. The book is due out this month.
From the article -
"...3 million, yes million, acres of open space are developed each year in this country; farmland is lost at the rate of 2 acres per minute; someone just entering middle age now who grew up in, say, Rockland County, New York, lived in a place with 17,360 acres of farmland—now there are 250, but check back in a few minutes. We can only compile the statistics and get out of the way, dumbfounded. No one knows what to do about it. There is nothing to do about it. The newspapers fill with stories containing incredible facts; apparently no one reads them. Occasionally there is an account of some monumental fight actually won, costing years of sweaty effort, and the prize is one development scaled back, one farm saved, a few acres that won't be logged, a Civil War battlefield protected though with givebacks, a single Wal-Mart backburnered. Meanwhile, scores of houses, health clubs, hospitals, and convenience stores and 2,378 Wal-Marts went up elsewhere."
The author includes this quote from Alan Devoe's 1937 "Phudd Hill" -
"So green are these hills, and so round and so many, that they suggest the massive tumuli of some gigantic and immemorially ancient race of man. I have walked upon them and extracted from their timeless earthiness the profoundest peace which it is possible to know."
I'm not familiar with Alan Devoe or Phudd Hill, but a Google Search returned a picture of some nice looking Wood Frogs on a place called Phudd Hill in New York state. It's somehow associated with what appears to be a museum farm...for lack of a better term where people can go and look at some old farm buildings, pretty flowers, grass...
Quite sad. What's happening with the frogs, the farms, the land - as we trade it away for parking lots, strip malls, big box houses - at what point, if ever, do we say we have enough pavement/development/private property signs?
Systems engineers working in the area of System Dynamics tell us that complex ecological systems behave in a non-linear fashion. This is a fancy way of saying that we can get surprised really quick when it comes to changes in our environment. People will move to an area and develop it until the point is reached where the quality of life diminishes sufficiently that the place is no longer attractive.
Unfortunately we only have one planet Earth.
Further Reading -
The Academy of American Poets - Wendell Berry
Field Observations an interview with Wendell Berry.
Gary Snyder at the Blue Neon Alley
