Cronon, Tourism, and Our Backyards

The other day, as I walked from my French 101 class with my oral examination partner, I passed a group of around 30 people- clearly tourists to Ann Arbor- thronging together in front of UMMA, cameras pointed in the direction of some (apparently) fascinating object. I wanted to know what was so interesting, so I looked past them to see the object of their fascination. I laughed almost before I even realized what it was I was looking at: a squirrel chewing open an acorn.

Credits: J.D. LaRue (photographer), Will Caine (man), campus squirrel.

I said to my partner, "look, those tourists are frantically taking a picture of that squirrel," laughing as I did so. Her reply, however, surprised me:

"You know, I would've laughed at that a year ago, but when I visited Africa- where my group of travelers gawked at wild monkeys within a town, taking pictures of them along the way- the natives laughed at us, too. It was like, 'look at those stupid white people thinking the monkeys are cool. Monkeys are just a nuisance.' So now I don't laugh when they take pictures of the squirrels here, because I know it's curious to their knowledge."

The conversation we had made me think back to Cronon, and I almost blushed with embarrassment for having not learned anything from the article on first try: my friend showed me that I took squirrels for granted and considered them to be stupid, much like the cited locals' lack of consideration for monkeys. That is, my inability to see the valuable nature before me every day in the city of Ann Arbor makes me overlook squirrels that I pass. Indeed, taking for granted the trees on campus that get cut down for buildings or the bushes that house birds and other animals.

Cronon says that this oversight is exactly what is wrong with our current understanding of nature, and I agree with him-- this interaction only furthered my belief in Cronon's position. That is, the squirrels deserve to be regarded as nature, protected like all the other wildlife in Ann Arbor/our hometowns ought to be. While conservation efforts abroad are important, like that of the Rhino conservation effort, so too are conservation efforts back home. I realized in that moment that Cronon spoke more directly to me than I previously acknowledged. 

All of these trees, image courtesy Google Maps, no longer exist

For example, my neighborhood recently chopped down all of the pine trees that lined the road it backs up to-- "they'd gotten too big," -- for they were interfering with the power lines that run along the road. In a perfect example of Cronon's warning, the neighborhood association cut down the trees without second thought concerning their actions. The idea of wilderness, so ingrained in our conscious, left little room for the people deciding the fate of the trees to consider that the trees are part of nature, too. I now hate driving the road next to my neighborhood, for not only does the stretch look unfamiliar and barren, but it reminds me of the problematic paradox of our conservation of "wilderness" elsewhere while disregarding it in our very backyards.