There’s nothing under the ground that’s worth more than the little layer of topsoil sitting on top of it.
Interpretation
Topsoil is invaluable for life and nurturing the earth, outweighing the potential riches below it.
Wendell Berry highlights the immense value of topsoil in sustaining life and agriculture, suggesting that the natural resources above ground are far more precious than any material wealth found beneath. This quote serves as a reminder to appreciate and protect our environment, emphasizing that the health of our land is directly linked to our survival and wellbeing as a society.
In practice
During an environmental seminar to emphasize the importance of soil health.
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.
Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality.
But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean.
After all, sustainability means running the global environment - Earth Inc. - like a corporation: with depreciation, amortization and maintenance accounts. In other words, keeping the asset whole, rather than undermining your natural capital.
It [the Earth] was breathtakingly beautiful, like something out of a fairy tale. There is no way to describe the joy of seeing the Earth. It is blue, and more beautiful than any other planet.
The moon was a sharply defined crescent and the sky was perfectly clear. The stars shone with such fierce, contained brilliance that it seemed absurd to call the night dark.
The summer breeze was blowing on your face_x000D_ _x000D_ Within your violet you treasure your summery words_x000D_ _x000D_ And as the shiver from my neck down to my spine_x000D_ _x000D_ Ignited me in daylight and nature in the garden
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