Why should conservationists have a positive interest in… farming? There are lots of reasons, but the plainest is: Conservationists eat.
WENDELL BERRYWhy should conservationists have a positive interest in… farming? There are lots of reasons, but the plainest is: Conservationists eat.
WENDELL BERRYThe primary motive for good care and good use of the land-community is always going to be affection, which is too often lacking.
WENDELL BERRYTo cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.
WENDELL BERRYTo cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.
WENDELL BERRYThe two great aims of industrialism – replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy – seem close to fulfillment.
WENDELL BERRYIt is a horrible fact that we can read in the daily paper, without interrupting our breakfast, numerical reckonings of death and destruction that ought to break our hearts or scare us out of our wits.
WENDELL BERRYAnnual plants are nature’s emergency medical service, seeded in sounds and scars to hold the land until the perennial cover is re-established.
WENDELL BERRYPrayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart.
WENDELL BERRYIt means that your will and God’s will may not be the same. It means there’s a good possibility that you won’t get what you pray for. It means that in spite of your prayers you are going to suffer.
WENDELL BERRYI come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief…
WENDELL BERRYIf conservationists will attempt to resume responsibility for their need to eat, they will be led back fairly directly to all their previous concerns for the welfare of nature.
WENDELL BERRYThe uplands of my home country in north central Kentucky are sloping and easily eroded, dependent for safekeeping upon year-round cover of perennial plants.
WENDELL BERRYThese are people who are capable of devotion, public devotion, to justice. They meant what they said and every day that passes, they mean it more.
WENDELL BERRYTo hear of a thousand deaths in war is terrible, and we ‘know’ that it is. But as it registers on our hearts, it is not more terrible than one death fully imagined.
WENDELL BERRYI prayed like a man walking in a forest at night, feeling his way with his hands, at each step fearing to fall into pure bottomlessness forever.
WENDELL BERRYBetter than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.
WENDELL BERRY