the white man came and took over their land.

Powell

This quote taken from The Exploration of the colorado River and Its Canyons pg.184

"Quite a number of Indians have each a patch of ground of two or three acres, on which they are raising wheat, potatoes, turnips,pumpkins, melons and other vegetables. Most of the crops are looking well, and it is rather suprising with what pride they show us that they are able to cultivate crops like white men. They are still occupying lodges, and refuse to build houses, assigning as a reason that when any one dies in a lodge it is always abandoned, and very often burned with all the efects of the deceased; and when houses have been built for them the houses have been treated in the same way. With their unclean habits, a fixed residence would doubtless be no pleasant place." - John Wesley Powell

Powell had began his exploration hoping to survey the land. Powell was also able to survey the Indian people who had first occupied the land before the American settlers came in and took it. In this quote I see two different sides of Powell. When I read the first line I felt that he was trying to show that Indians were just as capable as the white man yet I do sense a condescending tone. I believe that he may have been suprised at the Indian's abilities to farm. So to remind the reader that the Indians are indigenous, he has to include how they have different beliefs. It is interesting to learn that the Indian's beliefs about their dead and what Powell claims as their reason for being nomadic. Powell seems to be reminding the reader that , yeah sure, these Indians are able to learn the land and farm, yet look at how unwise they are when it comes to creating a home.

Thoreau Journal

"If I could, I would worship the pairings of my nails. I would fain improve every opportunity to wonder and worship, as a sunflower welcomes the light. The more thrilling, wonderful, divine objects I behold in a day, the more expanded and immortal I become." -Henry David Thoreau
I never saw the blue in the snow so bright, as this dark, damp stormy morning...suggesting that in darkest storms we may still have the hue of heaven in us- Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau always felt he was at peace in nature and exactly where he wanted to be and should be. The more he learned about nature, the more at peace he became with himself and the world around him. He realizes that even in the darkest of times there is always a small light that may symbolize that we are just a small part of the world and it's existence. "The hue of heaven", may still be in us, meaning there is still good in all of us, even though we may have been doing wrong.