State Of The Subway Cars Report (R44s-R188s) by Winson Thai A really long report that I wrote in high school about all the sub... [3,921 words]
Sheepshead Bay Station by Winson Thai This is an essay I wrote in college about how the subway station I lived by, Sheepshead ... [712 words]
Africans, Westerners And Intelligence. by Colin Baker A reply to Dr. James D. Watson's recent assertion that Africans are of i... [7,297 words]
Connecting With A Train Engineer: My Personal Memories Of Amtrak's Coast Starlight by Shelley J Alongi Four trips on the Coast Star... [3,862 words]
Metrolink111: The Learning Trip by Shelley J Alongi It has been two months since the Metrolink 111 accident. I've learned lots and... [1,758 words]
Metrolink111: I'd Rather Have The Serving Dish by Shelley J Alongi Thoughts of losing Rob the Metrolink engineer in the Chatsworth ... [2,571 words]
Unrealistic Reality by Michelle Mercier - [319 words]
So Much Time by Michelle Mercier - [740 words]
Metrolink111: Brown Eyes, Technology And Railroad Tracks by Shelley J Alongi Another milestone in my journey through the metrolink ... [2,744 words]
Metrolink 111: Being Unforgettable by Shelley J Alongi Yet another trip to the Fullerton station provides more relief and allows me... [1,475 words]
Metrolink 111: What Does That Face Look Like by Shelley J Alongi Reflections on the portrayal of Robert M. Sanchez in the media, an... [1,425 words]
Metrolink 111: The Green Light Of Passion by Shelley J Alongi A trip to the fullerton train station to get a hair of the dog that b... [1,417 words]
Metrolink 111: The Freight Train From Nowhere by Shelley J Alongi My perspective on why I feel so keenly the loss of robert M. Sanc... [1,831 words]
Metrolink 111: Taking The Curve by Shelley J Alongi Another trip to the fullerton station and plans to commune with the Chatsworth ... [1,408 words]
Metrolink 111: So What Do I Know About Trains? by Shelley J Alongi Stories start in the strangest places. I never would have though... [977 words]
Metrolink 111: Looking Hell In The Eyes by Shelley J Alongi Another step on my journey through the Metrolink 111 Sept 12 crash; a s... [1,557 words]
Metrolink 111: It's All About Lunch by Shelley J Alongi Never turn down an invitation to lunch and always make good memories. Good ... [909 words]
Metrolink 111: Being With Trains by Shelley J Alongi A second trip to the Fullerton train station allows me to get started on an id... [3,040 words]
Kitty Kisses: The Feline Moving Day Blues by Shelley J Alongi Moving with two cats. [1,239 words]
The Unheard Of Name by Graham Reynolds Graham, it�s not a name you here everyday now is it? In fact I have only met one other pers... [235 words]
Memorial To A Train Engineer by Shelley J Alongi Personal reflection on the crash of Metrolink 111. [963 words]
Covert Now To Islam by Wael El-Manzalawy - [241 words]
Bernie Mac by Jeffrey Williams Jr A Loss? [627 words]
Simply The Best by James Donaldson Collins The story of the rise and fall of Bobby Fischer [2,259 words]
A Great Loneliness
Kitty Kisses: Affection With Stipulations by Shelley J Alongi Signing a contract with a cat can be a pleasant affair. [664 words]
The Tyrant Of Egypt by Wael El-Manzalawy - [108 words]
The Dictator Of Egypt by Wael El-Manzalawy - [705 words]
Music, Ignore Please by Mark E S Hanson Ignore [327 words]
Media Coursework by Mark E S Hanson Ignore please [3,091 words]
Media Coursework, Don't Bother by M Hanson A-- [649 words]
No Title Just Bs by Sheridan Pickett A line of BS that is sure to confuse. There is about 1000 pages of this random crap. Should I ... [1,204 words]
Interviews From Hell by Jeffrey Lee Williams Hunting for the perfect position can be Hell. Here is a small example. [1,450 words]
Alone With Others by Elena Kravtsova A story about one lady's life which makes others feel sorry... [603 words]
Unbridled Fury: The Subconscious by R Bennett Okerstrom Subconscious thought... [365 words]
Unbridled Fury: The Battle To Breathe by R Bennett Okerstrom Subconscious thought... [685 words]
What�S Wrong With Assimilation? by Richard Koss This essay was originally written in 2006 when the Senate was considering an Im... [453 words]
My Dad by T Demarest - [306 words]
Media by M Hanson Don't comment, I just need this [478 words]
Existence Manifesto by Brandon Gregory Ryner Coltress A philosophy paper that I wrote. Maybe it started out as a letter to a friend. Maybe it s... [1,354 words]
Drama, Ignore It by Hanson Ignore it [1,850 words]
Dedicated To The Best Teacher In My Life by Elena Kravtsova This is an ode to a university teacher who influenced the author's per... [326 words]
True Stories About True People Story 3--'the Power Of Love.Mother's.' by Elena Kravtsova We love our mothers and sometimes are shy... [702 words]
The Islamic Dream by Wael El-Manzalawy - [338 words]
Kitty Kisses: Cat Wisdom by Shelley J Alongi After three years of cohabitating with cats, what have I learned? Read this entertaini... [1,383 words]
An Itsy Bitsy Lesson by Dee Sleng The way it works. [464 words]
What Is Heaven? by Wanderer Bass - [211 words]
Transfusion by Julie Fonda How one woman regroups after a chaotic day. [730 words]
Rant - Stupid Kids by Wanderer Bass Here's a rant that we all share when we think about stupid highschool kids. [718 words]
Mommy by Jae Rae It's more of a letter than an essay. It's something I wrote to my mom on Mother's Day. [597 words]
If You Don't Like It... by Wanderer Bass To all the people who don't have a brain out there. [349 words]
On Turning Seventy by Liilia Morrison A woman ponders the march of time [717 words]
In Soviet... by Wanderer Bass Just a bunch of random "In Soviet..." tidbits I thought up. If any of these are offensive to you, ... [83 words]
Go to page: 1 2 3 4 [5] 6 7 8 9 10 11
| |
TITLE (EDIT)
A Great Loneliness |
DESCRIPTION
A plea for understanding of how the wolf fits into our world.
[1,499 words] |
TITLE KEYWORD
Nature |
AUTHOR
James Donaldson Collins |
|
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
James collins is an artist and writer living in the Scottish Highlands with his wife, daughter and three dogs.
[June 2006] |
AUTHOR'S E-MAIL ADDRESS
[email protected] |
AUTHOR'S OTHER TITLES (1)
The Boy In The Road (Short Stories) A hot afternoon in the late 'forties. Sam lets his thoughts ramble as he waits to be called for his tea. [1,305 words] [Humor]
|
A Great Loneliness
James Donaldson Collins
A Great Loneliness
'Man must treat the beasts of this land as his brothers.
What is man without the beasts?
If all the beasts were gone,
Man would die from a great loneliness of spirit.
For whatever happens to the beasts,
also happens to the man.
All things are connected.'
Chief Seattle
Speech of 1854
Most people are now aware that we have some serious environmental issues facing us in the next few decades. The recent tsunami in Indonesia was a tragic reminder of the fragile balance of nature. There is nothing much we can do to stop these kind of events happening, except to install early warning systems. But global warming can be stopped or slowed down if and when we stop using fossil fuels and turn to renewable energy sources. The technology is being developed or already exists; wind and wave power, hydrogen fuel and nuclear fusion.
What can never be reversed if we let it happen is the loss of the diversity of life on our small, green and blue planet. The list of endangered species is growing all the time. Environmental awareness has been a long time coming. In a way we are the victims of our own success, at least in the West. Population growth makes it ever more difficult to preserve the wilderness areas which are so necessary for the survival of wildlife.
'When I was a boy in Scotland, I was fond of everything that was wild...
I loved to wander in the fields to hear the birds sing,
and along the shore to gaze and wonder at the shells and the seaweeds,
eels and crabs in the pools when the tide was low;
and best of all to watch the waves in awful storms thundering
on the black headlands and craggy ruins of old Dunbar Castle'.
John Muir
The first modern environmentalists, in a general way, were probably Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau, but the man who made a deep and practical impact was a Scot named John Muir. He was born in 1838 in Dunbar, not very far from where I was born, and he left Scotland for California at the age of twenty-eight. He called himself a 'poetico-trampo-geologist-botanist and ornithologist-naturalist'. Today he is known as the father of America's national parks. On August 5th, 2004, former President Bill Clinton said of him, "One of the Americans who inspired Theodore Roosevelt to conserve our national forests was the naturalist John Muir, who once said, 'Everybody needs beauty as well as bread - places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul'. In today's fast-paced, high-tech world, Muir's words are even more compelling".
Another influential writer was Henry Beston. In 1928, after spending a year in a small wooden house on the Great Outer Beach of Cape Cod, he wrote an inspiring little book called 'The Outermost House', which contained the following passage:
'We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves.
And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.
They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth'.
The Outermost House
Henry Beston
My own special interest is the wolf, that most misunderstood of all animals. Down the ages wolves have been the subject of much fear, hatred and mis-information and yet, of all the larger predators it is the least harmful to people. In a way, we know more about the character of wolves than we do about our closest relatives - the great apes - because their descendants are all around us, lolling about in front of the fire, or digging holes in the garden.
And yet the wolf has been hunted and persecuted almost to the edge of extinction. There have been no wolves in Britain for 300 years. The last one was probably killed at Helmsdale, some 40 miles north of where I live in the Scottish Highlands.
That the Vikings had a respect for the strength and sagacity of wolves is evidenced by the names given to ancient Nordic kings - Beowulf, Beadowulf, Wulfstan, etc. Even ealier is the legend of Romulus and Remus. The twins were found abandoned on the banks of the Tiber by a she-wolf, who fed them with her milk. When they grew up, Romulus built the city of Rome on the spot where the wolf had found them. Although no evidence to support the story has come down to us, there are plenty of authenticated stories of similar incidents, including three from Lucknow in India dated from 1844, 1954 and 1976.
One man who was centuries ahead of his time as a protector of animals was the Italian priest who became the patron saint of animals and the environment. Francis of Assisi was very much a lone voice, at one point pleading with the people of Gubbio to feed the notorious wolf which had been ravaging their flocks. His insight was all the more profound considering the relentless cruelty with which 'Brother Wolf', as Saint Francis called him, has been persecuted in the past fifteen hundred years.
In Anglo-Saxon times January was set aside especially for hunting wolves. It was known as wolfmonat or wolf month. Medieval folk-lore is full of stories about devil-wolves with dripping jaws and evil, slitty eyes. There are woodcuts of wolves with cloven hooves, carrying off little children, and there are children's stories like Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf, and various tales about were-wolves.
The subject of all these stories must indeed be a ferocious animal, but in fact there is no authenticated instance of anyone being attacked by a wolf. I don't say it couldn't happen; I just say you're more likely to be struck by lightning.
That it is possible for people and wolves to live in the same world has been demonstrated by the various wolf programs on-going in north-west Montana, the Yellowstone area, Central Idaho and North Carolina. There is also a scheme, backed by Greenpeace and various politicians to re-instate the wolf in certain areas of the Scottish Highlands. In the U.S. ranchers are being re-imbursed for any livestock losses - which are surprisingly light - by an organisation called Defenders of Wildlife. This is what they say on their website:
'Some of the nation's most prominent biologists have estimated that protecting habitat for wide-ranging predators such as wolves will conserve 90% or more of overall biological diversity. Because wolves can require home ranges of several hundred square miles, their conservation can help to preserve a host of other species making use of the same habitat.'
It was the 'Defenders' organisation which led the successful fight to restore the gray wolf to it's former habitat in Yellowstone Park, and they are currently battling against recent legislation in Alaska to allow the 'hunting' of wolves from light aircraft and snowmobiles. This degrading and inhumane practice was banned in 1972 until last year, and ignores the weight of scientific thinking. It has received widespread public opposition. Alaskans have voted against aircraft assisted wolf hunting twice; in 1996 and 2000.
Killing wild wolves is supposed to boost the numbers of caribou and moose for the benefit of hunters, but biologists say that the larger prey species elude wolves 97% of the time, and that by eliminating sick and old animals, predation actually strengthens the gene pool.
Richard Fiennes, the distinguished U.K. scientist and biologist has summed up the case for the wolf as follows:
'The wolf appears to retain a respect for human beings, and is reluctant to attack them. Not so man, who now fears and abominates the wolf and does all in his power to destroy him. Alas, he fails to recognize in the wolf's descendants, whom he has domesticated, the great virtues and loveable characters of the ancestral wolf. If wolves must become extinct in some areas, let us yet give what honour is due to him where we can.
The old traditions of this gentle creature's savagery and ferocity linger on, and man's hand is against him, even when he does no harm. There are still enormous regions of the world, in America and Russia, where he can be left unmolested; let him so remain.'
The Order of Wolves
Richard Fiennes
When I look at my dogs, I see a wolf,
and when I look at a wolf, I see my dogs.
James Donaldson Collins
|
|
Submit Your Review for A Great Loneliness
Required fields are marked with (*).
Your e-mail address will not be displayed.
|
|
Submit Your Rating for A Great Loneliness
|
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
© 2007 James Donaldson Collins |
STORYMANIA PUBLICATION DATE
July 2008 |
NUMBER OF TIMES TITLE VIEWED
1521
|
|
