As long as we insist on relating to it strictly on our own terms-as strange to us or subject to us-the wilderness is alien, threatening, fearful. We have no choice then but to become its exploiters, and to lose, by consequence, our place in it. It is only when, by humility, openness, generosity, courage, we make ourselves able to relate to it on its terms that it ceases to be alien.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of humility and openness in our relationship with nature, suggesting that we should engage with it on its own terms rather than solely from our perspective.
Wendell Berry's quote speaks to the idea that our relationship with nature is often marred by a sense of alienation and exploitation when we approach it with a self-centered mindset. By insisting on seeing the wilderness solely through our own lens—characterizing it as strange, threatening, or fearful—we become mere exploiters and risk losing our integral place within it. However, through a practice of humility, openness, and courage to connect with nature on its own terms, we can foster a more harmonious relationship, transforming the wilderness from an alien entity into a familiar part of our existence.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a speech about environmental conservation during Earth Day celebrations.
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.
Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.
People may come to our communities because they want to serve the poor; they will only stay once they have discovered that they themselves are poor.
You will never understand who you are until you understand who God is.
If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics - a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage - surely that proves that you are in the right?
Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it.
The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives - the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself.
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