for our grandchildren's grandchildren

 Of An American Land Ethic

why is a land ethic not dominant in American culture?

a commitment of a lasting, deep, loving relationship

of our species with our world?

Horace Kephart loved the Smokies

and despaired of how many children of Appalachia

had no "I . . . Thou" relationship with the land they loved,

despaired of how easily for them forest and mountain became just things,

with no more commitment to them than to a coin,

just something to be used at a whim,

like spoiled children, they were centered on self,

not on a grand sense of self,

rather on a narrow sense like a five year-old at their birthday party,

where self-indulgence is the order of the day,

no thought of the other, except in terms of what the other can give,

we required our own children to work and earn money

for the Christmas gifts they would give,

so that they could learn reciprocity,

a deepening commitment to the other, to the relationship,

to give so that we might better deserve to receive,

I wander the woods, both physically and metaphorically,

and I hope that, as a species, we can grow up

and believe in leaving a world that is better than we found it,

a world that welcomes and celebrates our grandchildren's grandchildren,

a party only lasts a short time,

the days after should be about hope,

not about the wreckage of the mess created,

the dominion we feel we were given

should be more of stewardship than of exploitation,

the eyes in the mirror of who we are

are also of those we do not yet know,

us when we find the right ethic of the land,

when we realize that who we are is larger and grander

than the lesser self that pulls at us,

to deny that only dessert is what we need.

by Henry H. Walker

October 18, ‘26

our wounded land

 

reading the woods

in my lifetime I have watched the woods change:

slowly, inexorably, profoundly,

fifteen years before I was born,

the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was dedicated,

mostly our national policy toward its parks has been hands-off

to this large expanse of mountains and valleys:

a minimum of roads, of parking areas, of trails,

mostly following the rule

that the less human action allowed, the better,

sins of commission so much worse than omission,

our land butts up against the national park on two sides,

as a child I played in the pine forest

which came after the farms and orchards were abandoned,

a few apple trees survived at the edges,

while great beech trees survived all the domestication of the land

since their lumber wasn't prized,

tulip poplar trees, and their cousins, were prized

and their seeds found purchase on the newly-"free" land

they reached up as high as they could,

their hunger for sun mostly starved out the pines

of my childhood, brambles clearing in the understory,

in the largeness of the park, in a few areas, 

small patches of old growth forest

somehow escaped humanity's hunger for more and more,

I knew one huge tulip poplar tree, high up a hollow,

that was over 22 feet in circumference,

five feet above the half-angle ground where it rooted,

below it next generation buckeye also remembered

the old forest in who they were:

giants, with bark like rippled sand,

with a glory of wildflowers below them every spring,

anywhere enough land was spared the saw,

a community re-built itself

with connections and relationships

that got our awe, but not our understanding,

the roots below our feet pull us back to early beginnings,

we humans blundered into Eden when we were as children,

and we knew not what we did,

except that we could spend the Earth's savings willy-nilly

on whatever necessity or bauble attracted us,

we have been, and still are, Mickey in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice,"

stumbling into powers we do not understand and cannot control,

even this national park is not immune from our excesses:

air pollution, climate change,

plagues of non-native insects, blights, plants,

 ravage this world which is working hard to remember

who it was, who it is, who it can be,

I remember our first born child,

he could readily knock down towers of blocks,

but it took him three months more to learn to stack the blocks,

I hope we have that needed metaphorical "three months"

before far too much is lost.

by Henry H. Walker

October 17, ‘26

I have looked at clouds

 

a gratuitous expression of glory

early this morning, maybe 35 minutes

before the Sun crested the eastern horizon,

I went outside for my daily meditation,

as I sat in my chair, 

I started to concentrate on the careful recitation of passages

gleaned from seekers over the centuries,

they who have done their best to distill

what our journey here on Earth should be about,

as I recite to myself, 

I lift up my eyes into the open sky above me,

encircled by the embracing forest

that surrounds the home we have created,

above, clouds create an ethereal magnificence

with their casual expression of self and beauty,

wispy, detailed, intricate, quietly morphing, ephemeral,

clouds often create recognizable simple shapes,

today I recognized a complexity of gratuitous beauty,

every moment has within it such glory

that I too rarely notice and appreciate,

the artist within every moment

creates and off-handedly shares a deep beauty,

revealed in a moment, and then it's gone,

I want to notice,

I want to remember,

today I did,

I appreciated the grace 

into which I can lift myself

if I but notice,

acknowledge,

celebrate.

by Henry H. Walker

October 13, ‘26

getting the joke

 

laugh, and keep control

a great gift from my mother to me:

"Laugh when your world goes off track!"

power goes out,

a computer slips into the inexplicable,

reality turns bizarre,

like so much in current events these days,

there are certainly times and places

for anger, for rage,

for acting upon the world to make things better,

but a laugh at absurdity can be the right response

to the unwillingness of the world to be rational,

a laugh called for when we look at the hand we are dealt

and realize that no card connects to another card,

Mother taught me to laugh at such a time,

to not give malevolence the power

to control our feelings,

woe not as constructive as getting the joke

the universe persists in playing upon us,

as my mother slipped into Alzheimer's,

she would often fall back into her default of the positive:

when she tried to stand

and I told her she hadn't walked for six months,

she looked at me and explained:

"either you're crazy, or I am,"

how wonderful when laughter can be your default.

by Henry H. Walker

October 11, ‘26