LOVING OUR LAND
A Personal Environmental History
Y GREAT GRANDFATHER LOVED THE LAND and studied its ecology, just like me. Not in the academic way I explore ecology, but in a practical way. He was a farmer. I learned about our like minds from my grandmother who grew up on his farm in southern Ohio. "We were taught it was a sin to waste, even if you could afford to," she told me. Apparently, my great-grandfather eschewed pesticides, instead trusting predators to keep pests off his plants; he fed food scraps to his animals and burned paper trash, leaving only small amounts of garbage for Mr. Segal, "the junkman," to pick up; he read books and journals like "Successful Farming" to hone his skills; he even harbored a healthy disrespect for city folk who bought, then trashed country land. "The land was his livelihood and he respected, honored, and nurtured it," my grandmother explained. But loving the land was a given for farmers in Southern Ohio when my grandmother grew up. Because it was their livelihood, respect and honor were necessary.
By the time my grandmother married my city-bred grandfather and raised my mother, the pastoral chapter in her life had ended. My mother grew up in cities and suburbs. I asked my grandmother if they ever went camping. All she remembered was a single girl scout trip - they were rained out and went home. How different than growing up on a farm! Although my grandmother said that lessons she learned in the country stayed with her for life, she did not mind her transition to the city. She considered the suburbs a good compromise between country and city. Besides, my grandfather declared he would rather join the foreign legion than live in the country.
Compared to my grandmother's childhood on the farm, my mother had little experience with the countryside during her youth. But the few experiences she did have were important and built anew kind of relationship with nature, a kind that was rare in my great-grandfather's day. My mother fondly remembers helping my great-grandmother can vegetables and pluck chickens on the farm. Her third grade teacher, an amateur naturalist, instilled a lifelong interest in birds. Her passion for gardening probably stems right from my great grandfather's well-kept vegetable garden. By the time my brother, sister, and I were born, camping was my parents' ideaof a family vacation. We journeyed to majestic giant sequoias, mysterious Joshua trees and venerable bristlecone pines. We imagined our lives as early explorers to the Sierra and as Anasazi climbing in D-shaped towers and looking out key-shaped windows. Although my parents do not directly rely on the land for their livelihood, they turn to it as a way of understanding and enjoying their lives.
This environmental philosophy, this spiritual role for nature that my parents projected on me was magnified by my experience asa youth in California and is now perhaps my most defining feature. I volunteered as a park ranger at Hovenweep National Monument the summer after my junior year. I started an environmental club with my friend Dave Harris at Mountain View High School the next year. Growing up in Silicon Valley also bred an appreciation for science and technology, so when I enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, I was inescapably drawn to field research in ecology. I now intend to make a living studying Earth's ecosystems and the role of nature in human society.
The environmental history of my family illustrates a philosophical progression in America's changing view of its relationship to the land. In my great-grandfather's day, people loved the land because it gave them freedom, it made them a living, and ultimately it helped make America the world's wealthiest nation. Later, as the frontier closed, and farming was taken over by the few from the many, people could live as far as they liked from our natural heritage. People were free to think, as Aldo Leopold put it, that "breakfas tcomes from the grocery [and] heat from the furnace." Then, when the environmental movement sounded the global alarm on the dangers of this view, Americans realized that their land has value to them beyond its economic usefulness. We found a new reason to love our land. No longer was this the exclusive domain of hermits like Henry David Thoreau and John Muir.
People like my mother realized the significance of seeing a rare bird through binoculars or seeing a tree as inspiration instead of as board feet. Maybe this realization came from repressed biophilic tendencies caused by rapid urbanization. Maybe it came from a spiritual void left by the decline of organized religion. Whatever the cause, I can't deny the importance of this new environmental ethic, this love of our land, in shaping my life. I think if my great-grandfather were here, he would share my healthy disrespect for the Ronald Reagans out there who still think if you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.
- ANTHONY DARROUZET-NARDI, 2002