Where real memories are made.

   Memories are important.  Memories are created by memorable events or moments in our lives.  These memories we create are fragile.  The mind combined with time works in a way to change the memories we are starved to preserve.  However we live in the age of technology there is nothing holding us back from permanently recording the important events of our lives.  Wether we do so through photographs or videos it is possible for everyone to accurately sustain these moments for all of time.  Nonetheless is simply spending all the time trying to permanently record these memories truly something memorable?  Would it not be best just to be swept up in the moment and hope that your memory will serve you well?  These are the questions I found myself asking upon reading, "The Vacation", by Wendell Berry.
     Berry's poem expresses the theme of technology versus nature.  "He showed his vacation to his camera, which pictured it, preserving it forever..."  This excerpt expresses to the reader that the protagonist of the poem is not the one involved in his vacation but the camera was, the protagonist was too busy enjoying his camera to enjoy his vacation.  Berry's use of punctuation further expresses his dislike for the idea of hiding nature behind technology.  He begins and ends the poem with short choppy sentences, whereas the center of the poem is long run on sentences.  The poem begins, "Once there was a man who filmed his vacation." This verse is very short and too the point it has no passion.  On the other hand in the middle of the poem when Berry speaks of the nature that the man is filming the sentences are long and flowing, "he went flying down the river in his boat with his camera to his eye, making a moving picture of the moving river upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly towards the end of his vacation."  This sentences flows like the river the man is on, it mirrors the nature of the beauty that the man is missing while hidden behind his camera.
     I agree with Wendell Berry's point of view in this poem.  It is important to be involved in the moment instead of trying to preserve the moment.  Because in essence no moment that is worth preserving is produced when going only for the capture. "With the flick of a switch , there it would be.  But he would not be in it.  He would never be in it", this are Berry's parting words.  Although the protagonist was there he was never involved, his videos from his vacations may as well be a documentary on television.  Not a memory.