You don’t need to read them. They’re long. If you didn’t already gather, they’re about trying to see nature in L.A., specifically the L.A. River.
I am a 2-minute walk from the L.A. River. I am not one of the stereotypical “Angelenos” Price references in her article. I often use the river as a running path. I have not forgotten about it. Although, I am familiar with her experience. The L.A. River is normally defined as everything but a river, from a glorified drain to a giant urban skate-park to an iconic movie set to an open-air sewer. The word “river” sounds too tropical, too indigenous, too rural. If I told an outsider without any context that I lived on a river, they’d imagine a home that couldn’t be further from the concrete truth (pun intended).
Before I read this article, I had a stereotypical definition of nature, one that separates the city from the wild. To me, nature was defined as “natural; not man-made.” This disconnection between civilization and the wild is something I have thought about before. In a previous class, I wrote a paper comparing the novels Sir Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe and The Life of Pi by Yann Martel, both of which are shipwreck narratives. My conclusion was that humankind is somehow unfit to survive against the overwhelming force of nature. In the wild, we seem to be out of our element, always uncomfortable, always needing some type of airtight shelter sealing us off, always clutching ourselves around our fires and fans and other conditioning units.
I concluded in my paper that, since the dawn of time, humankind has created literal and figurative walls between ourselves and nature, between civilization and the wild. This wall is ever present in modern literature with books like To Build a Fire, Hatchet, and Into the Wild and movies like The Grey and Revenant. The narrative “humans are unfit for the natural world” has been deeply embedded since our first experiences with earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, or simply hungry mountain lions. We are helpless without our conditioning units.
But Jennifer Price offers a different view, one that is a breath of fresh air (pun very much intended). I see now that this divide between city and nature is not only unhelpful, but also detrimental to the idea of environmentalism. Before, I saw nature in Joshua Tree, Yosemite, and Big Bear. Now, I see nature in the chair I’m sitting in, the desk I’m writing on, and the computer I am obsessively glued to everyday. Price emphasizes the importance of understanding and respecting our connection to nature in order to attain sustainability. Without that connection, we live out the American nightmare. We replace sustainability with human ignorance and selfishness.
Price explains that L.A. is at the core of modern nature storytelling. She writes, “The history of L.A. storytelling, if more complicated, still basically boils down to a trilogy. Nature blesses L.A. Nature flees L.A. And nature returns armed.”
Nowhere in this story do we see the phrase “Nature is L.A.”
I prefer that story, one where our relationship with nature is less combative and more harmonious.