Though we purposefully don't have a television connection, I do watch movies occasionally, and yesterday I watched the film Defiance, based on a true story about Tuvia Bielski and his brothers who, in 1941, basically took to the woods to hide from the Nazis, eventually forming a kind of resistance and gathering more and more Jewish people in their wooded community as time passed.
My focus on thinking about this film has been its most basic premise----of escaping into nature and allowing it to enfold and protect----and of how generous nature can be to humans, yet how cruel humans too often are to nature. Escaping into the surrounding forest was possible in the early 20th century, but I wonder whether those forests now exist to an extent that would allow them this. Based on humans' destructive tendencies, I think not, since 95% of all old-growth forest has been destroyed.
I read statistics like this and feel as if I've been slapped, only to remain uncomprehending.
