Efficiency or Enjoyment?

As I have said before, I prefer to take my nature walks towards the end of the day. Whether or not this is because the end of the day is the only time that I have to do any walking, I still find it personally enjoyable because of the overall experience that I get from finding a nice quiet place to pass the remaining hours of light in the day. This week, I found a nice inconspicuous spot at the base of a tree in the thinning (and by now leafless) woods near campus, and I sat down to write a little bit about other similarly quiet moments in my life. I'm not really sure how I got into this habit, but writing or thinking about past nice calm moments during present nice calm moments has been a sort of saving grace for my sanity this year.

Anyway, an important realization that I came to was that the extent to which I could write depended entirely on how much sunlight I had left before nightfall. I was deep enough in the woods that as every minute ticked by I had less and less light to work with. Soon I felt as though I was racing against the clock, trying to condense my ideas enough that by the time the sun went down I could come up with something that didn't seem to end too abruptly. I noticed, however, that the race to take advantage of every last ray of daylight wasn't too stressful. The whole time that I was concerned with finishing my little entry, I had barely noticed the quickly fading light, and by the time I had finished, I was completely in the dark.

Later, I thought about Berry's fascination with the "Old school" of thought, and the conflicts with functionality and enjoyment that he raises when describing his conversations with his farming friend, who preferred to use horses on his farm rather than tractors. I thought Berry sounded a bit like Thoreau (at least the cynicism is there) when he describes the farmer's use of his tractor:

"Last spring he used his big tractor only two days. The last time he went to use it, it wouldn't start, and he left it sitting in the shed; it was still sitting there at the time of our visit" (155).

Here, I think that Berry is trying to outline what he doesn't like about the advent of quick, labor-saving technology by showcasing this particular incident, where something that might be completely practical could also be entirely impersonal. Not only does the farmer apparently have a hard time justifying its use, but once it proves unreliable, it is unable to be improved upon, and is thus left alone to rust in his shed. While I think that Berry is far from the point of despising technology to the extent that Thoreau might have, he makes a compelling inadvertent statement about the importance of the enrichment of one's own life over the practicality of modern advances. Berry says,

"At year's end, his bank account will show a difference that the horses have made, but day by day his reason for working them is that he likes to" (155).

I felt as though this passage connected with my sense of enjoyment and understanding of practical application when it came to writing things down in the dark. For me, the focus was the enjoyment that I got out of writing about something. Whether or not it entailed more work or became less efficient, at the end of the day, I didn't fuss about whether or not I was able to fill two whole pages with something brilliant and concise. That wasn't at all the point. The point was that I was happy with the way I chose to work. While I think that it might be a stretch to expand this little scenario to the economic extent that Berry brings his farming examples in "A Good Farmer of the Old School", for me the good economic sense was of personal satisfaction. After all, I don't have to worry about selling anything I write to make a living. . . well, not yet anyway.

Turkey Farming

I know this isn't a nature walk, but I found it to be so fitting for this post, so please bear with me while I try to make my point. I am currently taking an enviormental philosophy class in which we are talking about such things as the benefits of vegetarianism, genetic engeneering, and the not so humane treatment of animals in most conventional farming practices. We recently took a trip to the local turkey farm, located in New Sharon. Everyone loves a break from the classroom, so we all took much appreciation in the fresh air, sunny sky and seeemingly beautiful day. When we arrived at the farm, we entered the store where customers purchase their holiday turkeys and all seemed well, aside from the lingering smell of freshly killed poultry. This is where we met Bob Neal, lead farmer and owner of the turkey farm, which has been in operation since the 1970's. A great guy from the git-go, Bob seemed very passionate about his line of work, warning us that it's not always pretty. From here, we were instructed to put plastic booties over our shoes so that we didn't infect the breeding grounds because germs can travel through the soil, infecting an entire lot of turkeys. From here, we went outside and right to the breeding grounds. Unlike conventional turkey farming, the birds were out in the sun, running around and greeting us with loud turkey noises, gobbling if you will. Bob talked to the birds, introducing us as if we were all on the same level of intelligence. I couldn't help but giggle to myself, but I came to find that Bob might've been one of the most humane and honest farmers I have never met (not that I have met many, but I have heard horror stories of farming practices gone wrong).

Bob was proud to inform us that his farm composts almost every organic material that they use, do not use genetically modified feed, do not inject their birds with antibiotics or artifical flavor chemicals, and try to give the birds the longest life possible. Bob then compared his ways to that of conventional farmers and I'm sure almost half of us were ready to puke by the time he got to the issue of killing the birds. Ironically, while listening to his comparison, we were standing right next to the kill house, were they just happened to be killing their quota for the day. Bob explained that his methods were the most humane and despite the shrieks from the doomed birds, I admired Bob for his honesty about his work and his willingness as well as want to find and use the most decent approach when it comes to farming turkeys. Unfortunately, Bob is the only farmer in New England that doesn't use genetically modified feed and one of the few who actually cares about the well-being of his birds.

I feel as though Wendell would applaud farmer Bob in his efforts to find the most humane and beneficial methods when it comes to farming animals for human consumption. I really enjoyed Home Econimics as a whole, but especially enjoyed the last section of reading. Lately, as a result of both this class and my philosophy class, I have become so worried about where my food is coming from and quite frankly, have seriously been considering becoming a vegetarian. I do understand that we as humans have a biological desire to eat meat, however, I don't in any way feel that we have the right to impose pain and terror, as well as discomfort and torture on animals that we are raising and killing merely for our own consuption. Call me ridiculous, but I feel that animals are entitled to a somewhat decent life, even if the end is met by the chopping block. I feel that Wendell would consider farmer Bob as what he calls the "good worker," one that, "loves the board before it becomes a table, loves the tree before it yields the board, loves the forest before it gives up the tree. The good worker understands that a badly made artifact is both an insult to its user and a danger to its source" (pg. 144). Farmer Bob understands that a poorly treated turkey is not only an insult to him, but also an insult to the environment, as well as the humans that are consuming it. It also becomes a sign of ignorance, one that shows just how much we as humans only care about the production and quantity, not the process and the quality. I found Wendell criticizing the human race for this ignorance, and found myself slighty ashamed, knowing that I have a part in this ignorance. According to Wendell, we view nature and its resources as 'means that can be used to advantage' (pg. 134). Our carelessness has lead us to be what Wendell feels is wasteful, even though we try to claim otherwise. He then goes on to say that, "Our great fault as a people is that we do not take care of things...Labor is expensive, time is expensive, money is expensive, but materials- the stuff of creation- are so cheap that we cannot afford to take care of them" (pg. 128). I couldn't agree more and the more I find out where my food comes from, the more I frown on our race for our abuse of the things that nature lends to us in what we like to think of as endless quantities. The real truth is that we are not only abusing the privilage of using the environment, but we are using the environment as a mere means and not having the deciency to give back what we take. Granted, if more conventional farming companies turned to more humane and traditional methods, our food would be more expensive, but wouldn't it be worth it? Perhaps we could then actually call ourselves an intelligent race, one that could feed the whole earth while still having appreciation for where our resources come from and learn to take care of them, cause after all, I'm sure nature is itching for some payback.

This week my walk took me to the bank to cash my paycheck. Though it is not a walk “in” nature it still allowed me ample time to think things over. With a 13-instrument jazz/funk band playing in my I-pod I set out for Bangor savings. Although I have been travelling high street for years I rarely walk it and with headphones. I decided I would let my eyes be my judges and look at the same walk in a new perspective.

On my walk I thought about Berry’s essay Economies. I thought about how he believes that plants and animals can, “live within the Great Economy entirely by nature, whereas humans, though entirely dependent upon it, must live in it partly by artifice.” (p.58) As I walk I realized it is true these buildings are manipulations of nature as well as the Gardens (although dying or preparing for winter) were cultivated to look pleasing to the eye. I look around at the trees, the bushes, peoples yards, tufts of forests nestled between neighborhoods and I couldn’t help but think how I’m going to miss this town when I move away. Here, at least it seems, people live more with nature than even southern parts of Maine or well many places. I couldn’t imagine looking out my window and being unable to see the trees or nature in as natural beauty as we can actually see it.

Where does all of this lead? It leads to something I have always noticed here, the strong division between the college and the town. Economically they are intertwined, come summer time when college is out this town is pretty dead (with the exception of tourists over 65!). But the people are two very separate communities. As much as this town is involved with the college, it is the least college-orientated town I’ve seen. So I asked myself the same questions as Berry did in his last essay, “Is community necessary…can “community values” be preserved simply for their own sake? Can people be neighbors, for example, if they do not need each other or help each other?” (p.180) I say unfortunately yes. It is what this town has become a division of communities.

I realize this has turned into a bit of a rant but it is something that has always bugged me about this town. I love it here. I like being able to walk to a store and buy anything I need. And although I went to high school not far from here and have lived in Maine for the last decade it seems that when I go into these stores I’m still looked at as a college student, a UMF’er. There aren’t deals within the Farmington community that promote to college students. There are no “college” nights at the bars, there isn’t even a local restaurant frequented by college students. But anyway this is what happens when my thoughts and eyes roam to the buildings around town, I get slightly off topic.

My last thought, well of any significance, was that I would have loved to have lived and gone to school at UMF before it was commercialized. From talking to old alumni who have gone to school here it seems that the town had been much more of a community before modernization really took over. And reading Berry really did feel like he wrote it recently, not almost 30 years ago. A particularly strong examples is presented on p. 186 when he states that, “The way that a national economy pres on its internal colonies, is by the destruction of community—that is, by the destruction of the principle of local self-sufficiency not only in the local economy by also in the local culture…change from goods once cheap or free to expensive goods having to be bought.

Wilderness Re-reconsidered

This week I went hiking with my friend Sarah, who is a bonafide outdoorswoman, a veteran of the Appalachian Trial. I actually had the privilege of picking her up at the end of the trail, near the foot of Mt. Ktaadn in Baxter State park, many years ago. I remember thinking that the experience had changed her: she looked lean and impossibly muscular, and also seemed calmer, quieter, less scattered.

Anyway, Sarah was in town, and I had a couple of free hours, and we decided to hike Bald Mountain. In once sense, it was plainly not a solitary walk. In another, it was the most solitary I’ve been in months. As we neared the summit we could see mountains in all directions -- our own Mt. Blue the closest of a series of frozen waves that receded, green to dark and then lighter blue against the sky. We stopped there and were quiet for a while, and the silence around us was a kind of small electric shock that went on until we spoke. There was just the wind, the bare rock face of the mountain, shrinking, like all the mountains of the east, which are among the oldest in the world, at its mountain pace. No meaning, no words, just the mountain being a mountain and a world being a world, no need for us, no need for interpretation. After a while Sarah said, “Wow – no road noise, You hardly ever get that anymore.” We could see road, snaking down along the foot of the mountain, obscured in places, but we couldn’t hear it.

Berry, like Cronon, is suspicious of this experience, the awe we feel at the top of a mountain, the vastness of the landscape around us – he is more interested in the way the human and the natural world can live together. Cronon’s critique of “Wilderness,”  which Berry shares, runs like this:

This, then, is the central paradox: wilderness embodies a dualistic vision in which the human is entirely outside the natural…To the extent that we celebrate wilderness as the measure with which we judge civilization, we reproduce the dualism that sets humanity and nature at opposite poles. We thereby leave ourselves little hope of discovering what an ethical, sustainable, honorable human place in nature might actually look like.

And, yes, I think, yes . As the ecocritic John  Elder  insists, the best hope for our future as a species lies in finding that “larger grammar in which the words culture and wilderness may both be spoken.”

And yet. Isn’t there something essentially salutary in making the effort, at least on occasion, not to speak the word culture? To try to stop hearing, at least for a moment, its endless vibrating ringtone -- even if it such efforts are doomed to failure (the road, afterall, was still there, and would have been even if I couldn’t see it)? Is the feeling of what I can only call spiritual health that I have at the top of a mountain really only cultural conditioning, as Cronon suggests, or does it go deeper? I certainly can remember having it as a child, when my conditioning was presumably much less complete: this sudden and overwhelming sense that who I thought I was, my “identity” -- comprised as it was and is of petty achievements and failures, complicated relationships, all the typical human stuff – was, in the larger scheme of things, wonderfully and terrifyingly irrelevant to the wild, slow receding of the mountains and the wild, slow turning of the earth. 

Landscape- Where are you?

This time, instead of a nature walk, I decided to be a total hypocrite and do a “nature drive” which isn’t really being with nature at all, but when I need a break, this is what I do. I choose to drive around Farmington and into Jay to see what I could “find” or just “see” in nature. I was driving down a large hill when I saw the scene that is to the right. I stopped and took a picture because I found myself becoming a little depressed. I took this drive to get away, a little break to feel better, and I find this “industry” right in the middle of the most beautiful view. I found myself wondering what Berry would think of this sight, seeing a plant, or whatever it was (I think it might have been the paper mill- making this all the more ironic with what we have read on the cutting of the trees) and finding it right in the middle of what little nature is left. I think of our industry today, our need for more, and our willingness to destroy one thing to create another, meaning cutting down nature to build a plant in the middle of it to produce more things that we as a society and economy want but don’t really need.

Berry states that “American agriculture is fantastically productive, and by now we all ought to know it. That American agriculture is also fantastically expensive is less known, but is equally undeniable, even though the costs have not yet entered into the official accounting. The costs are in loss f soil, in loss of farms and farmers, in soil and water pollution, in food pollution, in the decay of country towns and communities, and in the increasing vulnerability, of the food supply system.” (pg. 128) I realized when re-reading this section that the car I was in, the road I was on in addition with this plant that was in front of me all contributed to the loss of nature. I was smack in the middle of being upset about losing nature but contributing to it at the same time. I wonder then, with Berry’s ideas and suggestions about finding balance in nature if we will ever really find that balance, which scares me for the future. If my children’s children drive, bike, hike, walk, etc. down this road in the future what will they be looking at? Will this plant be here, will more be here, and will nature be here? I wonder how much we will “consume” before we realize it’s too late.

People or Land, Berry?

Doing the reading for last class made me angry. Wendell Berry made a lot of sense right up until he started bashing education for luring people away from their communities. That was when I became uneasy. And then he took it further by saying that school has no purpose or usefulness when it believes its job is to prepare people for careers and when he said that choice only forces people to fail. I expected this time to be angrier still with the ending of his book. But I wasn’t. I really enjoyed the essay “A Good Farmer of the Old School”. I liked reading about Lancie Clippinger and how he manages to make his farm productive. The value both Lancie and Berry put on independence and thinking for yourself really made sense to me and I started to understand what Berry was getting at a little better.

On page 166 Berry writes, “As the price of work has gone up, the value of it has gone down, until it is now so depressed that people simply do not want to do it anymore.” This makes sense to me. I think he is absolutely right. Working in retail I see a lot of this. If you can’t meet the sales goals then you get yelled at and in many companies if this continues long enough, you get replaced. People are not valued and people do not value their work. They work so they may have money so they may continue to buy the things they need. I think to some extent Berry is trying to assert that big scale farmers are like this. They have too much work on their hands to do themselves so they hire others to do it for them. Others who have no love for the land or for the work and who are merely there because it is a living.
In many ways though I still disagree with Berry. He values families remaining in a place for generations. I understand why he values this because it does mean that families eventually gain knowledge of their land and people gain value and recognition in the community however it is very limiting. It allows for no one to ever be something else.

I see it like this. My dad works at Hannaford as an assistant manager. If I was to follow what Berry is suggesting, I would go to school to get an education that would be useful to me as a manager at a retail store. Then I would return home and get a job. I don’t like retail. That is a major part of why I am going to school. I am here at Farmington to get an education that will allow me to do something that I really enjoy. This is something that Berry advocates for. He writes that, “... the present national ambition of the United States is unemployment. People live for quitting time, for weekends, for vacations, and for retirement; moreover this ambition seems to be classless, as true in the executive suites as on the assembly lines. One works, not because the work is necessary, valuable, useful to a desirable end, or because one loves to do it but only to be able to quit” all of which is a product of the industrial economy creating small tasks that gets rid of all thought. If I were to go into the “family business” mainly retail, would I not be doing the same thing? I would be doing a job that I did not care for, I would be doing it mindlessly and I would be longing to be done. Does not small family farms that are owned generation after generation condemn some of their own to this fate? Some who would rather be doing something else with their lives? So which is it Berry? Should I do a job that I love or should I stay in one place my whole life, doing what my family knows?

Maybe small family farms cut out more choices than you think. I imagine those farms can’t afford to send their children to schools that would give them a superb education. How much choice do these families have between farming and a different kind of life? If being able to choose our own lives makes us more healthy in the terms of the ability to use our brains and enjoy our work which is more important, the health of the land or the health of the people?

To Text, Or Not To Text

(OLD BLOG, FEEL FREE TO SKIP!) :)

"Talk of Heaven! Ye disgrace Earth". What an incredible line. I love not only the majestic use of 'YE' but also the thought provoking statement about how when we liken all natural things to the majesty of Heaven or Eden that we forget that which we are talking about is here, tangible, tastable, non-celestial and perhaps more sacred and holy because of it.

On my walk this evening I thought a lot about social interaction, and about visitors. One thing that always strikes me on the walks I take for this class is the loneliness of walking alone in the woods, where everything is interconnected and humming with life, where the trees tower over me and the lake stretches out almost past where I can see. You cannot help but feel that you are small and insignificant, but that you are also small and insignificant with every other human being on Earth, adding almost a kind of kinship and camaraderie to the loneliness you feel. I think that even the most powerful or most physically domineering of people cannot stand beside the ocean and think themselves it's equal or lord over it, and that is how I feel in the woods, and it is both humbling and empowering how the majesty of nature knocks us all, great or low, down a few pegs.

The loneliness of a nature walk got me thinking also about what Thoreau had to say about his time in the woods and the visitors he received, and about how "fewer came to see me upon trivial business". I know that this was written many years ago, but I think the idea is still applicable today. I think that with the era of cell phones that our worlds are not only smaller, but that our interactions with each other have suffered as a result. When you had to set up a visit and go see a friend in person, or when you had to hand write a letter that would reach someone days later, we took more thought and were less likely to socialize for the mere sake of socializing. I feel that our connection to each other is much less thoughtful now that we can call for any reason, and exchange texts and pictures at the drop of a hat. In an era where we can avoid social interaction all together by checking facebook pages for changes and events in people's lives, what would it be like if we all just put it aside for a while, got land-line phones and answering machines? I imagine the result would be much like what Thoreau describes, and we would find out then who was worth keeping in contact with, who challenges us, and who we would go out of our way to contact.