Wendell Berry’s “Our Deserted Country” in Our Only World covers a lot of ground. I read the first half of it this morning, slowly, underlining line after line, wondering how in the world I will ever begin. The usual routine for a Berry essay. I thought the quote below to be a poignant metaphor, extending beyond the canyon of difference between the agrarian economy and the industrial economy:
“It is the gait best suited to paying attention, most conservative of land and equipment, and most permissive of stopping to look or think. Machines, companies, and politicians 'run.' Farmers studying their fields travel at a walk.”
I thought back to the spring of 2012. I was months away from graduating college and getting married. I woke up mornings to the not-too-hot-yet heat of Phoenix, Arizona. The sun out early, the brightness pricking, tapping my body out of slumber. Drank coffee. Read the Bible. Wrote. I had finished my college basketball career. I no longer went to lift weights regularly. I no longer went on early morning runs. Instead, I walked. I walked around the suburban neighborhood that I had spent my whole life, aside from nine months in a dorm about 20 miles away in Tempe. For the first time, I began to notice little things about my neighborhood. Flowers sprouting from the edge of the basketball court at the Jewish school behind my house. A BMW leaving the garage of the pink stucco’d house every day, a middle aged man driving in one of a variety of bright golf polos. A short, thin elderly woman in leggings and a Nike zip-up running jacket, walking her three large pitbulls. Rather, her 3 large pitbulls walking her. That faded green house, tucked in a cult-de-sac, a large tree and tree house in the backyard looming, blocking most of the sun’s light. There were a couple months one year I used to visit Austin regularly, who lived in the faded green house. I don’t remember his last name. As I noticed these things in the slow, contemplative way that I never had before, I missed my neighborhood. I hadn’t left yet, but I missed it.
I do wonder though if Berry would cringe at the thought of that quote above as a metaphor. It is just a fact of agriculture and industry. Which reminds me that this is always the problem I have. I am stuck in the carousel, where horse chases horse. Endlessly. The music of spinning playing loudly. How am I supposed to give up my professional job to begin a small, local farm if it means that I will perish because I will not be able to pay for what I need to sustain me until I can become sustainable? Berry understands this too:
“And so however severe may be the current abuses of the land, and however urgent the need for conservation, we have got to bear in mind that the land will not be well used, because it cannot be, by people who cannot afford to use it well.”
Berry quotes another farmer:
“...it is hard to think of your environmental responsibilities when you’re wondering who will be the next family to live in your house.”
