“The survival of wilderness, of places we do not change, where we allow the existence even of creatures we perceive as dangerous- is necessary. Our sanity probably requests it. Whether we go to those places or not, we need to know they exist.”
Wendell Berry, ‘The World Ending Fire’. All quotes in this post are from the short essay ‘Getting Along with Nature (1982)’.
Grazing Land, NE Tasmania. Pentax MX, 2021.
“But unlike other creatures, humans must make a choice as to the kind and scale of the difference they make. If they choose too small a difference, they diminish their humanity. If they choose to make too great a difference, they diminish nature, and narrow their subsequent choices, ultimately, they diminish or destroy themselves.”
St Columba Falls, Pyengana, Tasmania. Pentax MX 2021.
In the middle. NE Tasmania. Pentax MX, 2021.
“I think there is a bad reason to go to the wilderness. We must not go there to escape the ugliness and the dangers of the present human economy. We must not let ourselves feel that to go there is to escape… There can be continuity between them and there must be.”
Rainbow Valley, NE Tasmania. Pentax MX, 2021.
“To make this continuity between the natural and the human, we have only two sources of instruction: nature herself and our cultural tradition.”