Cooper also mourns the losses that her land incurs, suggesting that any depletion of the natural aspects of a place drastically alter its identity. Like her seemingly innocent cataloging of natural plants and animals indigenous to America, which emerges as a plea for national pride and definition based on the natural world, her repeated lamentings of disappearing or decreasing portions of the natural world emerge as a plea for the preservation of the wilderness. Like Cooper's gently emerging concern for identifying indigenous plants and animals, Cooper gradually develops this theme of loss throughout her text. "Little events," when taken cumulatively, have large implications.
Cooper observes wild pigeons in early March, for instance, and recalls a previous season when "they passed over the valley in... large unbroken flocks several miles in extent succeeding each other." Then she remarks, "There have not been so many here since that season" (18). The reader might dismiss this observation due to its early position in her book, but as one progresses through the text and continually comes across this motif of longing for previous times when--somehow--nature was more complete, one realizes that Cooper is truly concerned about the changes taking place in her surroundings.
Her concern becomes much more overt, but not until much later in the book.25 Cooper's seemingly minor concern for the losses of groups of birds or plants culminates in her consideration of the rapid deforestation occurring in the country.26 She returns to the subject many times throughout the course of Rural Hours and, further along in the book, strongly criticizes people for their careless use of timber:
One would think that by this time, when the forest has fallen in all the valleys -- when the hills are becoming more bare every day--when timber and fuel are rising in prices, and new uses are found for even indifferent woods--some forethought and care in this respect would be natural in people laying claim to common sense. (213-14)