Outside Reading #1- Jacqueline Thornley

Recently I’ve been reading The Last of the Mohicans by James Fennimore Cooper. Honestly I haven’t really enjoyed reading the book because he just doesn’t know how to move things along at the pace I like. But one of the key aspects of the book that I’ve really enjoyed is the extensive descriptions of nature. The book is filled with pages detailing the mountain and waterfall scenes and the epic wilderness of the North. Cooper was inspired to write the novel after a trip to the Adirondacks and now the book has become an American classic. Nature is so often the source of inspiration for authors, poets, inventors, and countless others. People who have experienced the awesome power of nature have difficulty forgetting it and oftentimes seem to want to incorporate it somehow into their daily lives. Yet nature itself is by definition removed from civilization, which makes one wonder how it is able to accomplish such a feat. Perhaps those inspired many are just trying to bring a piece of true spiritual significance back to humanity.