This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
Module 3 • Natural Resources: Tundra Farming
Student Page 3-5a
can be a national geography because the con- the beginning. All local geographies, as they
stituent parts are interchangeable and can be were defined by hundreds of separate, independent
treated as commodities. In day-to-day affairs, native traditions, were denied in the beginning
in other words, one place serves as well as in favor of an imported and unifying vision of
another to convey one’s point. On reflection, America’s natural history. The country, the landscape
this is an appalling condescension and a terrible itself, was eventually defined according to dic-
imprecision, the very antithesis of knowledge. tates of Progress like Manifest Destiny, and laws
The idea that either the Green River in Utah or like the Homestead Act which reflected a poor
the Salmon River in Idaho will do, or that the understanding of the physical lay of the land.
valleys of Kentucky and West Virginia are virtu-
ally interchangeable, is not just misleading. For
————————————
people still dependent on the soil for their suste-
nance, or for people whose memories tie them to
When I was growing up in southern California,
those places, it betrays a numbing casualness, a
I formed the rudiments of a local geography—
utilitarian, expedient, and commercial frame of
eucalyptus trees, February rains, desert cotton-
mind. It heralds a society in which it is no longer
tails. I lost much of it when my family moved to
necessary for human beings to know where they
New York City, a move typical of the modern,
live, except as those places are described and fixed
peripatetic style of American life, responding
by numbers. The truly difficult and lifelong task of
to the exigencies of divorce and employment.
discovering where one lives is finally disdained.
As a boy I felt a hunger to know the American
landscape that was extreme; when I was finally
If a society forgets or no longer cares where it
able to travel on my own, I did so. Eventually I
lives, then anyone with the political power and
visited most of the United States, living for brief
the will to do so can manipulate the landscape
periods of time in Arizona, Indiana, Alabama,
to conform to certain social ideals or nostalgic
Georgia, Wyoming, New Jersey, and Montana
visions. People may hardly notice that anything
before settling years ago in western Oregon.
has happened, or assume that whatever happens—
a mountain stripped of timber and eroding into
The astonishing level of my ignorance con-
its creeks—is for the common good. The more
fronted me everywhere I went. I knew early on
superficial a society’s knowledge of the real
that the country could not be held together in a
dimensions of the land it occupies becomes,
few phrases, that its geography was magnificent
the more vulnerable the land is to exploitation, to
and incomprehensible, that a man or woman
manipulation for short-term gain. The land, vir-
could devote a lifetime to its elucidation and
tually powerless before political and commercial
still feel in the end that he or she had but sailed
entities, finds itself finally with no defenders. It
many thousands of miles over the surface of the
finds itself bereft of intimates with indispensable,
ocean. So I came into the habit of traversing
concrete knowledge. (Oddly, or perhaps not
landscapes I wanted to know with local tutors
oddly, while American society continues to value
and reading what had previously been writ-
local knowledge as a quaint part of its heritage,
ten about, and in, those places. I came to value
it continues to cut such people off from any real
exceedingly novels and essays and works of
political power. This is as true for small farm-
nonfiction that connected human enterprise to
ers and illiterate cowboys as it is for American
real and specific places, and I grew to be mildly
Indians, native Hawaiians, and Eskimos.)
distrustful of work that occurred in no particular
place, work so cerebral and detached as to be
The intense pressure of imagery in America,
refutable only in an argument of ideas.
and the manipulation of images necessary to a
society with specific goals, means the land will
These sojourns in various corners of the coun-
inevitably be treated like a commodity; and
try infused me, somewhat to my surprise on
voices that tend to contradict the proffered
thinking about it, with a great sense of hope.
image will, one way or another, be silenced or
Whatever despair I had come to feel at a wan-
discredited by those in power. This is not new to
ing sense of the real land and the emergence of
America; the promulgation in America of a false
false geographies—elements of the land being
or imposed geography has been the case from
manipulated, for example, to create erroneous
but useful patterns in advertising—was dispelled
PolarHusky.com
© NOMADS Online Classroom Expeditions GoNorth! Chukotka 2007 Curriculum 78
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164  |  Page 165  |  Page 166  |  Page 167  |  Page 168  |  Page 169  |  Page 170  |  Page 171  |  Page 172  |  Page 173  |  Page 174  |  Page 175  |  Page 176  |  Page 177  |  Page 178  |  Page 179  |  Page 180  |  Page 181  |  Page 182  |  Page 183  |  Page 184  |  Page 185  |  Page 186  |  Page 187  |  Page 188  |  Page 189  |  Page 190  |  Page 191  |  Page 192  |  Page 193  |  Page 194  |  Page 195  |  Page 196  |  Page 197  |  Page 198  |  Page 199  |  Page 200  |  Page 201  |  Page 202  |  Page 203  |  Page 204  |  Page 205  |  Page 206  |  Page 207  |  Page 208  |  Page 209  |  Page 210  |  Page 211  |  Page 212  |  Page 213  |  Page 214  |  Page 215  |  Page 216  |  Page 217  |  Page 218  |  Page 219  |  Page 220  |  Page 221  |  Page 222  |  Page 223  |  Page 224  |  Page 225  |  Page 226  |  Page 227  |  Page 228  |  Page 229  |  Page 230  |  Page 231  |  Page 232  |  Page 233  |  Page 234  |  Page 235  |  Page 236  |  Page 237  |  Page 238  |  Page 239  |  Page 240  |  Page 241  |  Page 242  |  Page 243  |  Page 244  |  Page 245  |  Page 246  |  Page 247  |  Page 248  |  Page 249  |  Page 250  |  Page 251  |  Page 252  |  Page 253  |  Page 254  |  Page 255  |  Page 256  |  Page 257  |  Page 258  |  Page 259  |  Page 260  |  Page 261  |  Page 262  |  Page 263  |  Page 264  |  Page 265  |  Page 266  |  Page 267  |  Page 268  |  Page 269  |  Page 270  |  Page 271  |  Page 272  |  Page 273  |  Page 274  |  Page 275  |  Page 276  |  Page 277  |  Page 278  |  Page 279  |  Page 280  |  Page 281  |  Page 282  |  Page 283  |  Page 284  |  Page 285  |  Page 286  |  Page 287  |  Page 288  |  Page 289  |  Page 290  |  Page 291  |  Page 292  |  Page 293  |  Page 294  |  Page 295  |  Page 296  |  Page 297  |  Page 298  |  Page 299  |  Page 300  |  Page 301  |  Page 302  |  Page 303  |  Page 304  |  Page 305  |  Page 306  |  Page 307  |  Page 308  |  Page 309  |  Page 310  |  Page 311  |  Page 312  |  Page 313  |  Page 314  |  Page 315  |  Page 316  |  Page 317  |  Page 318  |  Page 319  |  Page 320  |  Page 321  |  Page 322  |  Page 323  |  Page 324  |  Page 325  |  Page 326  |  Page 327  |  Page 328  |  Page 329  |  Page 330  |  Page 331  |  Page 332  |  Page 333  |  Page 334  |  Page 335  |  Page 336  |  Page 337  |  Page 338  |  Page 339  |  Page 340  |  Page 341  |  Page 342  |  Page 343  |  Page 344  |  Page 345  |  Page 346  |  Page 347  |  Page 348  |  Page 349  |  Page 350  |  Page 351  |  Page 352  |  Page 353  |  Page 354  |  Page 355  |  Page 356  |  Page 357  |  Page 358  |  Page 359  |  Page 360  |  Page 361  |  Page 362  |  Page 363  |  Page 364  |  Page 365  |  Page 366  |  Page 367  |  Page 368  |  Page 369  |  Page 370  |  Page 371  |  Page 372  |  Page 373  |  Page 374  |  Page 375  |  Page 376  |  Page 377  |  Page 378  |  Page 379  |  Page 380  |  Page 381  |  Page 382  |  Page 383  |  Page 384  |  Page 385  |  Page 386  |  Page 387  |  Page 388  |  Page 389  |  Page 390  |  Page 391  |  Page 392  |  Page 393  |  Page 394  |  Page 395  |  Page 396  |  Page 397  |  Page 398  |  Page 399  |  Page 400  |  Page 401  |  Page 402  |  Page 403  |  Page 404  |  Page 405  |  Page 406  |  Page 407  |  Page 408  |  Page 409  |  Page 410  |  Page 411  |  Page 412  |  Page 413  |  Page 414
Produced with Yudu - www.yudu.com