Catherine Greenfield-- Something to be Said-- In reference to The Practice of the Wild.

"As a contemporary thought we might also wonder how it is for those whose childhood landscape was being ripped up by bulldozers, or whose family moving about made it all a blur. " p.28, The Practice of the Wild-- Snyder

There is something to be said about people who have never had a permanant hearth. Because I have never had a patch of earth to call my own singular home, I have always seen the world, as a whole, as my home. I attatch myself to wherever I am at any given point. I glorify in the beauty of the place, and lament in its distruction, even if I have only been among that piece of wild for a short time. I cannot afford to tie my heartstrings to a particular tree or mountain range; nipping those ties every few months or years would be too much for me to handle. I would have scarred and calloused heartstrings if I let myself give my whole to one particular spot. Therefore, all things, to me, are sacred. All places, all things, and all people. Instead of being singularly attached, I love every place with equal portions of my whole heart, whether the landscape in question is natural or man-made. I am just as touched by one place as another, but that doesn't mean I am less touched as someone who calls that landscape his or her home. I am simply touched differently. Maybe not all of the crevices of my heart imbibe in the glory of that one place alone. Maybe I am not completely stone-drunk from it. But I am, at the very least, severely inebriated by it. Too, I rarely tire of a particular place, because I know I probably won't see it again. No place is a monotony. As a result of this, I do not have to travel far or hike long distances to feel immersed in the words of the world. All of its languages and accents are plesant to the ears and eyes of my heart. Therefore, I do not pity myself or my ever-moving feet, nor do I pity others like me. I also don't see myself as superior, or count myself as more lucky for being able to commune wherever I am. I feel that it is with an equal heart that those who stay and those who go can love and breathe and be with the natural world. I feel that it is ignorant of Snyder, or of anyone, to count a goer as unlucky, and a stayer as lucky, by those reasons alone. After all-- there are plenty of people who have spent their whole lives in a place if immense beauty, and still have never experienced the glory of the place, just as there are people whose travels have taken them far and wide, and yet they feel no joy in the world. Those are the unlucky ones.