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I have never written anything with the intent that it be published as a collection of essays. Most of what I have written over the years has been in response to requests for papers that were given as speeches or published as articles in magazines or journals, or to address issues that concerned me. Accordingly, this collection may appear disjointed. When I reflect upon my writing, however, I see that it represents a personal journey in the evolution of an ecological conscience. This was not something I set out to do at any point in my life. Like most journeys, it was more of an unanticipated adventure than a premeditated course of action. It all started with my father. My parents began farming in North Dakota right after they got married, in 1930, and the Dust Bowl hit shortly thereafter, so their early years in farming were extremely stressful. Somehow my father understood intuitively that the Dust Bowl was not just about the weather but about the way farmers farmed. Consequently, he decided that this “would never ever happen to his farm again,” and he became a radical conservationist. While he didn’t always agree with the newly formed Soil Conservation Service about how the land should be cared for, caring for the land became his top priority. I can remember him admonishing me with a pointed finger, even when I was four or five years old, that “taking care of the land” was our most important requirement. Without my being aware of it, those lectures instilled in me a kind of land ethic that determined the course of my life. This early inoculation of a deeply felt principle created an early curiosity about values. Why did people choose to do what they did? Why did they prefer one course of action rather than another? That curiosity drew me into the fields of philosophy and theology during my educational journey. I majored in religion at Yankton College in Yankton, South Dakota, a liberal 8 Preface 9 Preface arts college that challenged its students to think critically. It was the faculty at Yankton College who taught me that it was not only appropriate but necessary to question values openly and to think independently. I was a junior in college when I first read Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac. I remember being immensely inspired by it. Leopold’s writing about the land ethic confirmed the importance of my father’s early admonitions . Still, the importance of Leopold’s ecological thinking did not register with me at the time, and his use of the phrase “ecological conscience” slipped by me unnoticed. An awareness of the importance of ecological thinking came much later in my life. Inspired by a faculty member at Yankton College, I decided to attend the Hartford Theological Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut, and then went on to the Divinity School at the University of Chicago to acquire more discipline with respect to values. Upon finishing graduate school, I entered a career in higher education, teaching in the fields of religion and philosophy. The opportunity to engage students with respect to their own values turned out to be another great inspiration for me. Traditional teacher/student roles tended to dissipate rather quickly as we entered a dialogue concerning values. One student in particular changed the course of my life and led me down a path that helped me recognize the ecological conscience that had been evolving in my own life since those early days of instruction by my father. I encountered that student, David Vetter, in the late 1960s. As director of the Consortium for Higher Education Religion Studies in Dayton, Ohio, I became interested in working with students who wanted careers that transcended the ordinary job market. David had completed his undergraduate work at the University of Nebraska and had worked as a research assistant in a project examining the impact of organic field management on soil quality. When I arrived in Dayton, David was a student at United Theological Seminary and was interested in developing a career that nurtured a land ethic. I was immediately drawn to him. David shared with me results of his Nebraska research, which demonstrated that well-managed organic practices significantly enriched the biological health of soil. Immediately, my mind flew back to the image of my father, with his finger pointed at me, admonishing me to take care of the land. At this point, my intense interest in values and continuing interest in...

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