To see nature perform a phenomenon directly in front of you is truly a blissful sight. Nature scares us in many ways, but it also gives many people a sense of their true home ground. Nature makes us think about life a little harder when a hurricane, tornado, avalanche, or a volcano eruption occur. In Ursula K. Le Guin's essay, "A Very Warm Mountain" which is about a volcano eruption in Washington, Idaho and points east, she brings out some points in which the volcano had the right to blow off all of her steam at the world. .
She states that the volcano "lay and watched her forests being cut and her elk being hunted and her lakes being fished and fouled and her ecology being tampered with and the smoky, snarling suburbs creeping closer to her skirts, until she saw it was time to teach the White Man's Children a lesson ( Le Guin, 2000, p175). In another essay titled "A Literature of Place" by Barry Lopez goes with the idea that nature is being removed from our world slowly by human kind. He refers to a unique type of writing that many know as "nature writing" where one tries and write about one's relationship with their land. Barry Lopez's essay and Ursula K. Le Guin's essay both explore the idea that nature is being destroyed and humans need to build up a personal relationship with nature. .
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Lopez believes to secure an intimacy for a place you must "be silent, put aside the bird book, the analytic state of mind, any compulsion to identify, and sit still." (Lopez, 2000, p183). Ursula K. Le Guin had a very intimate side with nature when she experienced the volcano eruption mentioned earlier. She kept the intimacy by watching and keeping track of the eruptions and realizing the reasons this may be happening. She sat still, was silent and put things aside that she believed were less important in life, just like Lopez suggested to people who want to keep the intimacy with nature.
