A Conservationist Manifesto

Cover/Dedication

scott russell sanders A conservationist manifesto \ c on s e rvation i s t A san de rs As an antidote to the destructive culture of consumption dominating American life today, Scott Russell Sanders calls for a culture of conservation that allows us to savor and preserve the world instead of devouring it. How might we shift to a more durable and responsible way of life? What changes in values and behavior will be required? Ranging geographically from southern Indiana to the Boundary Waters Wilderness and culturally from the Bible to billboards, Sanders extends the visions of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Rachel Carson to our own day. A Conservationist Manifesto shows the crucial relevance of a conservation ethic at a time of mounting concern about global climate change, depletion of natural resources, extinction of species, and the economic inequities between rich and poor nations.The important message of this powerful book is that conservation is not simply a personal virtue but a public one. \ Scott Russell Sanders, Distinguished Professor of English at Indiana University Bloomington, is the author of twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including Writing from the Center (Indiana University Press, 1995), Hunting for Hope, and A Private History of Awe. Sanders is winner of the Lannan Literary Award, John Burroughs Essay Award for Natural History, AWP Award in Creative Nonfiction, and the 2009 Mark Twain Award. Cover illustration: Charles Burchfield, HillTop at High Noon, 1925. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. John Lambert Fund. $19.95 Nature • Essays manifesto INDIANA INDIANA University Press Bloomington & Indianapolis http://iupress.indiana.edu 1-800-842-6796 “Sanders’s A Conservationist Manifesto is a book to be savored—for its language, its stories, its sense of place, and for how it reminds us of the profound relationships with nature and each other that can inspire us to change how we live on this planet. . . .A must read for all of us who are wrestling with the future of conservation and searching for how to express the values that will take us to a greener and more sustainable future.” —Will Rogers, President,The Trust for Public Land “A seasoned professor and writer of fiction and nonfiction has given us the benefit of his journey in the worlds of literature, natural history, and religious philosophy. But A Conservationist Manifesto is more than that. Scott Russell Sanders’s elegant writing reminds us once again that it is, above all, through style that power defers to reason.” —Wes Jackson, President,The Land Institute \ \ A conservationist manifesto Also by Scott Russell Sanders Nonfiction A Private History of Awe The Force of Spirit The Country of Language Hunting for Hope Writing from the Center Staying Put Secrets of the Universe The Paradise of Bombs In Limestone Country Fiction The Invisible Company The Engineer of Beasts Bad Man Ballad Terrarium Wonders Hidden Fetching the Dead Hear the Wind Blow Wilderness Plots scott russell sanders A conservationist manifesto / Indiana University Press Bloomington & Indianapolis This book is a publication of Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA http://iupress.indiana.edu Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931 Orders by e-mail iuporder@indiana.edu The author warmly thanks the editors of the following publications, in which earlier versions of the essays contained in this book first appeared: “Building Arks” under the title “A Fleet of Arks” in Wild Earth and Resurgence; “Common Wealth” in Tikkun; “A Few Earthy Words” in Helen Whybrow, ed., The Story Handbook: Language and Storytelling for Land Conservationists (San Francisco: The Trust for Public Land, 2002); “Two Stones” in The Louisville Review; “The Warehouse and the Wilderness” in Water-Stone; “The Geography of Somewhere” as Foreword to Dan Shilling, Civic Tourism: The Poetry and Politics of Place (Prescott, Arizona: Sharlott Hall Museum Press, 2007); “Hometown” under the title “Where Belonging Is a Virtue” in Notre Dame Magazine; “On Loan from the Sundance Sea” in Preservation; “Big Trees, Still Water, Tall Grass” in Barry Lopez, ed., Heart of a Nation: Writers and Photographers Inspired by the American Landscape (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2000); “Limberlost” under the title “Limberlost and Found” in Audubon; “Wilderness as a Sabbath for the Land” in Hank Lentfer and Carolyn Servid, eds., Arctic Refuge: A Circle of Testimony (Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions...