"Thinking Like a Mountain"- By Aldo Leopold

I can think like a human, I can think like a cat, I can think like an osprey. But think like a mountain? Not so much. After reading this article, I learned what it means to 'think like a mountain' and how it could help us all.

In this article, the author, Aldo Leopold, tells the story of how everything in nature is a balance. In the beginning, a human always leaped at the chance to kill a wolf in order to preserve the deer population. After a while, all the wolves disappeared and suddenly there were only deer. With more deer and not as many wolves, more plants were being eaten and not enough created. That meant all the plants were gone and all the deer eventually died. They didn't just kill that one wolf, they killed the whole mountain.

"While a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades." 

In my opinion, this article is a great example of deforestation, and the fault here is ours. We did what we thought was best for the mountain, but little did we know that our one little act would cause so many unfortunate events to ensue. If we had thought like the mountain, we would have known that by killing those wolves, we would overpopulate deer, kill the plants, and so on. Who would have known that our minor error would cause so much trouble? To recap, everything in life and nature is a balance. If that balanced is played with, well, you know what happens. Maybe next time we should start to think like a mountain.

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                                                  http://www.eco-action.org/dt/thinking.html