Rst environmental autobiography PDF

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University of Illinois

Gillson Beach: the Landscape of my Past, Present, and Future

Sophia Fox RST 242 Professor Jeffrey Farr May 9, 2020

Fox 1 When I think about my childhood, my first thought is of getting sand stuck in my bathing suit at Gillson Beach. This is where my summers always took place. Any free time I had, I would meet up with my friends on our bikes and we would head to the beach for a day full of smiles and laughter. My time at Gillson led to me creating personal connections with nature. I strengthened my naturalistic values, also known as “satisfaction derived from direct contact from nature” (Kellert 45). Spending hours each day in the water and on the sand led to my strong appreciation for the landscape I spent all summer at. Our exploratory trips across the sand founded a personal connection between me and my world that I'll appreciate for years to come. Sadly, humans have had a very negative impact on the environment. We have the tendency to destroy nature for our own personal gain. While we have begun to fix this, we cannot ignore how it was at its worst: “Air and water pollution was everywhere in the late sixties. Leaded fuels, chemicals, wastes, and other sources seemed to threaten everyone's quality of life” (Rothman 126). If life was the same as it was then, I would not have been able to frolic in lake Michigan like I did. We need to preserve our bodies of water so future generations can enjoy Gillson Beach the same way I did. In order to understand how we got to that point, We must go to the beginning when westward expansion was the priority. This inevitable movement came from the need to profit from natural resources: “The environmental history of the American West is above all a history of the conquest, control, and transformation of a large and complex space” (Opie 155). While I

Fox 2 see it as a place to do handstands underwater, Lake Michigan is one of the largest sources of fresh water. If it were not for the need to excavate the surplus of new natural resources back at the beginning of our nation’s history, I could not have had the wonderful memories at my beloved beach. Additionally, if it weren’t for environmentalists such as John Muir, who knows what our world would look like today. Muir was a conservationist in the late 1800’s who fought for nature to remain unharmed, and eventually led to the founding of multiple national parks (Nash 122-140). Had he decided not to follow his dream, my beautiful beach might have been turned into a filtration plant instead of a place where families can enjoy their Saturday afternoons in peace. For that reason, I thank Muir for his contributions to the environment. Overall, I am grateful for Gillson Beach. Our nation as a whole has gone through a lot conservation-wise, but we have also come out successful. Nature is still prevalent, and we are able to make life-long memories in places such as the local beach.

Works Cited “Chapter 5: The Rise of Aesthetic Environmentalism.” Saving the Planet: the American Response to the Environment in the Twentieth Century, by Hal K. Rothman, Ivan R. Dee, 2000, pp. 108–130. “Chapter 4 and 5.” Nature's Nation: an Environmental History of the United States, by John Opie, Hartcourt Brace College Publ., 1998, pp. 114–185. Kellert, Stephen R. “The Biological Basis for Human Values of Nature.” The Biophilia Hypothesis, by Stephen R. Kellert and Edward O. Wilson, Island Press, 2013, pp. 42–46. Nash, Roderick, and Char Miller. Wilderness and the American Mind. Yale Univ. Press, 2014....