Sublime

heroes is with service to and stewardship of the land.

When Russians wax eloquent about their homeland, they will often invoke Mother Russia, but Mother Russia is not the nation, and She is certainly not the leadership; She is the Land. The deep Russian bond to the earth—specifically, the soil—transcends all other affiliations with the exception, perhaps, of family. Likewise, the forest and its creatur

A healthy forest must need dead trees. They’ve been around since the beginning. Birds turn them to use, and small mammals, and more forms of insects lodge and dine on them than science has ever counted. She wants to raise her hand and say, like Ovid, how all life is turning into other things. But she doesn’t have the data.

Their existence gives the lie to the thought that the wild is always something untouched by human hearts and hands. The wild can be human work.

was taught to love the land around me, to understand the history that it connected me to, and to take responsibility for its care into the future.