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Thesis proposals are in, and job interviews are on the horizon. As you return to campus for the winter term, is there much to look forward to? I’m sure you hear, almost daily, forecasts of doom for today’s college graduates looking to join the work force. Sure, that applies to the investment bankers and future stockbrokers, but there’s got to be work for do-gooders with a Dartmouth degree-right?
With the steadily growing movement of urban agriculture spreading across paved and chain-linked cities of America, thousands of urban residents are discovering and rediscovering the land around them-land that has lain forgotten or poorly used for decades. Agriculture flourishing and producing in the clogged cities? Oxymoronic, you might say. But the overflowing gardens and impressive statistics of their production prove differently. In fact, urban agriculture may be a key to the solution for a long list of problems that America’s cities face today. With the continuation of this movement, and the societal realization of its importance and possibilities, urban agriculture is in a position to create great changes in our relationship to both food and the land.
Tom Chappell spoke like a great philosopher as he conveyed his message of “common goodness” to an eager crowd of Dartmouth students and faculty on October 16 in Collis. “Goodness is an entity; a living being that has inherent worth and dignity,” he argued. These words were particularly refreshing coming from the lips of a prominent business man such as Mr. Chappell. With years of experience in the cutthroat business world, Tom Chappell has somehow managed to keep his values close in the face of corporate greed. He has incorporated these values to successfully build a “value centered,” financially successful business¬Tom’s of Maine.
When first proposed the idea of writing a piece on the influence of my Zen practice on my environmentalism, I thought it’d be a piece of cake. I never feel more present and spiritual than I do when hiking through the woods of New Hampshire or sitting to meditate to the crashing waves of the ocean. I imagined a long, flowery piece about interconnectedness of natural phenomena and the profound Buddhist love and respect for all sentient beings. But as I rollerbladed along the streets of Paris (the only hour of my day dedicated to non-school related thinking), I came to realize that the topic was more problematic that I had thought.
We need to remember what land is. Land is grace. It is something that comes in quiet moments and deep breaths. It is not something that was created to be sectioned off or partitioned. Land is experienced as that moment of ineffable beauty, vivid touch and life, something that can’t be owned, can’t be faked and never quantified. Land requires the right eyes to see it-eyes that have been cultivated to see the world as a beautiful whole, to take everything in. It requires lungs that know how to breathe in the sweet morning air, drinking it, tasting it. It requires a heart with the passion to know it deeper and deeper, more and more. It is the “transcendent but astonishing and holy power to be, an ever flowing river of grace, a jaw dropping gift of infinite giftedness.”1
My family never went to church on Sundays. Instead, most Sunday mornings, we would go for a walk in the woods behind my house. It took about a half-hour to walk down to the Potomac River, and as we traversed the little creek that led us there, we would talk. My father would teach us bird songs, the leaves of trees, and a general respect for the natural world in which we were immersed. While other kids sat in church, I found spirituality in being outside-my place of worship buttressed by branches rather than bricks.
When I was about eight years old, itching for my afternoon to start after a monotonous Sunday School class, my teacher told us that we would have a homework assignment for the week. As the class groaned, she remarked, “This will be easy. All I want you to do is hug a tree.” Groans quickly turned to snickers, especially from the boys-eight-year-old boys do not hug anything, least of all trees. Yet, being the obedient little student I was back then, I made sure to go out to my front yard sometime that following week and wrap my arms around a giant live oak.
“To be an environmentalist who happens to eat meat is like being a philanthropist who doesn’t happen to give to charity.” -Howard Lyman
Kalahari Desert, Africa: November 13th, 2002
When I was eight, I arranged to have a special meeting with my elementary school principal to convince her that we needed a compost pile in the backyard of our school. I explained to her how we would collect apple cores and banana peels and put them in a pile to make dirt for the school garden. Without much thought, she mentioned something about decaying food attracting animals and vetoed my idea.
Copyright 2006 Dartmouth Green Magazine
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