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8 Thinking Like a Mountain: Nature, Wilderness, and the Virtue of Humility
- Johns Hopkins University Press
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Aldo Leopold begins his famous essay “Thinking like a Mountain” by evoking the haunting call of a wolf. “A deep chesty bawl,” he writes, “echoes from rimrock to rimrock, rolls down the mountain, and fades into the far blackness of the night. It is an outburst of wild defiant sorrow, and of contempt for all the adversities of the world.” Leopold suggests that the cry of the wolf quickens the pulse of all sentient beings, whether in anticipation of a meal from the gleanings of a hunt or in fear of the blood that may be so spilled. “Yet behind these obvious and immediate hopes and fears there lies a deeper meaning, known only to the mountain itself . Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf.” Talk of “thinking like a mountain” is perhaps overly dramatic, but Leopold has a point in suggesting that experience with wilderness may have something to teach us about intellectual humility. Indeed, I want to suggest that the recognition of the need to cultivate certain virtues, especially humility, may stand behind many of the appeals to “nature” that we find in discussions of medical biotechnology , agricultural biotechnology, and environmentalism. To explore the connection among ideas of “wilderness,” “nature,” and particular virtues, I want to look chapter Eight Thinking like a Mountain Nature, Wilderness, and the Virtue of Humility Paul Lauritzen, M.A., Ph.D. Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility. —Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac Thinking like a Mountain 115 briefly at two writers who have wrestled with these connections in compelling ways, Cormac McCarthy and Wendell Berry. There are dangers in appealing to writers whose reflections on wilderness and nature are not conducted within the standard frame of bioethical concerns, but perhaps for that very reason there is wisdom to be found in their writings. Or at least that is what I hope to show. Thus, in the first part of this chapter, I will examine Cormac McCarthy’s explorations of wilderness motifs. In the second part, I will turn to consider Wendell Berry’s appeals to wilderness and nature. Cormac McCarthy Although most of McCarthy’s work would be instructive for our purposes, the book on which I will primarily focus is the second volume of his border trilogy, The Crossing. The Crossing is a complex, sprawling work, but for our purposes, part one of the book, which comprises 127 pages, is the core. Set in 1939 in New Mexico, this section tells the story of sixteen-year-old Billy Parham, who with his father and brother sets out to trap a wolf that has begun to prey on cattle in the range. The story opens with a passage that displays the force of McCarthy’s writing , as well as his conviction that there is value in closely observing the “natural” world without seeking to bend it to one’s will. Shortly after the family arrives in the valley they will call home, a very young Billy wakes to the howling of wolves in the hills. He decides to take a look. Here is how McCarthy describes the scene: When he passed the barn the horses whimpered softly to him in the cold. The snow creaked under his boots and his breath smoked in the bluish light. An hour later he was crouched in the snow in the dry creekbed where he knew the wolves had been. . . . They were running on the plain harrying the antelope and the antelope moved like phantoms in the snow and circled and wheeled and the dry powder blew about them in the cold moonlight and their breath smoked palely in the cold as if they burned with some inner fire and the wolves twisted and turned and leapt in a silence such that they seemed of another world entire. . . . There were seven of them and they passed within twenty feet of where he lay. He could see their almond eyes in the moonlight. He could hear their breath. He could feel the presence of their knowing that was electric in the air. They bunched and nuzzled and licked one another. Then they stopped. They stood [34.236.152.203] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 07:47 GMT) 116 Paul Lauritzen with their ears cocked. Some with one forefoot raised to their chest. They were looking at him. He did not breathe. They did not...