A LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE EARTH

Cherish sunsets, wild creatures, and wild places.

Have a love affair with the wonder and beauty of the earth.

Steward Udall (1920-2010)

We were at the beach and the sky was clear, the water bright shades of aqua, darker at the shore, lighter toward the horizon.  Sunny and 70°.  The prior day was ravenous thunder, lightning and pounding rain, steel gray water with no visible horizon.  We stayed indoors to read and watch college sports.  

Then I saw this quotation and remembered the name Stewart Udall, Secretary of the Interior under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.  He was a Morman, a lawyer, congressman, professor, and writer of poetic bent.  His papers are held at the University of Arizona, his home state.  Udall is known as Advocate for the Planet Earth. Who wouldn't be proud to be so named? 

I love the idea of a love affair with the earth. A love affair with the force that sustains us, provides for our needs, sooths us, is a source of beauty and awe.  So, I decided to learn more about Secretary Udall. 

He says that each generation has its own rendezvous with the land, that despite our fee titles (yes, we learned about fee simple ownership in 1st year Property class), we are all only brief tenants on this planet.  That makes sense.  The trees in my wood are far older than I and God-willing will outlast my living descendants.  The rocks even older. 

At home, I have my favorite trees and boulders.  Years ago, Udall said that our choice is not between growth and stagnation, but between short-term growth and long-term disaster.  Mining, clear-cutting, trading long-grassed meadows and forests for concrete and asphalt, or even a well-maintained lawn, is a search and destroy mission.  

Right now, my meadow grasses are long and shaggy.  Just days ago, the geese were strutting about after a rain. 

Now wild daisies and purple bugle weeds bloom in proliferation. And a scattering of buttercups. A neighbor mows in May and has never had a daisy.  How many turtles and lady bugs are lost in mowing?  How many pollinators and butterflies?  Whose habitats are destroyed? 

I do think that neighborhoods with no deer and azaleas in bloom, neat pine straw beds beneath the trees and all carefully tended are beautiful.  They bring joy too.  Order is its own pleasure. If no Roundup is used, rabbits make homes beneath many a pruned hedge.  At our house I think the hawks get the rabbits, we have so few. 

Deer eat our wild blueberries too, before we get a one, and the native black raspberries go to feed the coyotes and racoons as well as the birds. A beautiful red fox has been hanging around this winter and spring.  As much as a sighting thrills me, I'm not totally at ease with its presence. 

But for our love affair with the earth, rewilding is still the most wonderful trend.  Making a place for birds and worms and butterflies.  Waiting to see what weedy thing in spring is actually a delicate wildflower.  Becoming an advocate for our little patch of the planet.