The realization about the trees is preceded by Luciente and Connie both realizing how polluted Connie’s environment is, and especially as Connie relaxes because she is being saved by the ecological subject, she is now also relaxing in a smaller version of the utopia. This patch of trees is representative of a solution Schmitt points out occurred in the effort to bring nature into urban areas; city parks. These parks, like Central Park in New York City of which Connie may have been familiar with, sprang up as an effort “to replace public eyesores with parks and playgrounds,” and these trees were planted perhaps with the same intention. Public parks provided a space for people to connect to nature even if they couldn’t get out of the city, so these small demonstrations of nature could represent the wilderness without being seen as a threat. These trees are also white pine, significant in the local Iroquois culture as “the symbol of peace,” connection the ecological subject and the Ecological Indian further. These trees, as Connie spends time in them, allows her a chance to see what it might be like to be a part of the utopia. Connie is surviving in an artificially reconstructed wilderness, where both the environment and Native American culture are preserved, even just by accident. But as these are constructed, Connie is still herself and within the expectations of the ecological other, where not just her body but her actions keep her out. 
Connie is never able to become the ecological subject, where her permanent othering comes from a combination of the utopia and her own time. The wilderness Connie experiences in the utopia is one she doesn’t entirely understand or is comfortable in. Part of her discomfort and inability to connect comes from how Mattaposiett represents the Ecological Indian, preserving and interacting with the environment in a way that promotes the ecological subject and not people like Connie. It isn’t as bad to be the ecological other in the utopia, though, because she can rely on the pristine wilderness and knowledge of the locals. In contrast with Connie’s time, being the ecological other is life and death as Connie escapes into a polluted wilderness in order to avoid her mind being polluted by the mind control experiment. Connie suffers as she doesn’t have the survival skills necessary, and in calling Luciente for help is resigned to be the ecological other, forced to passively experience the wilderness as Luciente assumes the active role of the ecological subject. But Connie’s escape from the ward is cut short as she is caught at a bus station trying to make her way back to New York City, and is returned to the mental institution. Once back, she undergoes the mind control experiment and loses her freedom entirely. 
Being an ecological other perhaps doesn’t matter to Connie as she is experiencing the utopia or in her own wilderness experience, but it does influence her thoughts and actions regarding the environment when she is no longer able to be an autonomous person. 
