Javelinas and Teenagers

More from Barbara Kingsolver:

". . . most of us have come to see human ownership of places and things, even other living creatures, as a natural condition, right as rain. While rights and authority and questions of distribution are fiercely debated, the basic concept is rarely in doubt. I remember arguing tearfully, as a child, that a person couldn't own a tree, and still in my heart I believe that, but inevitably to come of age is to own. When we stand upon the ground, we first think to ask, 'Whose ground is this?' And NO TRESPASSING doesn't just mean, 'Don't build your house here.' It means: 'All you see before you, the trees, the songbirds, the poison ivy, the water beneath the ground, the air you would breathe if you passed through here, the grass you would tread upon, the very idea of existing in this place - all these are mine.' Nought but a human mind could think of such a thing. And nought but a human believes it. Javelinas, and teenagers, still hark to the earth's primordial state and the music of the open range."