illusions of nature
icture the first place you thought of as nature. Maybe itwas nothing more than a vacant lot in the middle of acity, or a patch of scrub along a riverbank. It might have beena cottage or campground that you visited year after year, orperhaps your childhood home opened onto a forest, a beach,a mountain. Whatever your original vision of nature was, fixit in your mind.Myself, I grew up on a prairie that had no name. I’ve lookedinto the question, hoping to turn up some lost but interestingname like those I’ve known from other places—Joe’s SnakeField, or Our Lady of the O, or Fountain of Bones—and havecome up empty-handed. The best explanation I can give forthe anonymity of my home prairie is that it seemed to havehardly any history. Why give a name to a patch of grass wherenothing much had happened?