The Inspirational Life of Environmentalist Wendell Berry
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and BPR, a public radio station serving western North Carolina. Wendell Berry made his choices and stuck to them. He did not have a computer or a smartphone. He wrote more than 50 books of […]
Wendell Berry, the 92-year-old environmentalist, farmer, teacher, and philosopher, passed away on August 31. Throughout his life, he lived many roles, inspiring generations of writers, farmers, and advocates. Berry’s answer to the question of how to live right was to start small, revering the Earth’s beauty and working daily to reverse the harm done to it.
In his essay "Think Little," he wrote that no public crisis is not also a private one, reflecting his belief that individual actions can heal the rupture between modern life and the land. Berry despised dualisms, such as those between humanity and the natural world, body and soul, and between those who hold certain beliefs. He extolled this approach in his poem "Manifesto: Mad Farmer Liberation Front," where he encouraged planting sequoias and seeing oneself as part of nature.
Despite his strong environmental convictions, Berry sometimes criticized the environmental movement for focusing too much on politicians rather than individuals healing the rupture. He was arrested for protesting a nuclear plant in 1979 and for a sit-in against mountaintop removal coal mining in 2011. Berry refused to let technology alienate him from his work, as seen in his 1987 essay "Why I am not Going to Buy a Computer," in which he called himself a Luddite.
Despite fitting into modern politics, Berry believed that marriage and family strengthened community ties, but didn't believe the government should legislate such things. He was a religious man who preferred to spend Sunday mornings in the woods rather than attending church. Berry recognized the necessity of making compromises in a fallen world, advocating for honest efforts to live right, even if purity is unattainable.
He believed that tending the land and learning its rhythms could heal it, and in his poem "A Discipline," he imagined apocalypse approaching on every side but still emphasized the importance of living and leaving things better than found.
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