As I age in the world it will rise and spread, and be for this place horizon and orison, the voice of its winds. I have made myself a dream to dream of its rising, that has gentled my nights. Let me desire and wish well the life these trees may live when I no longer rise in the mornings to be pleased with the green of them shining, and their shadows on the ground, and the sound of the wind in them.
Interpretation
As I grow older, I cherish the beauty of nature and hope for its continued existence after I'm gone.
In this quote, Wendell Berry expresses a profound connection to nature through his reflections on aging. He highlights the importance of trees and the natural environment, indicating that his dreams and desires are tied to the vitality of nature. As he contemplates his mortality, he wishes for the trees to thrive long after he has departed, illustrating a deep appreciation for the beauty and serenity that nature brings to life, alongside a sense of responsibility to preserve it for future generations.
In practice
A speaker at an environmental conference could use this quote to emphasize the importance of conservation.
We weren't allowing our hopes to become expectations. Expectations are tempting, pleasant, maybe necessary. They are scary too, once you have had some experience. They are not necessarily and not always a bucket of smoke, but they can be and are even likely to be.
The uplands of my home country in north central Kentucky are sloping and easily eroded, dependent for safekeeping upon year-round cover of perennial plants.
A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.
WE ARE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY - I mean our country itself, our land. This is a terrible thing to know, but it is not a reason for despair unless we decide to continue the destruction. If we decide to continue the destruction, that will not be because we have no other choice. This destruction is not necessary. It is not inevitable, except that by our submissiveness we make it so.
Much of our waste problem is to be accounted for by the intentional flimsiness and unrepairability of the labor-savers and gadgets that we have become addicted to.
We had entered an era of limitlessness, or the illusion thereof, and this in itself is a sort of wonder. My grandfather lived a life of limits, both suffered and strictly observed, in a world of limits. I learned much of that world from him and others, and then I changed; I entered the world of labor-saving machines and of limitless cheap fossil fuel. It would take me years of reading, thought, and experience to learn again that in this world limits are not only inescapable but indispensable.
In the animal kingdom, one of the keys to survival is to outwit your enemies. And when you're surrounded by carnivores, one of the best strategies is to fade into the background and disappear.
Walking on willow tree roads by a river dappled with peach blossoms, I look for spring light, but am everywhere lost. Birds fly up and scatter floating catkins. A ponderous wave of flowers sags the branches.
A little child paddles a little boat, Drifting about, and picking white lotuses. He does not know how to hide his tracks, And duckweed's opened up along his path.
Tree at my window, window tree, My sash is lowered when night comes on; But let there never be curtain drawn Between you and me.
For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect it.
We are living as if we had three planets' worth of resources to live with rather than just one. We need to cut by about two-thirds our ecological footprint. For that we need one planet farming as well as one planet living - one planet farming which minimises the impact on the environment of food production and consumption, and which maximises its contribution to renewal of the natural environment
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