Personal Narrative: Priest Lake, Idaho

Looking back at my childhood through present day, I would have to say that Priest Lake, Idaho is the one place that has impacted me, and my views on our environment the most. It is my special place. Growing up my family spent a lot of time during the summer up at Priest Lake. We then began spending our Thanksgivings there, renting cabins for 3 days and just enjoying family time, playing card and board games, listening to music, cooking lots of food, and playing in the snow, if it happened to actually snow that year. As my siblings and I got older and started families of our own, we began taking weeklong family camping trips at Priest, boating out to one of the islands. Because my family is so big, we would end up taking up 2-3 campsites and would have most of the beachfront to ourselves. We were on an island, away from everything for a whole week! My love for Priest Lake was always there, but it began to grow even more, and I began to really respect more things around me when we started these camping trips. I always found this camping trip to be so peaceful. We could take nice nature walks around the island or hike up into the center of the island to really get away from it all. I felt at home here. …show more content…
Therefore, I believe like Karen Warren, that we as humans need to “adopt a ‘loving eye’ in our relationship with nature” (Fairbanks, p.87). I feel that Priest Lake has helped me see nature in such a way. The land, trees, and animals are there for our use and consumption, but what would happen if we used and consumed everything in sight? What would we be left with? Priest Lake’s beauty has helped me see that even though we humans see these things as being here for our use, we also have to take care of them like we take care of ourselves. We are always talking about showing love and kindness to those people around us, but why not show this same affection for the “nonhuman natural world” (Fairbanks,