Wendell Berry lives and farms with his family in Henry County, Kentucky, and is the author of more than thirty books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Although Berry’s tenets echo those of many of his literary ancestors in American literature, his advice is more critical than that of his predecessors, for we now more than ever threaten our existence with destructive potentials unimaginable only a few decades ago. Berry explains our critical condition in “The Loss of the Future,” an essay in The LongLegged House: We have reached a point at which we must either consciously desire and choose and determine the future of the earth or submit to such an involvement in our destructiveness that the earth, and ourselves with it, must certainly be destroyed. And we have come to this at a time when it is hard, if not impossible, to foresee a future that is not terrifying. (46)
or the sake of job creation in Kent we have lavished public money on c nly so long as they can exploit peo where. The general purpose of the p o foster or conserve. What is the di ld town centers were built by peop nd who realized a particular value ook good because they were built b elves and wanted the respect of the kirts, on the contrary, were built b ride in the place, see no value in li eighbors. The only value they see i e siphoned out ofit to more fortun
ntucky, and in other backward stat n corporations that come in and sta eople here more cheaply than elsee present economy is to exploit, no difference? The difference is that th ople who were proud of their place ue in living there. The old building by people who respected themheir neighbors. The corporate outby people who manifestly take no lives lived there, and recognize no e in the place is the money that can unate places-that is, to the wealthie
Compromise Hell / For the sake of “job creation� in Kentucky, and in other backward states, we have lavished public money on corporations that come in and stay only so long as they can exploit people here more cheaply than elsewhere. The general purpose of the present economy is to exploit, not to foster or conserve. What is the difference? The difference is that the old town centers were built by people who were proud oftheir place and who realized a particular value in living there. The old buildings look good because they were built by people who respected themselves and wanted the respect of their neighbors. The corporate outskirts, on the contrary, were built by people who manifestly take no pride in the place, see no value in lives lived there, and recognize no neighbors. The only value they see in the place is the money that can be siphoned out ofit to more fortunate places-that is, to the wealthier suburbs ofthe larger cities. As a result, our once-beautiful and bountiful countryside has long been a colony of the coal, timber, and agribusiness corporations, yielding an immense wealth of energy and raw materials at an immense cost to our land and our land’s people. Because of that failure also, our towns and cities. The governmental obligation to protect these economic resources, inseparably human and natural, is the same as the obligation to protect us from hunger or from foreign invaders. In result, there is no difference between a domestic threat to the sources of our life and a foreign one.
Art was the rememberer. He knew what he knew and what had been known by a lot of dead kinfolks and neighbors. They lived on in his mind and spoke there, reminding him and us of things that needed to be remembered. Art had a compound mind, as a daisy has a compound flower, and his mind had something of the unwary comeliness of a daisy. Something that happened would remind him of something that he remembered, which would remind him of something that his grandfather remembered. It was not that he “lived in his mind.” He lived in the place, but the place was where the memories were, and he walked among them, tracing them out over the living ground. That was why we loved him. We followed the state road along the ridges toward Port William and then at the edge of town turned down the Sand Ripple Road. We went down the hill through the woods, and as we came near the floor of the valley, Elton went more carefully and we began to watch. We crossed a little board culvert that rattled under the wheels, eased around a bend, and there was the backwater, the headlights glancing off it into the treetops, the road disappearing into it. Elton stopped the truck. He turned off his headlights and the engine, and the quietness of the moonlight and the woods came down around us. I could hear the peepers again. It was wonderful what the road going under the water did to that place. It was not only that we could not go where we were used to going; it was as if a thought that we were used to thinking could not be thought. “Listen!” Elton said. He had heard a barred owl off in the woods. He quietly rolled the window down. And then, right overhead, an owl answered: “HOOOOOAWWW!” And the far one said, “Hoo hoo hoohooaw!” “Listen!” Elton said again. He was whispering.The owls went through their whole repertory of hoots and clucks and cackles and gobbles.“Listen to them!” Elton said. “They’ve got a lot on their minds.” Being in the woods at night excited him. He was a hunter. And we were excited by the flood’s interruption of the road. The rising of the wild water had moved us back in time. Elton quietly opened his door and got out and then, instead of slamming the door, just pushed
it to. I did the same and came around and followed him as he walked slowly down the road, looking for a place to climb out of the cut. Once we had climbed the bank and stepped over the fence and were walking among the big trees, we seemed already miles from the truck. The water gleamed over the bottomlands below us on our right; you could not see that there had ever been a road in that place. I followed Elton along the slope through the trees. Neither of us thought to use a flashlight, though we each had one, nor did we talk. The moon gave plenty of light. We could see everything-underfoot the blooms of twinleaf, bloodroot, rue anemone, the little stars of spring beauties, and overhead the littlest branches, even the blooms on the sugar maples. The ground was soft from the rain, and we hardly made a sound. The flowers around us seemed to float in the shadows so that we walked like waders among stars, uncertain how far down to put our feet. And over the broad shine of the backwater, the calling of the peepers rose like another flood, higher than the water flood, and thrilled and trembled in the air. It was a long walk because we had to go around the inlets of the backwater that lay in every swag and hollow. Way off, now and again, we could hear the owls. Once we startled a deer and stood still while it plunged away into the shadows. And always we were walking among flowers. I wanted to keep thinking that they were like stars, but after a while I could not think so. They were not like stars. They did not have that hard, distant glitter. And yet in their pale, peaceful way, they shone. They collected their little share of light and gave it back. Now and then, when we came to an especially thick patch of them, Elton would point. Or he would raise his hand and we would stop a minute and listen to the owls. I was wider awake than I had been since morning would have been glad to go on walking all night long.
Awake At Night / Late in the night I pay the unrest lowe to the life that has never lived and cannot live now. What the world could be is my good dream and my agony when, dreaming it I like awake and turn and look intothe dark. I think of a luxury in the sturdiness and grace of necessary things, not in frivolity. That would heal the earth, and heal men. But the end, too, is part of the pattern, the last labor of the heart to learn to lie still, one with the earth again, and let the world go.
To Know the Dark / To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
The Familiar / The hand is risen from the earth, the sap risen, leaf come back to branch, bird to nest crotch. Beans lift their heads up in the row. The known returns to be known again. Going and coming back, it forms its curves, a nerved ghostly anatomy in the air.
Rain / It is a day of the earth’s renewing without any man’s doing or help. Though I have fields I do not go out to work in them. Though I have crops standing in rows I do not go out to look at them or gather what has ripened or hoe the weeds from the balks. Though I have animals I stay dry in the house while they graze in the wet. Though I have buildings they stand closed under their roofs. Though I have fences they go without me. My
The Springs / In a country without saints or shrines I knew one who made his pilgrimage to springs, where in his life’s dry years his mind held on. Everlasting, people called them, and gave them names. The water broke into sounds and shinings at the vein mouth, bearing the taste of the place, the deep rock, sweetness out of the dark. He bent and drank in bondage to the ground.
A Wet Time / The land is an ark, full of things waiting. Underfoot it goes temporary and soft, tracks filling with water as the foot is raised. The fields, sodden, go free of plans. Hands become obscure in their use, prehistoric. The mind passes over changed surfaces like a boat, drawn to the thought of roofs and to the thought of swimming and wading birds. Along the river croplands and gardens are buried in the flood, airy places grown dark and silent beneath it. Under the slender branch holding the new nest of the hummingbird the river flows heavy with earth, the water turned the color of broken slopes.