It Must Be Poor Life

We Abuse Land Because We Regard It As A Commodity Belonging To Us.

The Drama Of The Sky Dance Is Enacted Nightly On Hundreds Of Farms, The Owners Of Which Sigh For Entertainment, But Harbor The Illusion That It Is To Be Sought In Theaters. They Live On The Land, But Not By The Land.

Our Tools Are Better Than We Are, And Grow Better Faster Than We Do. They Suffice To Crack The Atom, To Command The Tides, But They Do Not Suffice For The Oldest Task In Human History, To Live On A Piece Of Land Without Spoiling It.

I Now Suspect That Just As A Deer Herd Lives In Mortal Fear Of Its Wolves, So Does A Mountain Live In Mortal Fear Of Its Deer. And Perhaps With Better Cause, For While A Buck Pulled Down By Wolves Can Be Replaced In Two Or Three Years, A Range Pulled Down By Too Many Deer May Fail Of Replacement In As Many Decades.

There Is Yet No Ethic Dealing With Man's Relation To Land And To The Animals And Plants Which Grow Upon It. Land, Like Odysseus' Slave-girls, Is Still Property. The Land-relation Is Still Strictly Economic, Entailing Privileges But Not Obligations.