rachelmanija | (Reply)

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One thing this is reminding me of is when I first read Margaret Atwood as a teenager in NM and found a lot of her descriptions of nature familiar -- not the deep bush stuff, but just the general awareness of how vulnerable you are as a matter of course. And she saw it as an American/Canadian divide (understandably!) but to me it seemed more rural/urban. It's a little hard to put into words -- not so much stuff about risk or being reckless, but an awareness of how easily things can go pear-shaped and what you need to be aware of living in that kind of environment. Just, how nature itself isn't hostile or out to get you, but has to be taken on its own terms, respected in a way? Something like that. It's something I really don't feel in cities, or even a lot of suburbia, because there so much of the risk is humans and what they do. But in a way a grizzly isn't out to get you, and someone thinking they could tame it, like Treadwell, isn't seeing it for what it really is. ....feh, I am not putting this well and mixing up the concepts.