Land Prophets

This month, as April encourages us to linger outdoors and play, we honor the death of Rachel Carson on the 14^th, remember the birth of John Muir on the 21^st and celebrate Earth Day on the 22^nd.

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The Land Prophets dedicate their lives to showing others how to do less damage to the land. They confront people in politics and businesses who exploit the land only to make money, who listen to special interest groups rather than the everyday people they represent, and who betray the public trust as trustees of the land. These are some of our prophets.

In California, John Muir saw sheep destroying the wilderness meadows of the Sierra Nevada and worked to get them removed. In the process, he helped create the Sierra Club and the National Park system that has saved large tracts of wilderness areas. He also wanted to save Hetch Hetchy, but the politicians in San Francisco sold nature out for votes.

Rachel Carson in Maine discovered the devastating effects of pesticides on eagles and wildlife, and alerted people to the ecological disaster of using toxic chemicals like DDT on the environment. Her book Silent Spring reminds us to pay attention.

Aldo Leopold saw the barren land in Sand County, Wisconsin, and figured out a way to restore the habitat. His efforts and writings kick-started the ecology movement. 

Destruction of the land stops only when people speak up.

Kathleen Dean Moore writes about the interplay of land and ocean in Oregon, and human renewal through the spirituality of being outdoors.

Sigurd Olson worked to save the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota, and taught the value of listening to nature’s wildness.

Terry Tempest Williams in Utah writes of the radioactive desecration of land in the west and its toll on human health, and she is leading a movement of healing the land.

Wendell Berry in Kentucky is figuring out how to do sustainable farming, feeding people while doing minimal damage to the land, helping the earth remain a habitat for animals and birds while feeding people for decades to come.

Sharman Apt Russell writes of the living environment in the desert wilderness of southwest New Mexico, where many of us think not much life lives, and reminding us that what seems barren sustains a wide variety of life.

John Burroughs in New York wanted people to love the nature that existed around us, even in the city, because then they would take care of it.

Francis and Clare of Assisi loved nature, and felt that we were brothers and sisters to all creatures. Rather than fear the outdoors, they encourage us to participate in its life and care for it.

Stepping into the unknown involves taking risks because we don’t know where we’ll end up, or who will object and fight us. But the experiences of the land prophets who have gone before us tell us that standing up for nature is the only way that the natural world will be saved.