Emig: Cooper and Irving Blogs

As we move forward in American history, it should come as no surprise that the forest, "the abode of the devil," comes to serve as more than just a place of fear, temptation, and evil. In this week's readings, we see Americans mature from the time of Rowlandson and begin to use those resources around them, i.e. the forest/nature, to sustain themselves and their livelihoods. In Cooper's first two chapters of The Pioneers, settlers have come to love and admire the wilderness for its inevitable, natural beauty. To them, nature provides an assortment of both wants and needs. The wilderness provides adventure, beauty, and the most sublime of sceneries. Cooper wastes no time expressing how he feels about nature. He begins The Pioneers, by describing "an extensive district of country whose surface is a succession of hills and dales... of mountains and valleys. It is among these hills that the Delaware takes its rise; and flowing from the limpid lakes and thousand springs of this region the numerous sources of the Susquehanna meander through the valleys until, uniting their streams, they form one of the proudest rivers of the United States. The mountains are generally arable to the tops, although instances are not wanting where the sides are jutted with rocks that aid greatly in giving to the country that romantic and picturesque character which it so eminently possesses."  This imagery paints a picture of the America we all want to live-- both then and now. However, America then was an adventure waiting to happen. Nature provides food, clothing, shelter-- essentially everything the settlers need to sustain their lives. Cooper knows nature is not to be feared. On the contrary, the New World provides settlers with a fresh start, a new Garden of Eden, if you will. Therefore, that Garden of Eden, or nature, must be explored and revered for all that it offers. However, nature, its inhabitants and its beauty must also be protected and preserved as demonstrated in Chapter 22. Cooper describes an abuse of nature; "the light smoke of a single piece would issue from among the leafless bushes on the mountain, as death was hurled on the retreat of the affrighted birds, who were rising from a volley, in a vain effort to escape." Instances like this one are to be avoided by settlers and leads to the implementation of game laws needed to protect nature and inhabitants alike.
Irving, for me, takes the beauty and reverence of nature a step further than Cooper and really certifies nature as a wondrous, miraculous, and captivating place, as opposed to an evil dwelling. Although Irving incorporates the mysteries of nature and the forest from a fearful standpoint at the beginning of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Irving states that "around him [Ichabod Crane] nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance." Though, in some cases, nature may be a little scary, mysterious, or even terribly frightening, there is a beauty and appeal found in nature that cannot be unparalleled anywhere else on the planet. People are drawn to nature and can identify with it, as we see in "Rip Van Winkle." After awaking from his 20-year nap, Rip is not startled by the scene of nature in front of his eyes. It all looks just as it did before; it is unchanged. As he begins to make his way home, "he got down into the glen; he found the gully up which he and his companion had ascended the preceding evening; but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs." This passage shows the striking differences between Irving and Rowlandson. Where Rowlandson saw nature/the forest as her doomed place of suffering, Irving displays nature as man's close companion, a watchdog, almost. Nature forever changed Rip's life-- though, nature really did not change much at all. 

"Even to this day they never hear a thunder-storm of a summer afternoon, about the Catskills, but they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of ninepins; and it is a common wish of all henpecked husbands in the neighborhood, when life hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out of Rip Van Winkle’s flagon."