As a little girl I spent my days outside in the field behind my house. My mom has always been an advocate for nature, for spending as much time as possible in it and appreciating it in general. My house was always filled with the latest all natural soap or biodegradable cracker box, her personal way of giving thanks to the world. Because of my mother's constant push to get out of the house and into the big wide world, I discovered the awe inducing field that very obviously sat behind a row of trees in my backyard.

Once I finally ventured into this field my childhood was changed forever. My first step in and I was overwhelmed with the beauty this field held. After that moment I spent every waking moment of my time outside in my field. I went exploring for hours, looking for salamanders in the part that was wooded, discovering a notso new species of insect(it turned out to be a lightening bug), running from coyotes howling in the distance, lying in the grass waiting for the sun to explode into a million colors and stumbling back through the tall grasses in the dark with
my flashlight in hand. I felt the pure intensity of the earth in that insignificant field in the middle of my insignificant small town. Among the animals, fresh air, and natural earth I found that the field was my place.

Around ten years ago a housing development company gained the rights to develop the
land and all at once my private wonderland was destroyed. The tall grasses transformed into tall
piles of dirt which turned into tall roofs of new cookiecutter houses. The salamanders
disappeared, replaced by concrete roads with perfectly manicured lawns. The sunset is blocked
by the construction vehicles working fast to make more money. When I walk into my field I no
longer feel at home and everything has changed. The animals are gone. The fresh air is gone and
it is just another neighborhood.This was no longer my place. It was no longer the earth’s place
either. It was mankind's place, a place for us to further expand, as if we didn’t already occupy
enough of the world. The consequence of our actions are beginning to show.

Every morning I drive to school I see the same grime covered fox wandering around my neighborhood. I once drove up so close to it and it didn’t even flinch. The fox is no longer afraid of humans. I could walk up and feed this fox a hotdog and it wouldn’t even mind. Nature isn’t just something pretty to look at, it is a home. A home to thousands of animals. These animals had found some of the last places untouched by humans only to be misplaced as we expand further.

We are destroying the homes of thousands of animals just to build bigger and better ones than
the homes we already have.

People love animals and they love nature, so why do we insist on the continuous destruction of both. People pay their lifesavings for oceanfront views. Millions of people visit state parks each year to take in the wonders of the natural world. Some photographers spend their lives using nature as their muse. Nobody wants to pay for a view of a dirt pile and a bulldozer.

Nobody wants to visit a development filled with lookalike houses. Nobody wants to photograph the destruction of nature. Yet we continue to do it. Yes, we need a place to live and yes it ismpossible for us to not leave a mark on the world. But we do not need new homes every ten years nor do we need to make our mark damaging on the world. We need to be aware that what we have is not inferior to us. We need to respect the earth and everything on it, because no human work of art will ever beat the pure natural earth.

As a race we have become so comfortable with the idea of ruining nature for our benefit, without caring if we are destroying the beauty and animals the natural world holds. For the last three decades, together, the human race has destroyed 3/5s of the amazon rainforest, due to logging, construction of homes, exploitation of goods(CNN). How have we become so senseless to the destruction of our own world? A world that is home to thousands of species and the most beautiful sights, destroyed for human benefit. Why do we believe that we can ruin what is not ours?

We believe we can ruin what is not ours because we believe it is ours. We tend to put our wants above everything else in the world, granted not everyone, but the vast majority. If we hope to keep any of nature we must learn to live with the earth and not on the earth. We need to stop destroying. We cannot do it all at once, We need to learn to be aware, appreciative, and respectful of nature and we will stop destroying the things we love.