Thinking Like a Mountain

"We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer deer strives with it's supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time." In the article, Thinking Like a Mountain, the author describes a time when he comes to realize that not everything is revolved around human development. In the text, he tells a story of when he and some other people were out having lunch near a river and saw what looked to be a deer struggling with the current of the river, only when they moved closer did they realize that it was not a deer but a wolf. Now as hunters, if you had the chance to kill an animal that was hunting down your game, you would obviously do it, and that is what they did. But the author saw something within the eyes of the dying wolf, something he had never seen before. He saw that what they had done was the complete opposite of what was good. He saw how the wolf, and all wild animals for that matter, were integrated within the mountain. He saw that everything was in perfect balance with everything else and that human development was disrupting the sustainability of the mountain. To sum everything up, Thinking Like a Mountain by: Aldo Leopold, is a text that tells the story of just one person realizing that the way the mountain and everything that lives in it thinks is the correct way to think when building an empire. Adopting the thought process of the mountain could lead to more environmentally sound developments and can lead to a much healthier global and local ecosystem.

Exoneration

How would you feel if you were wrongful convicted of a crime that you had no part in? How would you feel if years of your life were taken away from you and there was nothing you could do? Sadly, many people have had this happen to them and there was nothing that they could do to help themselves. Recently, our class has been looking into the U.S. justice system and what steps they take to make sure that the right person is serving jail time. During this process we learned about this thing called exoneration. Exoneration is the release of someone in jail because evidence has been provided to the court that they have the wrong person in prison. During class, we listened to the story of three men who had all been convicted and falsely accused of a murder that they did not commit. This story followed the actions they took during the initial trial and what they did behind bars to finally get their case re-opened. Due to the advancement in DNA evidence, these three men were able to prove themselves innocent and were able to get themselves released from jail. While it was all a happy ending, these men were convicted during their teenage years, meaning that they missed a lot of lives big moments. After they were released, the documentarian that made this recording talked to them and noticed that there were pictures of random people all over the place, this was because during their time in jail, the three men never got to fully experience the world around them so they were doing everything in their power to help fix that. Hearing about this story has given me conflicted feeling. On one and I am glad that these people are finally being able to live the life that was stolen from them but on the other, I feel as thought they have all been cheated of something that is rightfully theirs since birth. Hearing that young people who get exonerated are trying their hardest to learn the world around them almost breaks my heart, I mean, what if it was me who was wrongfully convicted and had my life ruthless stolen from me? Coming out of that situation, I would be like a child in a very large and unforgiving candy shop.