I'm reading Henry David Thoreau's Walden for the first time and will post some more thoughts of that at a later date. But this DCist post is an interesting window into the mentality that Thoreau was pushing back against - that nature is only worth what can be extracted from it. A few years before it was made into a national park in 1890, a DC official proposed building a dam to turn the park into a reservoir. After all, it was "worthless for any other purpose, being precipitous, rocky hillside, covered with thickets of laurel and small timber."
Sunday, September 11, 2011
1880s View of Rock Creek Park: Totally Worthless
I'm reading Henry David Thoreau's Walden for the first time and will post some more thoughts of that at a later date. But this DCist post is an interesting window into the mentality that Thoreau was pushing back against - that nature is only worth what can be extracted from it. A few years before it was made into a national park in 1890, a DC official proposed building a dam to turn the park into a reservoir. After all, it was "worthless for any other purpose, being precipitous, rocky hillside, covered with thickets of laurel and small timber."
I'd like to clear cut that and frack it at the same time. Then, build an oil pipeline through it. Too much? Could I use children to mine it for minerals?
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