When the pioneers were feverishly venturing West, they had to stand on their horses' backs just to see over the prairie grass—that is how tall the fields used to grow. Every winter, my family and I used to load up our van and drive West on the long expanse to what used to be this new frontier.
Today, Americans venture to Europe, the Bahamas or Asia to get a glimpse of something new, something unseen by their eyes, something exotic. Yet this is what our country used to be—untamed horses running wild intermixed with massive herds of buffalo grazing freely. There were no highways, no John Nolen Drive or State Street—just unbound scenery for as far as the eye could see.
From shore to shore, America has ecosystems as diverse as any other continent. From the lush rolling hills of the East to the amazing mountain range of the West, the beauty that America used to be surrounded by, and in some sense is still surrounded by today, takes my breath away. Yet today the majority of us stand disconnected from this world.
We sit in classrooms, labs and libraries, and we get ""back to nature"" on weekend trips ""up north"" or to Devil's Lake. As college students, we all live hard-working, busy lives, but have we stopped and taken enough time to think about what our definition of ""success"" truly means?
The beauty of nature is all around us, yet our lives move so it feels like we live outside of it—walking over paved wetlands and bulldozed prairies without even realizing what used to be there. This disconnect from the land around us, and what we take from our environment just to sustain even a single breath, fuels our inability to see the connection between our actions and our losses.
You may be reading this thinking, ""But I walk to class and turn my lights off when I leave the room."" However, the lifestyle we strive for does not allow for a sustainable standard of living. Is this progress worth the simultaneous degradation of the innate earth processes that allow our very existence?
While it may not be realistic to go back to a time when nature was more than a commodity and life was slow, it is possible to re-evaluate our path. On this path, material excess does not mean success, and free space is more than a tool for gratuitous human interest. Instead, through small lifestyle and mentality changes, we ensure a sustainable future.
On this course of revision, we could all learn a lot from reflecting on what we have left behind on our path. On this journey, I would start off walking with the lobsters in Maine and work my way down the pebbled coast to the sun-drenched beaches of Florida, thinking back to a time when there were no traces of Disney World or the clubs of Miami. I would circle back up to the Great Lakes, then to California where the massive waves of the Pacific could crash over my head.
Finally, while hiking through the Rocky Mountains, I would stare up at their sheer immensity, contemplating just how small I am compared to their giant historical existence.
On my next road trip West with my family, I will be sure to drive slower, to breath deeper and gaze longer. The beauty that encompasses our lives should be a part of us all. Every scene and image revealing to us where we come from and how much we have left behind—teaching us who we are and what unbelievable beauty we have to fight for in the days to come.
