D. Ryan Foster , Nautral value of life

4/30/08 In response to Unsettling of America

"To look at a farm in full health gives the same complex pleasure as looking at a fully healthy person or animal. It will give the same impression of abounding life."

I like the idea the life itself can be a source of pleasure. Life not only in the sense that you have a life and are happy to be living it, but life in that one can appreciate the sheer existence of life or health in another living body. Much of the issue with modern times in Berry's words seems to come from a separation of mind from body and land. He cries against the loss of valuing the physical in exchange for the intellectual. It seems the major problem lies in a lack of real ties to the physical world, "a unity of body and soil". This unity I think is necessary to understand the simple pleasure drawn from life. And the idea that it is pleasing to experience life can help define why we view certain places as sacred. It is also interesting that he mentions the farm, a human creation from natural setting to describe this pleasure and his examples are in the health of both person and animal. This simile could easily transfer to the overwhelming experience of living creatures available in a wilderness but he opts to not separate the human from this world as those he argues against, but instead ties us closer with his examples. This speaks to how a person could find sanctity in a farm with its abundant life and rich soil as long as it is "healthy" and that connection with the life there is available. This respect for life can also explain our value of deserts and permafrosted tundras. While we cherish that which sustains life we are awestruck by landscapes that can extinguish it almost completely. In respect to deserts and other barren areas it would be curious to wonder if the beauty we find is the amazement in the lack of life or in the cheers given out for the little bit of life that can sustain itself in such harsh environments. That may lie in the individual but anyone who has "enough acquaintance with land and people to have some sense of" how things should be will find the beauty in either scenario (Berry 181).