An Embodied Land Ethic Beyond the Binary

Below is an essay I crafted for my first writing assignment in grad school. It carries a more academic tone than my usual writing style, but I believe is still approachable in its content and style.

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“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise,” declares Aldo Leopold in his then-groundbreaking work, A Sand County Almanac. In his essay The Land Ethic, Leopold expresses the severance between humans and the natural world and the disconnect that occurs by viewing the world as a commodity instead of viewing ourselves as a member of the world. Leopold’s words have gone on to shape generations of conservationists and citizens alike in a movement toward ethical relationships with the landscape, but this framework seems to only dance along the surface of what an embodied land ethic might resemble. What Leopold fails to incorporate in his land ethic are the Indigenous principles of reciprocity and gratitude that extend through time immemorial.

The conviction of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ that Leopold depicts in such binary terms mirrors structures of colonialism. This ethical lens limits the nuances of relationships and reciprocity that are an inherent component of beginning to see oneself as a community member of our living world. We need a land ethic that is inherently and intentionally decolonized; an ethic that requires to see oneself not as an individual with unlimited freedoms to make decisions on behalf of all life (cultural values of individualism and exceptionalism) but see ourselves as inhabitants of this earth privileged with contributions to give and teachers to turn to. Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013) describes this opportunity of choices as a covenant of reciprocity. She shares,

The berries trust that we will uphold our end of the bargain and disperse their seeds to new

places to grow […] They remind us that all flourishing is mutual. We need the berries and the

berries need us. Their gifts multiply by our care for them, and dwindle from our neglect. We are

bound in a covenant of reciprocity, a pact of mutual responsibility to sustain those who sustain us.

And so the empty bowl is filled again. (p.382) 1

When our land ethic moves beyond preservation, it leads to active relationships that are guided by love and selflessness– a relationship of seeing oneself as inextricably bound to their biotic community, to the living landscape, to this planet that expresses love to us through beauty, nourishment, and life. By seeing ourselves as embedded in relationships with the ones we love, we do not just act for ourselves, we act for the relationship– for the animacy of reciprocity that is greater than just two players acting and reacting. It is not just the earth sustaining humans, and humans making actions either towards or against preservation– it is a new entity, a relationship, a covenant, that is formed. This covenant guides our actions because it transforms us from seeing beyond human exceptionalism and moves us into a posture of gratitude for being co-creators in this gift of life. A relational land ethic sees our choices and our relationship to the living land not just as a moral framework to examine our decisions, but as a joyous privilege that makes space for us to receive the generous experience of all that is offered. A choice to be transformed into something greater than ourselves.

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When I was a girl, I was not presented a land ethic to measure my planetary actions by, but rather was given a biblical framework in which to distinguish right and wrong. ‘Right’ being God’s plan for us– a life free from sin, and ‘wrong’ being the antithesis– a life of sin. This fixed framework offered very little room for understanding or for dynamic ways of knowing. And then in 2014, as I was just beginning my 20's, these moral tools (or lack thereof) were confronted with complex scenarios of what seemed to be love and justice clashing with truth and sin. It was through my budding relationship with the living world that I began to shift my own paradigm. A sleeping seed woke inside of me, and I began adoring the animate world that burst forth all around. I started listening to lingering echoes of light on the ponds and the woods stretching to the sun. I fell in love with the geese speaking to the night, the generous berries brambling freely through the humid summer air, and the eternal tide folding into itself again and again. It is through knowing we are moved.

The same summer I began my unlearning, I returned home from college for a visit and went with my mother to pick up homemade apricot jelly from a family friend’s house. I distinctly remember a printed sign in their hallway that read, ‘worship the creator, not the creation.’ I was confused how creating deliciously sweet food from one's own house could cultivate that sense of separatism. How could I love a god who created the succulent fruit trees and not also be in love with the fruit that so generously gives? Gradually, and sometimes cataclysmically, I outgrew the moral container that used to shape me. I could not see things bound within a dichotomy of created vs creator when everything felt alive, animate, and actively participating in this world. The places that shaped me could no longer hold the person I was, and I turned to a relationship with the Earth as a container through my metamorphosis.

As the years unfolded so did my own ethics on humans' relationship with the land. I began to understand everything as a reciprocal mesh and myself a chain in the linkage to all life. 2 I wanted to see beyond creator and created, I wanted to live the active creation. I wanted to be a citizen of a world animate and autonomous– I wanted to know and be moved by the living world. If I were to love this creation, I needed to see myself not only as a part of it, but as a participant in it. I needed to shift my choices to contribute to something greater than myself. I needed to turn to a narrative older than the world I was existing in, I needed to turn to an understanding greater than just my singular actions having a cosmic reaction.

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And this is where Leopold’s land ethic falls short– it does not engage the active reciprocal relationship of land and us shifting and unfurling together. It holds us as separate from the land: our actions or our inactions, our tending or our neglect. Through cultural, religious, and political powers, humans have attempted to sever our inherent relationship with the living earth– we placed ourselves in a powerful position of domination and forgot to see the beautiful reciprocity we are bound to. We have augmented our reality to a world where we are the only players in the game, the only sentient and self-willed decision makers. When one begins to view a land ethic more as a mutual relationship instead of a lens, it becomes more about knowing and co-creating, than the static decision of preservation or destruction. A land ethic cannot be handed down as a text to study and apply, it is a posture that is birthed from understanding. In this unprecedented time of compounded human-created catastrophe, it is not enough to act in preservation. We must act in a way that seeks to know and be known by the living ecosystems we are embedded in; to build relationships of humility, gratitude, and reciprocal love. Then we can begin the work that lies ahead of us.

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Footnotes:

1. Kimmerer, R. W. (2013) Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants Milkweed Editions. In this essay, Kimmerer shares the joy of mutuality between berries and berry-eaters. The bowl mentioned here is in reference to a ceremonial wooden bowl filled with berries and passed around for all to enjoy.

2. A term presented to me by Timothy Morton’s work in The Ecological Thought. He utilizes ‘mesh’ instead of ‘web’ or ‘network’ and argues that too many terms we use to describe interconnectedness have been compromised by the Internet or vitalism. Morton, T. (2010) The Ecological Thought Harvard University Press.