Blog Post #5

Nicole Wojnowski

Professor Melissa Santos

ENG 102-037

23 February 2018

The Importance of Connecting with Nature

In Eating the Landscape by Enrique Salmon, the author tells about human connection to nature in past times. Similar to Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, they discuss the loss of care for nature. We seem to have developed into a world where most people tend to take things for granted and don’t take the time to appreciate everything that we have. What we don’t always realize is that a lot of time, effort, and work is put into making the natural foods such as fruits and vegetables. Back then, the food was all-natural (non-processed) and everyone was taught to love and appreciate food, nature, and what the Earth gave to them, whereas today that is rarely taught.

On page 52, the quote “…in order to preserve the community, the land must also be preserved.” stuck out to me because I not only connected the book with Braiding Sweetgrass, but I also connected me to my personal life and community. I made the connection between Eating the Landscape and Braiding Sweetgrass because the authors make it a key point and stress the importance of oral traditions and keeping nature close to us because it has a huge impact on societies and communities. By having a positive relationship between nature and tribes and communities, they are able to find peace with themselves and their communities. I made the personal connection by thinking about the crazy and hectic, fast lives that we live here in Massachusetts. It’s not only in Massachusetts but in a ton of other places all over the world too and you can tell a difference in the lifestyle between an area with a strong connection with nature and an area without that. You can travel to states such as Pennsylvania and feel a sense of peace there, where they have the Amish community there. I found that this made an impact on my life and made me realize that I want to live in an area where there is a better understanding of farming and preserving our community to keep the Earth a positive and growing place.