Reading
Finished reading: Distant Neighbors by Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder. 📚 Berry to Snyder, 1978:
I am, I believe, a “non-violent” fighter. But I am a fighter. And I see with considerable sorrow that I am not going to get done fighting and live at peace in anything like the simple way I once thought I would. So how to keep from becoming evil?
Maybe the answer is to fight always for what you particularly love, not for abstractions and not against anything: don’t fight against even the devil, and don’t fight “to save the world.”
It would have been nice if I had read that before I wrote this essay. It also would have been nice if I had remembered this quotation from Berry:
The problem, as it appears to me, is that we are using the wrong language. The language we use to speak of the world and its creatures, including ourselves, has gained a certain analytical power (along with a lot of expertish pomp) but has lost much of its power to designate what is being analyzed or to convey any respect or care or affection or devotion toward it. As a result we have a lot of genuinely concerned people calling upon us to “save” a world which their language simultaneously reduces to an assemblage of perfectly featureless and dispirited “ecosystems,” “organisms,” “environments,” “mechanisms,” and the like. It is impossible to prefigure the salvation of the world in the same language by which the world has been dismembered and defaced.
Also this from Gary Synder:
Bioregional awareness teaches us in specific ways. It is not enough just to “love nature” or to want to “be in harmony with Gaia.” Our relation to the natural world takes place in a place, and it must be grounded in information and experience.
Currently contemplating: Portfolios of Ansel Adams by Ansel Adams, John Szarkowski. I bought this book in 1982, but this is the first time I’m going through it systematically and very slowly. 📚
Currently reading: Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America by Douglas Brinkley. 📚 Brinkley reports that one Civilian Conservation Corps company in New Mexico had a newsletter called The Woodpecker in which this psalm was featured:
Roosevelt is my shepherd, I shall not want;
He maketh me lie down on straw mattresses,
he leadeth me inside a mess hall,
he restoreth to me a job.
He leadeth me in the paths of reforestation for his country’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of poison oak and ivy,
I will fear no evil, for he is for me.
His blankets and uniforms, they comfort me.
He prepareth a saw and ax before me in the presence of my commanding officer,
my shoes runneth over.
Surely beans and employment will follow me all the days of Roosevelt’s administration
and I shall dwell in a tent forever.
Currently reading: Anna Karenina, for the first time in some years. Endless joys here, and I’m reminded that there’s a certain kind of scene that Tolstoy does uniquely, and wonderfully. Here, for instance, a dinner party at which Levin finds himself encountering Kitty, who some months earlier had rejected his proposal of marriage. Several of the others are discussing Issues of the Day, especially the education of women, but Levin and Kitty are absorbed in a tête-à-tête, and Levin’s heart is not-so-strangely warmed. He tells Kitty about having seen her in a coach.
‘Wasn’t I all dishevelled?’ she thought; but seeing the rapturous smile these details evoked in his memory, she felt that the impression she had made must on the contrary have been a very good one. She blushed and laughed with happiness.
‘I honestly don’t remember.’
‘What a good laugh Turovtsyn has!’ said Levin, admiring his moist eyes and shaking body.
‘Have you known him long?’ asked Kitty.
‘Who doesn’t know him!’
‘And I see that you think he’s a bad person?’
‘Not bad, but worthless.’
‘That’s not true! And you must stop thinking that straight away!” said Kitty. ‘I used to have a low opinion of him too, but he — he is an exceedingly nice and remarkably kind man. He has a heart of gold.’
‘How did you manage to find out about his heart?’
‘We are great friends. I know him very well. Last winter, soon after … you came to see us,’ she said, with a guilty but at the same time trusting smile, ‘all Dolly’s children had scarlet fever, and he came to see her one day. And can you imagine,’ she said in a whisper, ‘he fel so sorry for her that he stayed on, and began helping her look after the children. Yes, and he went on living with them for three weeks, and looked after the children like a nanny.’
‘I am telling Konstantin Dmitrich about Turovtsyn during the scarlet fever,’ she said, leaning over to her sister.
‘Yes, it was remarkable, he was wonderful!’ said Dolly, glancing at Turovtsyn, who sensed he was being talked about, and smiling at him gently.
Levin cast Turovtsyn another glance, and was amazed he had not realized the extent of this man’s charm before.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll never think ill of people again!’ he said merrily, expressing what he genuinely now felt.
📚
Finished reading: Middlemarch by George Eliot — for maybe the twelfth time. As I grow older and older, it grows greater and greater. 📚
Finished reading: The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America by Douglas Brinkley. One-third of this massive book concerns the personal and political life of TR; one-third concerns his astonishing achievements in the conservation of the American landscape and its creatures; and one-third describes his killing of animals, thousands of animals. It often seems that TR wanted to protect the wildlife of American from everyone except him and his friends, who would be free to slaughter indiscriminately. His bloodlust was a kind of mania, and Brinkley can do nothing (who could?) to explain how it co-existed with his lifelong commitment to protect wild animals and their environments. 📚
Currently reading: A Sand County Almanac and Other Writings On Ecology And Conservation by Aldo Leopold. Re: Leopold’s “land ethic” and his emphasis on the “biotic community,” I think: I just don’t know how to convince people who care only about money to care even a little bit about anything else. 📚
Finished reading: John Muir: Nature Writings (LOA #92) by John Muir 📚
The poor bit of measured time was soon spent, and while the saddles were being adjusted I again urged Emerson to stay. “You are yourself a sequoia,” I said. “Stop and get acquainted with your big brethren.” But he was past his prime, and was now as a child in the hands of his affectionate but sadly civilized friends, who seemed as full of old-fashioned conformity as of bold intellectual independence. It was the afternoon of the day and the afternoon of his life, and his course was now westward down all the mountains into the sunset. The party mounted and rode away in wondrous contentment, apparently, tracing the trail through ceanothus and dogwood bushes, around the bases of the big trees, up the slope of the sequoia basin, and over the divide. I followed to the edge of the grove. Emerson lingered in the rear of the train, and when he reached the top of the ridge, after all the rest of the party were over and out of sight, he turned his horse, took off his hat and waved me a last good-by. I felt lonely, so sure had I been that Emerson of all men would be the quickest to see the mountains and sing them. Gazing awhile on the spot where he vanished, I sauntered back into the heart of the grove, made a bed of sequoia plumes and ferns by the side of a stream, gathered a store of firewood, and then walked about until sundown. The birds, robins, thrushes, warblers, etc., that had kept out of sight, came about me, now that all was quiet, and made cheer. After sundown I built a great fire, and as usual had it all to myself. And though lonesome for the first time in these forests, I quickly took heart again, — the trees had not gone to Boston, nor the birds; and as I sat by the fire, Emerson was still with me in spirit, though I never again saw him in the flesh.
On the way back to our Tuolumne camp, I enjoyed the scenery if possible more than when it first came to view. Every feature already seems familiar as if I had lived here always. I never weary gazing at the wonderful Cathedral. It has more individual character than any other rock or mountain I ever saw, excepting perhaps the Yosemite South Dome. The forests, too, seem kindly familiar, and the lakes and meadows and glad singing streams. I should like to dwell with them forever. Here with bread and water I should be content. Even if not allowed to roam and climb, tethered to a stake or tree in some meadow or grove, even then I should be content forever. Bathed in such beauty, watching, the expressions ever varying on the faces of the mountains, watching the stars, which here have a glory that the lowlander never dreams of, watching the circling seasons, listening to the songs of the waters and winds and birds, would be endless pleasure. And what glorious cloudlands I should see, storms and calms, — a new heaven and a new earth every day, aye and new inhabitants. And how many visitors I should have. I feel sure I should not have one dull moment. And why should this appear extravagant? It is only common sense, a sign of health, genuine, natural, all-awake health. One would be at an endless Godful play, and what speeches and music and acting and scenery and lights! — sun, moon, stars, auroras. Creation just beginning, the morning stars “still singing together and all the sons of God shouting for joy.”
I’ve been suffering from eyestrain, so for my evening reading have turned to Stephen Fry narrating the Sherlock Holmes stories, which ranks as one of the three best narrations I have ever heard, the other two being Fiona Shaw’s The Mill on the Floss and Andy Serkis’s The Lord of the Rings. Spot-on in all respects: Simon Callow’s review of Fry’s Holmes. 📚🎧