Finding My Land Ethic

“Obligations have no meaning without conscience, and the problem we face is the extension of the social conscience from people to land.” This is what the great land ethicist Aldo Leopold says in A Sand County Almanac, that while we often recognize an obligation to the land, it is meaningless until we extend our consciences to apply to land. No statement could have applied more to me before I came to Woolman. I had a well developed social conscience, but only as it applied to people. I recognized that I had some obligation to the land, but I didn’t have a conscience reminding me that every decision I make, from the clothes I wear to the food I eat, was either fulfilling or neglecting that responsibility. I certainly considered myself an ethical person, yet I did not even contemplate the ecological ethics of my decisions. For someone who spent so much time focused on social justice and creating a better world, it seems shameful and almost comical that I was so ignorantly naïve about the environment. In short, four months ago, I most definitely did not have a land ethic.

Leopold points out that “Perhaps the most serious obstacle impeding the evolution of a land ethic is the fact that our educational and economic system is headed away from, rather than toward, an intense consciousness of land.” Sadly, Leopold’s predictions of 1949 were tragically accurate. In my school curriculum, issues such as the water crisis and our industrial food system were not taught in any science or humanities class; nor were empowering concepts such as land ethic or environmental stewardship. This way of thinking, which separates people from nature, creates a false dichotomy between the two in the minds of youth and young activists.

When I arrived at Woolman as an anthropocentrist, I was not looking forward to the environmental science class. In the past, I had had nothing but bad experiences with science classes and saw environmentalists as tree hugging hippies who were distracting the world from the pressing issues facing humanity today (hunger, war, genocide, etc.). My, how wrong I was. In the four short months since I arrived here, my world has been flipped around. Environmental science has become my favorite class and I have become a staunch advocate for the earth. I have cultivated a new respect for nature at large and have learned to love dirt. I have, in the words of Aldo Leopold, “enlarged the boundaries of [my] community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.” I have embraced my role as a member of this diverse biotic community, not just as a spectator who is limited to saving it or destroying it, but rather as a member who’s capable of communing with it.

In my time at Woolman, I have learned that I know absolutely nothing about nature, yet it is now a part of my conscience. Leopold says that “the evolution of a land ethic is an intellectual as well as emotional process” and I think that I have now begun both processes. On an intellectual level, I now understand how my social justice crusades interrelate with the plight of the world’s waters and trees. I am starting to recognize and change my practices that have negative impacts. On an emotional level, I am learning to embrace dirt, commune with my watershed, and take pride in the land. I used to say that I would never live in a place that smelled of cow poop and am reported to have said in eighth grade (a time when I was desperate to fit in, please don’t judge me for this) that “nature is ok, but the mall is prettier.” Now I relish the smell of sweet manure and feel like I’m going to have a nervous break down when I enter any sort of large store because of all of the consumer decisions and thus responsibilities with which I’m bombarded. Clearly, I’ve changed at Woolman.

Leopold says that “It is inconceivable that an ethical relation to land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for land, and a high regard for its value.” At the Yuba, Woolman Campus, and all of the other places we’ve been this semester, I’ve found that love, respect, and admiration, and will not soon let it go.