Writer and naturalist Janisse Ray recently visited Miami
University to tell us about “Being Human in Wild Times.” She hails from southern Georgia’s long-leaf
pine territory not so far from the place I grew up in coastal SC—she sounded
like a long forgotten friend and she had a passion for pines which is rare in
those parts. As she spoke of the long-leaf pine ecosystems that she loved (I
would say who would not, but history suggest the answer may be many), of which
97-99% have been lost, she made a connection between fragmentation of the
habitat and fragmentation of our communities and families, suggesting that our detachment
from the land has perhaps became possible as we left the communities of our
upbringing and the natural habitats that were part of our cultural heritage to
move on to somewhere better where we were more anonymous and less tied to our
past and surroundings. Would we be
better stewards of our natural resources if we knew we would live and die in
the same place we were raised, where we would watch our children and grandchildren
grow up?
One of the joys of rereading A Sand County Almanac with my students is rediscovering the love
that Aldo Leopold has for his small patch of land in Wisconsin and what a great
student he is of his 80 acre parcel. I
no more hear geese without thinking of him. He makes me want to love my 0.5
acre parcel a lot more even if there is slightly fewer grouse in my yard—but there
are weeds buried somewhere under that snow that I regularly fail to cherish. From January to December he finds himself out
at his “shack” on the weekends getting to know his community—the chickadees and
grouse, the rabbits and deer, the prairie chickens and woodcocks, and of course
the plants that many of us never take enough notice of—the white pines (his
beloved) and red birch, the Silphium and Draba. He relishes the least of
these. And from an old agricultural
field, he helps the land return to what it once was even it was on the verge of
forgetting and in doing so build a natural community. He doesn’t speak so much of the human
community that he may or may not build when he is there, but he mentions the
neighbors who have treed a coon or collected the honey from his trees, and he
doesn’t seem to mind sharing his bounty. So perhaps loving the land can also
connect us to community. Or at least slow the pace down.
It is a work-weary world, it seems, that keeps us too much
out of nature and too much glued to the keyboards and the warm glow of our
screens. In Ohio, we are quite enveloped
in snow and a brisk chill, which I have been enjoying on my daily walks with
the geese flying in the blue sky with great purpose. Tonight the edge of the chill is being taken
off by the heater, as well as a log in the fireplace, which Leopold notes “is
the sunlight that is now being released, through the intervention of my axe and
saw, to warm my shack and my spirit through eighty gusts of blizzard. And with
each gust a wisp of smoke from my chimney bears witness to whomsoever it may
concern that the sun did not shine in vain.” He reminds us that we are connected and part
of the land, that we will leave our mark on it one way or the other, with the
axe and with footsteps we leave tracking across the snow.
