Berry in his own words

We had some words here about Wendell Berry a few weeks ago. In an interview nicely conducted by Lauren Wilcox in World Ark, a publication of the Heifer Project, Berry himself gives what I take to be a good short summary of his stance (this issue's not on line yet):

It's important at least that we understand our economic relation to the world, the way we live from it, the way we do or don't take care of it. I think the conservation movement unwittingly helped to drive a wedge between us and our land by implying that we could live most of our lives in circumstances that don't quite suit us -- doing work that doesn't suit us, work that makes us say, Thank God it's Friday -- and then somehow, on vacation, go to a national park and reconnect with the natural world. But of course that's not a connection. ...

You don't have to go to the Rocky Mountains to confront nature, to learn from it and ask the necessary questions. If you go to a good farm that has been properly and gracefully fitted into a place, then you can see that real questions about the terms on which we live have been asked, and answered.