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Think Little: Essays
First published in 1972, “Think Little” is cultural critic and agrarian Wendell Berry at his prescient about the dire environmental consequences of our mentality of greed and exploitation, yet hopeful that we will recognize war and oppression and pollution not as separate issues, but aspects of the same. “Think Little” is presented here alongside one of Berry’s most popular and personal essays, “A Native Hill.” This gentle essay of recollection is told alongside a poetic lesson in geography, as Berry explains at length and in detail, that what he stands for is what he stands on. Each palm-size book in the Counterpoints series is meant to stay with you, whether safely in your pocket or long after you turn the last page. From short stories to essays to poems, these little books celebrate our most-beloved writers, whose work encapsulates the spirit of Counterpoint cutting-edge, wide-ranging, and independent.
128 pages, Paperback
Published November 5, 2019
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1089 people want to read
About the author
Wendell Berry
293 books4,915 followersWendell Berry is a conservationist, farmer, essayist, novelist, professor of English and poet. He was born August 5, 1934 in Henry County, Kentucky where he now lives on a farm. The New York Times has called Berry the "prophet of rural America."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 98 reviews
January 1, 2020
Thoughts soon.
December 30, 2019
This is the January's read for the Nature Literature group, though we started a bit early as the eponymous essay is quite short and it's point quite on target. Berry speaks of not just going out there with a placard and think you're doing your bit for peace, integration, and the environment, but making these causes part of your life and then working towards using your vote to get people who are hands on into office so that changes can not only be discussed, but made. We're part of the problem and need to change our lives to have an impact on these issues.
*"But even the most articulate public protest is not enough. We don’t live in the government or in institutions or in our public utterances and acts, and the environmental crisis has its roots in our lives. By the same token, environmental health will also be rooted in our lives. That is, I take it, simply a fact, and in the light of it we can see how superficial and foolish we would be to think that we could correct what is wrong merely by tinkering with the institutional machinery. The changes that are required are fundamental changes in the way we are living."*
+
Berry goes on to tell the reader about his part in changes and how spare ground can be made into a garden plot whose creation has impact far greater than just seeing results on one's grocery bill.
*"Most of us, for example, not only do not know how to produce the best food in the best way – we don’t know how to produce any kind in any way. Our model citizen is a sophisticate who before puberty understands how to produce a baby, but who at the age of thirty will not know how to produce a potato. And for this condition we have elaborate rationalizations, instructing us that dependence for everything on somebody else is efficient and economical and a scientific miracle."*
*"IF YOU ARE concerned about the proliferation of trash, then by all means start an organization in your community to do something about it. But before – and while – you organize, pick up some cans and bottles yourself. That way, at least, you will assure yourself and others that you mean what you say. If you are concerned about air pollution, help push for government controls, but drive your car less, use less fuel in your home. If you are worried about the damming of wilderness rivers, join the Sierra Club, write to the government, but turn off the lights you’re not using, don’t install an air conditioner, don’t be a sucker for electrical gadgets, don’t waste water. In other words, if you are fearful of the destruction of the environment, then learn to quit being an environmental parasite."*
*"A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating. The food he grows will be fresher, more nutritious, less contaminated by poisons and preservatives and dyes than what he can buy at a store. He is reducing the trash problem; a garden is not a disposable container, and it will digest and reuse its own wastes. If he enjoys working in his garden, then he is less dependent on an automobile or a merchant for his pleasure. He is involving himself directly in the work of feeding people. If you think I’m wandering off the subject, let me remind you that most of the vegetables necessary for a family of four can be grown on a plot of forty by sixty feet."*
*"How much food could be grown in the dooryards of cities and suburbs? How much could be grown along the extravagant right-of-ways of the interstate system? Or how much could be grown, by the intensive practices and economics of the garden or small farm, on so-called marginal lands? Louis Bromfield liked to point out that the people of France survived crisis after crisis because they were a nation of gardeners, who in times of want turned with great skill to their own small plots of ground. And F. H. King, an agriculture professor who traveled extensively in the Orient in 1907, talked to a Chinese farmer who supported a family of twelve, ‘one donkey, one cow . . . and two pigs on 2.5 acres of cultivated land’ – and who did this, moreover, by agricultural methods that were sound enough to have maintained his land in prime fertility through several thousand years of such use."*
The second essay Berry talks about the land he was raised on and how it created him as a person and gave him a great vocabulary and knowledge base than his time in the city provided. His being tied to the land was something that was essential to his being and the mistakes of his ancestors on this land he still sees today and is even haunted by. It's a deeper connection than those who are not familiar with it can imagine as he discovered talking to those who were trying to keep him from leaving the city.
*"IN MY TEENS, when I was away at school, I could comfort myself by recalling in intricate detail the fields I had worked and played in, and hunted over, and ridden through on horseback – and that were richly associated in my mind with people and with stories. I could recall even the casual locations of certain small rocks. I could recall the look of a hundred different kinds of daylight on all those places, the look of animals grazing over them, the postures and attitudes and movements of the men who worked in them, the quality of the grass and the crops that had grown on them. I had come to be aware of it as one is aware of one’s body; it was present to me whether I thought of it or not."*
*"Finally, there was the assumption that the life of the metropolis is the experience, the modern experience, and that the life of the rural towns, the farms, the wilderness places is not only irrelevant to our time, but archaic as well because unknown or unconsidered by the people who really matter – that is, the urban intellectuals."*
This is my first introduction to Berry, but it was a good one. It will give you insight into our country and our roll in the environment which Berry believes cannot be ignored or covered with slogans in attempt to appear to be being addressed. I'd definitely recommend this!
*"But even the most articulate public protest is not enough. We don’t live in the government or in institutions or in our public utterances and acts, and the environmental crisis has its roots in our lives. By the same token, environmental health will also be rooted in our lives. That is, I take it, simply a fact, and in the light of it we can see how superficial and foolish we would be to think that we could correct what is wrong merely by tinkering with the institutional machinery. The changes that are required are fundamental changes in the way we are living."*
+
Berry goes on to tell the reader about his part in changes and how spare ground can be made into a garden plot whose creation has impact far greater than just seeing results on one's grocery bill.
*"Most of us, for example, not only do not know how to produce the best food in the best way – we don’t know how to produce any kind in any way. Our model citizen is a sophisticate who before puberty understands how to produce a baby, but who at the age of thirty will not know how to produce a potato. And for this condition we have elaborate rationalizations, instructing us that dependence for everything on somebody else is efficient and economical and a scientific miracle."*
*"IF YOU ARE concerned about the proliferation of trash, then by all means start an organization in your community to do something about it. But before – and while – you organize, pick up some cans and bottles yourself. That way, at least, you will assure yourself and others that you mean what you say. If you are concerned about air pollution, help push for government controls, but drive your car less, use less fuel in your home. If you are worried about the damming of wilderness rivers, join the Sierra Club, write to the government, but turn off the lights you’re not using, don’t install an air conditioner, don’t be a sucker for electrical gadgets, don’t waste water. In other words, if you are fearful of the destruction of the environment, then learn to quit being an environmental parasite."*
*"A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating. The food he grows will be fresher, more nutritious, less contaminated by poisons and preservatives and dyes than what he can buy at a store. He is reducing the trash problem; a garden is not a disposable container, and it will digest and reuse its own wastes. If he enjoys working in his garden, then he is less dependent on an automobile or a merchant for his pleasure. He is involving himself directly in the work of feeding people. If you think I’m wandering off the subject, let me remind you that most of the vegetables necessary for a family of four can be grown on a plot of forty by sixty feet."*
*"How much food could be grown in the dooryards of cities and suburbs? How much could be grown along the extravagant right-of-ways of the interstate system? Or how much could be grown, by the intensive practices and economics of the garden or small farm, on so-called marginal lands? Louis Bromfield liked to point out that the people of France survived crisis after crisis because they were a nation of gardeners, who in times of want turned with great skill to their own small plots of ground. And F. H. King, an agriculture professor who traveled extensively in the Orient in 1907, talked to a Chinese farmer who supported a family of twelve, ‘one donkey, one cow . . . and two pigs on 2.5 acres of cultivated land’ – and who did this, moreover, by agricultural methods that were sound enough to have maintained his land in prime fertility through several thousand years of such use."*
The second essay Berry talks about the land he was raised on and how it created him as a person and gave him a great vocabulary and knowledge base than his time in the city provided. His being tied to the land was something that was essential to his being and the mistakes of his ancestors on this land he still sees today and is even haunted by. It's a deeper connection than those who are not familiar with it can imagine as he discovered talking to those who were trying to keep him from leaving the city.
*"IN MY TEENS, when I was away at school, I could comfort myself by recalling in intricate detail the fields I had worked and played in, and hunted over, and ridden through on horseback – and that were richly associated in my mind with people and with stories. I could recall even the casual locations of certain small rocks. I could recall the look of a hundred different kinds of daylight on all those places, the look of animals grazing over them, the postures and attitudes and movements of the men who worked in them, the quality of the grass and the crops that had grown on them. I had come to be aware of it as one is aware of one’s body; it was present to me whether I thought of it or not."*
*"Finally, there was the assumption that the life of the metropolis is the experience, the modern experience, and that the life of the rural towns, the farms, the wilderness places is not only irrelevant to our time, but archaic as well because unknown or unconsidered by the people who really matter – that is, the urban intellectuals."*
This is my first introduction to Berry, but it was a good one. It will give you insight into our country and our roll in the environment which Berry believes cannot be ignored or covered with slogans in attempt to appear to be being addressed. I'd definitely recommend this!
October 15, 2019
I was afraid this would happen. ‘Think Little’ was my first nonfiction by Berry, and I now I must read more. I, as Wallace Stegner once said, cannot choose my favorite Berry form: fiction, nonfiction, poetry — he can do it all. A full review to come from me. My many thanks to Counterpoint for reaching out to me and gifting a copy!
———
Okay:: editing to add my full review 💗
———
‘THINK LITTLE’ PACKS BIG PUNCH FOR NATURALISTS, BERRY FANS
//
My husband and I traveled though the Kentucky hills as I read aloud from Wendell Berry’s THINK LITTLE essay book by @counterpointpress. We were on our way to hear Mr. Berry speak and wanted his words to carry us there – images, ideas scattered about us, sparking the car’s dusty sunrays.
//
This pocket-sized book was our perfect travel companion. It contains two essays: ‘Think Little’ and ‘A Native Hill.’ In the title essay, readers find the basis for some of Berry’s beliefs (small, purposeful, community-centered living) and how he believes all major issues (government, environment, race) are connected.
//
Driving back home to Ohio, we went off track and drove through Mr. Berry’s hometown, and I read ‘A Native Hill.’ This essay gives a sort of mini-biography, a why and how he lives where he does. There is a section of the essay where he describes walking along a specific road, the woods, the land, and it brought his Port William stories to life. I felt like at any minute, I would see Burley and Jayber walk down the hill, through the trees, and right up to me.
//
“And since I did most of my growing up here, and have had most of my most meaningful experiences here, the place and the history, for me, have been inseparable, and there is a sense in which my own life is inseparable from the history of the place. It is a complex inheritance, and I have been both enriched and bewildered by it.”
//
THINK LITTLE was my first non-fiction by Berry, and I cannot stop here. He can write in any form. This gorgeously tiny copy releases November 5th as part of the new Counterpoints Series. Do you have a favorite nonfiction by Berry yet? If not, I highly recommend this copy!
———
Okay:: editing to add my full review 💗
———
‘THINK LITTLE’ PACKS BIG PUNCH FOR NATURALISTS, BERRY FANS
//
My husband and I traveled though the Kentucky hills as I read aloud from Wendell Berry’s THINK LITTLE essay book by @counterpointpress. We were on our way to hear Mr. Berry speak and wanted his words to carry us there – images, ideas scattered about us, sparking the car’s dusty sunrays.
//
This pocket-sized book was our perfect travel companion. It contains two essays: ‘Think Little’ and ‘A Native Hill.’ In the title essay, readers find the basis for some of Berry’s beliefs (small, purposeful, community-centered living) and how he believes all major issues (government, environment, race) are connected.
//
Driving back home to Ohio, we went off track and drove through Mr. Berry’s hometown, and I read ‘A Native Hill.’ This essay gives a sort of mini-biography, a why and how he lives where he does. There is a section of the essay where he describes walking along a specific road, the woods, the land, and it brought his Port William stories to life. I felt like at any minute, I would see Burley and Jayber walk down the hill, through the trees, and right up to me.
//
“And since I did most of my growing up here, and have had most of my most meaningful experiences here, the place and the history, for me, have been inseparable, and there is a sense in which my own life is inseparable from the history of the place. It is a complex inheritance, and I have been both enriched and bewildered by it.”
//
THINK LITTLE was my first non-fiction by Berry, and I cannot stop here. He can write in any form. This gorgeously tiny copy releases November 5th as part of the new Counterpoints Series. Do you have a favorite nonfiction by Berry yet? If not, I highly recommend this copy!
December 3, 2021
This was written in 1970 and to think we haven't learned anything since then.
July 23, 2021
“Religion as has been openly practiced in this part of the world has promoted and fed upon a destructive schism between the body and soul, Heaven and earth. It has encouraged people to believe that the world is of no importance, and that their only obligation in it is to submit to certain churchly formulas to get to Heaven…Once the creator was removed from the creation, divinity became only a remote abstraction, a social weapon in the hands of the religious institutions. This split in public values produced or was accompanied by, as it was bound to be, an equally artificial and ugly division in people’s lives, so that a man, while pursuing Heaven with the sublime appetite he thought of as his soul, could turn his heart against his neighbors and his hands against the world.”
February 23, 2021
“When I move to go, it is as though I rise up out of the world.”
April 15, 2023
I’ve been thinking a lot about joy lately, and this was exactly the right thing for me to read right now. It’s challenging and wonderful and will remind you of all the things you haven’t been noticing but would bring you more joy if you did.
April 26, 2022
The book's dimensions exemplify its contents, it being about four inches wide and five tall, and the author personifies his philosophy. Though he has protested and petitioned his government in Frankfort, Kentucky, he succeeds with his environmental message because he exemplifies sound practice in his own life. In the 122 pages of this volume, he calls on all of us to do likewise. Writing in 1968, he exemplifies the mandate to “be the change you want to see.”
November 20, 2019
This is my first experience reading Berry. I felt like I needed to since so many of the writers I like constantly reference him in their work.
This was a nice introduction, but I think to get a good sense of his writing I'm going to need to pick something a little longer.
This was a nice introduction, but I think to get a good sense of his writing I'm going to need to pick something a little longer.
July 9, 2020
This was my first time reading Wendell Berry. He’s mentioned so often by authors I enjoy, such as Barbara Kingsolver and Michael Pollan, that I decided the time had come to give him a try. If the library wait list is anything to go by, a lot of people are experiencing pandemic-induced back-to-the-land wistfulness, because I was on a months-long wait list for this one.
What struck me most about this short two-essay collection is that, except for a brief mention of Nixon, it could have been written this year rather than 50 years ago. I'm not sure if Berry is particularly prescient, or if we as humans are just incredibly slow in adopting more sustainable land policies, but it was kind of incredible to read something written so long ago that's just as applicable and current today. The book's two essays, "Think Little" and "A Native Hill" both address environmental issues, agriculture specifically. The first essay, "Think Little" is more overt and critical, while "A Native Hill" delivers its message through a lyrical telling of Berry's native grasses, forests and hills. Both essays made me think, reconsider and swoon for a more rural life, but I found "A Native Hill" particularly moving. In fact, I found myself frequently thinking that Berry put to words things I've often felt, viscerally, but never quite put into concrete, actual words. I think my favorite passage the entire collection was the following:
"One early morning last spring, I came and found the woods floor strewn with bluebells. In the cool sunlight and the lacy shadows of the spring woods the blueness of those flowers, their elegant shape, their delicate fresh scent kept me standing and looking. I found a delight in them that I cannot describe and that I will never forget. Though I had been familiar for years with most of the spring woods flowers, I had never seen these and had not known they were here. Looking at them, I felt a strange loss and sorrow that I had never seen them before. But I was also exultant that I saw them now – that they were here. For me, in the thought of them will always be the sense of the joyful surprise with which I found them – the sense that came suddenly to me then that the world is blessed beyond my understanding, more abundantly than I will ever know."
This is something I’ve experienced myself in nature. It happened to me the first time I saw bluebells carpeting the stream valley by my house. Another time, it happened when I was walking in the thin strip of woods behind my house and noticed, for the first time, the blue, yellow, and white wildflowers growing at the edge of the forest where the woods meet the trail. And most recently, it happened when I was on a walk with my husband and daughter, and my husband pointed out the hundreds of blackberry bushes in bloom around the perimeter of the sports park we were walking through. I’ve walked around that park since I was 10, and I never noticed them before, but suddenly, I couldn’t not notice them. I really relate to the feeling that “the world is blessed beyond my understanding, more abundantly than I will ever know.”
Other passages I enjoyed:
-"The time is past when it was enough merely to elect our officials. We will have to elect them and then go and watch them and keep our hands on them, the way the coal companies do” (Think Little).
-"Most of us are not directly responsible for strip mining and extractive agriculture and other forms of environmental abuse. But we are guilty nevertheless, for we connive in them by our ignorance. We are ignorantly dependent on them. We do not know enough about them; we do not have a particular enough sense of their danger” (Think Little).
-"Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating. The food he grows will be fresher, more nutritious, less contaminated by poisons and preservatives and dyes than what he can buy at a store. He is reducing the trash problem; a garden is not a disposable container, and it will digest and reuse its own wastes...But he is doing something else that is more important: he is making vital contact with the soil and the weather on which his life depends. He will no longer look upon rain as a traffic impediment, or upon the sun as a holiday decoration” (Think Little).
As a recent gardening convert, the part about “enlarging, for himself,” the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating,” rings particularly true. When you grow something from seed and nurture it through rain storms and dry spells, it really gives you another level appreciation for food.
-"IN THIS AWAKENING there has been a good deal of pain. When I lived in other places I looked on their evils with the curious eye of a traveler; I was not responsible for them; it cost me nothing to be a critic, for I had not been there long, and I did not feel that I would stay. But here, now that I am both native and citizen, there is no immunity to what is wrong. It is impossible to escape the sense that I am involved in history."
-"The idea was that when faced with abundance one should consume abundantly – an idea that has survived to become the basis of our present economy. It is neither natural nor civilized, and even from a ‘practical’ point of view it is to the last degree brutalizing and stupid."
“The road builders, on the contrary, were placeless people. That is why they ‘knew but little.’ Having left Europe far behind, they had not yet in any meaningful sense arrived in America, not yet having devoted themselves to any part of it in a way that would produce the intricate knowledge of it necessary to live in it without destroying it. Because they belonged to no place, it was almost inevitable that they should behave violently toward the places they came to. We still have not, in any meaningful way, arrived in America."
-"The slopes along the hollow steepen still more, and I go in under the trees. I pass beneath the surface. I am enclosed, and my sense, my interior sense, of the country becomes intricate. There is no longer the possibility of seeing very far. The distances are closed off by the trees and the steepening walls of the hollow. Here the eyes become dependent on the feet. To see the woods from the inside one must look and move and look again."
-"Much of the interest and excitement that I have in my life now has come from the deepening, in the years since my return here, of my relation to this place. For in spite of all that has happened to me in other places, the great change and the great possibility of change in my life has been in my sense of this place. The major difference is perhaps only that I have grown able to be wholeheartedly present here. I am able to sit and be quiet at the foot of some tree here in this woods along Camp Branch, and feel a deep peace, both in the place and in my awareness of it, that not too long ago I was not conscious of the possibility of. This peace is partly in being free of the suspicion that pursued me for most of my life, no matter where I was, that there was perhaps another place I should be, or would be happier or better in; it is partly in the increasingly articulate consciousness of being here, and of the significance and importance of being here."
-"THE MOST EXEMPLARY nature is that of the topsoil. It is very Christ-like in its passivity and beneficence, and in the penetrating energy that issues out of its peaceableness. It increases by experience, by the passage of seasons over it, growth rising out of it and returning to it, not by ambition or aggressiveness. It is enriched by all things that die and enter into it. It keeps the past, not as history or as memory, but as richness, new possibility. Its fertility is always building up out of death into promise. Death is the bridge or the tunnel by which its past enters its future."
Next on my reading list is “The Unsettling of America,” and a collection of Berry’s poetry.
What struck me most about this short two-essay collection is that, except for a brief mention of Nixon, it could have been written this year rather than 50 years ago. I'm not sure if Berry is particularly prescient, or if we as humans are just incredibly slow in adopting more sustainable land policies, but it was kind of incredible to read something written so long ago that's just as applicable and current today. The book's two essays, "Think Little" and "A Native Hill" both address environmental issues, agriculture specifically. The first essay, "Think Little" is more overt and critical, while "A Native Hill" delivers its message through a lyrical telling of Berry's native grasses, forests and hills. Both essays made me think, reconsider and swoon for a more rural life, but I found "A Native Hill" particularly moving. In fact, I found myself frequently thinking that Berry put to words things I've often felt, viscerally, but never quite put into concrete, actual words. I think my favorite passage the entire collection was the following:
"One early morning last spring, I came and found the woods floor strewn with bluebells. In the cool sunlight and the lacy shadows of the spring woods the blueness of those flowers, their elegant shape, their delicate fresh scent kept me standing and looking. I found a delight in them that I cannot describe and that I will never forget. Though I had been familiar for years with most of the spring woods flowers, I had never seen these and had not known they were here. Looking at them, I felt a strange loss and sorrow that I had never seen them before. But I was also exultant that I saw them now – that they were here. For me, in the thought of them will always be the sense of the joyful surprise with which I found them – the sense that came suddenly to me then that the world is blessed beyond my understanding, more abundantly than I will ever know."
This is something I’ve experienced myself in nature. It happened to me the first time I saw bluebells carpeting the stream valley by my house. Another time, it happened when I was walking in the thin strip of woods behind my house and noticed, for the first time, the blue, yellow, and white wildflowers growing at the edge of the forest where the woods meet the trail. And most recently, it happened when I was on a walk with my husband and daughter, and my husband pointed out the hundreds of blackberry bushes in bloom around the perimeter of the sports park we were walking through. I’ve walked around that park since I was 10, and I never noticed them before, but suddenly, I couldn’t not notice them. I really relate to the feeling that “the world is blessed beyond my understanding, more abundantly than I will ever know.”
Other passages I enjoyed:
-"The time is past when it was enough merely to elect our officials. We will have to elect them and then go and watch them and keep our hands on them, the way the coal companies do” (Think Little).
-"Most of us are not directly responsible for strip mining and extractive agriculture and other forms of environmental abuse. But we are guilty nevertheless, for we connive in them by our ignorance. We are ignorantly dependent on them. We do not know enough about them; we do not have a particular enough sense of their danger” (Think Little).
-"Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating. The food he grows will be fresher, more nutritious, less contaminated by poisons and preservatives and dyes than what he can buy at a store. He is reducing the trash problem; a garden is not a disposable container, and it will digest and reuse its own wastes...But he is doing something else that is more important: he is making vital contact with the soil and the weather on which his life depends. He will no longer look upon rain as a traffic impediment, or upon the sun as a holiday decoration” (Think Little).
As a recent gardening convert, the part about “enlarging, for himself,” the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating,” rings particularly true. When you grow something from seed and nurture it through rain storms and dry spells, it really gives you another level appreciation for food.
-"IN THIS AWAKENING there has been a good deal of pain. When I lived in other places I looked on their evils with the curious eye of a traveler; I was not responsible for them; it cost me nothing to be a critic, for I had not been there long, and I did not feel that I would stay. But here, now that I am both native and citizen, there is no immunity to what is wrong. It is impossible to escape the sense that I am involved in history."
-"The idea was that when faced with abundance one should consume abundantly – an idea that has survived to become the basis of our present economy. It is neither natural nor civilized, and even from a ‘practical’ point of view it is to the last degree brutalizing and stupid."
“The road builders, on the contrary, were placeless people. That is why they ‘knew but little.’ Having left Europe far behind, they had not yet in any meaningful sense arrived in America, not yet having devoted themselves to any part of it in a way that would produce the intricate knowledge of it necessary to live in it without destroying it. Because they belonged to no place, it was almost inevitable that they should behave violently toward the places they came to. We still have not, in any meaningful way, arrived in America."
-"The slopes along the hollow steepen still more, and I go in under the trees. I pass beneath the surface. I am enclosed, and my sense, my interior sense, of the country becomes intricate. There is no longer the possibility of seeing very far. The distances are closed off by the trees and the steepening walls of the hollow. Here the eyes become dependent on the feet. To see the woods from the inside one must look and move and look again."
-"Much of the interest and excitement that I have in my life now has come from the deepening, in the years since my return here, of my relation to this place. For in spite of all that has happened to me in other places, the great change and the great possibility of change in my life has been in my sense of this place. The major difference is perhaps only that I have grown able to be wholeheartedly present here. I am able to sit and be quiet at the foot of some tree here in this woods along Camp Branch, and feel a deep peace, both in the place and in my awareness of it, that not too long ago I was not conscious of the possibility of. This peace is partly in being free of the suspicion that pursued me for most of my life, no matter where I was, that there was perhaps another place I should be, or would be happier or better in; it is partly in the increasingly articulate consciousness of being here, and of the significance and importance of being here."
-"THE MOST EXEMPLARY nature is that of the topsoil. It is very Christ-like in its passivity and beneficence, and in the penetrating energy that issues out of its peaceableness. It increases by experience, by the passage of seasons over it, growth rising out of it and returning to it, not by ambition or aggressiveness. It is enriched by all things that die and enter into it. It keeps the past, not as history or as memory, but as richness, new possibility. Its fertility is always building up out of death into promise. Death is the bridge or the tunnel by which its past enters its future."
Next on my reading list is “The Unsettling of America,” and a collection of Berry’s poetry.
April 13, 2021
Wendell Berry’s words have been transformational in my life.
This book contains two essays. It’s a tiny book and is 100 pages. Just please read it. Also, *soft brag* I drove to his town in Kentucky to buy it from his bookstore NBD
The first one, written in 1968, addresses big issues like environmental exploitation, racism, and the wealth gap. He brings these issues under the same umbrella and urges readers to Think Little, to direct their energy and focus their impact on a small, communal, practical scale. This is the transformational work- beginning with the integrity of the private life of each person
“We need better government, no doubt about it. But we also need better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities...”
His following essay joins this idea with his love of his ancestral home in the Kentucky tobacco fields. He related his work and life and vision with his love of the land and nature and connects us to the land in his writing. Wendell Berry ties wisdom and academic thought with affection in a way no other writer does. To joyfully relate knowledge and care with affection has been very freeing for me personally.
This book contains two essays. It’s a tiny book and is 100 pages. Just please read it. Also, *soft brag* I drove to his town in Kentucky to buy it from his bookstore NBD
The first one, written in 1968, addresses big issues like environmental exploitation, racism, and the wealth gap. He brings these issues under the same umbrella and urges readers to Think Little, to direct their energy and focus their impact on a small, communal, practical scale. This is the transformational work- beginning with the integrity of the private life of each person
“We need better government, no doubt about it. But we also need better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities...”
His following essay joins this idea with his love of his ancestral home in the Kentucky tobacco fields. He related his work and life and vision with his love of the land and nature and connects us to the land in his writing. Wendell Berry ties wisdom and academic thought with affection in a way no other writer does. To joyfully relate knowledge and care with affection has been very freeing for me personally.
December 31, 2021
ok i didn’t know anything abt this book when i picked it up but it was short and i needed a final book for my goodreads goal. but this was wonderful.
this book (particularly the second essay) contains some of the most beautiful writing i have ever encountered. i don’t always have the patience for long descriptions of nature but this book was just beautiful enough that i didn’t mind.
and yeah it had a very relevant and important message ,, and the really beautiful, lyrical writing doesn’t distract from the messaging at all but actually makes it so much stronger. even though this is fifty years old, it was a very relevant read. i’m really glad i read this.
“for i do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it”
“
this book (particularly the second essay) contains some of the most beautiful writing i have ever encountered. i don’t always have the patience for long descriptions of nature but this book was just beautiful enough that i didn’t mind.
and yeah it had a very relevant and important message ,, and the really beautiful, lyrical writing doesn’t distract from the messaging at all but actually makes it so much stronger. even though this is fifty years old, it was a very relevant read. i’m really glad i read this.
“for i do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it”
“
October 16, 2020
I am not exaggerating when I say this book is a life changing little thing. Wendell Berry’s prose is poetic and full of humility and wisdom. I read this book in the course of an afternoon because it was so unpretentious and refreshing in its thoughtfulness, and I fully intend to return to it again.
November 25, 2025
Excellent! Berry is so eloquent and magically awakens my childhood memories in rural Appalachia every time. The size of the book is handy too and I will definitely be rereading this and holding onto it to cement it in my brain
January 9, 2023
There are parts of this essay I really like and others, especially his theological meanderings, that really miss the mark.
September 3, 2020
Take Thoreau, remove the Romanticism and add a brain and you get this guy. I like him. (Hot Take: Pope Francis may have stole everything from this book and used it to write Laudato Si’, and that’s not a bad thing.)
October 26, 2025
A quick reminder of what makes Berry one of our foremost authors and thinkers around nature and our interactions with it. He should be required reading.
July 1, 2023
Need all of my friends to read this asap
February 25, 2024
This small tome of two essays is affectionately and patiently written. It is kind, pointed and prophetic. I'm going to offer just a couple extended quotes, from Wendell Berry in – goddammit – the year 1968. We will have no excuse as people what we've done and what we are doing to our planet. We can't say we weren't warned decades in advance.
"Nature has a patient ear. To her the slowest funeral march sounds like a jig. She is satisfied to have the notes drawn out to the lengths of days or weeks or months. Small variations are acceptable to her, modulations as leisurely as the opening of a flower." (pages 84-85)
"We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was good even for us. We have fulfilled the danger of this by making our personal pride and greed the standard of our behavior toward the world – to the incalculable disadvantage of the world and every living thing in it. And now, perhaps very close to too late, our great error has become clear. It is not only our own creativity – our own apacity for life – that is stifled by our arrogant assumption; the creation itself is stifled.
"We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to *know* the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it." (pages 88-90)
"Nature has a patient ear. To her the slowest funeral march sounds like a jig. She is satisfied to have the notes drawn out to the lengths of days or weeks or months. Small variations are acceptable to her, modulations as leisurely as the opening of a flower." (pages 84-85)
"We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was good even for us. We have fulfilled the danger of this by making our personal pride and greed the standard of our behavior toward the world – to the incalculable disadvantage of the world and every living thing in it. And now, perhaps very close to too late, our great error has become clear. It is not only our own creativity – our own apacity for life – that is stifled by our arrogant assumption; the creation itself is stifled.
"We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to *know* the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it." (pages 88-90)
April 20, 2023
The way this book describes decomposition and our connection to the earth through death is holy.
— “My breastbone burns with imminent decay. My body begins its long shudder into humus. I feel my substance escape me, carried into the mold by beetles and worms. Days, winds, seasons pass over me as I sink under the leaves. For a time only sight is left me, a passive awareness of the sky overhead, birds crossing, the mazed interreaching of the treetops, the leaves falling - and then that. too, sinks away. It is acceptable to me, and I am at peace. When I move to go, it is as though I rise up out of the world.”
amen.
— “My breastbone burns with imminent decay. My body begins its long shudder into humus. I feel my substance escape me, carried into the mold by beetles and worms. Days, winds, seasons pass over me as I sink under the leaves. For a time only sight is left me, a passive awareness of the sky overhead, birds crossing, the mazed interreaching of the treetops, the leaves falling - and then that. too, sinks away. It is acceptable to me, and I am at peace. When I move to go, it is as though I rise up out of the world.”
amen.
October 3, 2023
it's well written. and there's a lot that Berry and I agree on -- particularly in "A Native Hill." But then there's this:
"But even the most articulate public protest is not enough. We don't live in the government or in institutions, or in our public utterances and acts, and the environmental crisis has its roots in our lives. By the same token, environmental health will also be rooted in our lives. That is, I take it, simply a fact, and in the light of it we can see how superficial and foolish we would be to think that we could correct what is wrong merely by tinkering with the institutional machinery. The changes that are required are fundamental changes in the way we are living."
...which is just. wrong?? Throughout "Think Little" it seems like he's so close to getting it -- getting that environmentalism is the same thing as the peace and justice movements, etc -- but then he somehow isn't able to see that the way people live is a direct result of institutional machinery. And promoting the idea that people shouldn't protest or change institutions until they are living a near-perfect environmentalist lifestyle is advocating for a moral purity that is both unhelpful and frankly dangerous. If you go around telling people that institutional change isn't worth it unless they're already zero waste you're going to have a lot fewer activists. And yes, the urgency of the environmental movement has changed since the 70s -- but in many ways the ethos of it hasn't. So what gives?
"But even the most articulate public protest is not enough. We don't live in the government or in institutions, or in our public utterances and acts, and the environmental crisis has its roots in our lives. By the same token, environmental health will also be rooted in our lives. That is, I take it, simply a fact, and in the light of it we can see how superficial and foolish we would be to think that we could correct what is wrong merely by tinkering with the institutional machinery. The changes that are required are fundamental changes in the way we are living."
...which is just. wrong?? Throughout "Think Little" it seems like he's so close to getting it -- getting that environmentalism is the same thing as the peace and justice movements, etc -- but then he somehow isn't able to see that the way people live is a direct result of institutional machinery. And promoting the idea that people shouldn't protest or change institutions until they are living a near-perfect environmentalist lifestyle is advocating for a moral purity that is both unhelpful and frankly dangerous. If you go around telling people that institutional change isn't worth it unless they're already zero waste you're going to have a lot fewer activists. And yes, the urgency of the environmental movement has changed since the 70s -- but in many ways the ethos of it hasn't. So what gives?
Read
November 2, 2025“We do not understand the Earth in terms either of what it offers us or of what it requires of us, and I think it is a rule that people inevitably destroy what they do not understand.” … “There appears to be a law that one creatures have reached the level of consciousness, as men have, they must become conscious of the creation; they must learn how they fit into it and what its needs are and what it requires of them, or else pay a terrible penalty: the spirit of the creation will go out of them, and they will become destructive; the very earth will depart from them and go where they cannot follow.”
Unsure of how to rate essays, but I like the first more than the second.
Unsure of how to rate essays, but I like the first more than the second.
April 28, 2020
I try not to give a five-star rating without a good reason for doing so, but this book (or, these two essays) deserve such praise. The first essay was challenging, in the sense that it challenged me to think about the way I’m living. The second essay was both challenging and entrancing; I was again made to consider my ways while also being transported into the wooded hills and valleys of the author’s lineage.
On a less literary and more philosophical level, I can’t say I wholeheartedly embrace all of Berry’s perspectives on nature and our relationship with nature, but, man, he beautifully articulates his perspectives and makes me think more carefully about my own.
On a less literary and more philosophical level, I can’t say I wholeheartedly embrace all of Berry’s perspectives on nature and our relationship with nature, but, man, he beautifully articulates his perspectives and makes me think more carefully about my own.
February 21, 2024
“What lives are still ahead of me here to be discovered and exulted in, tomorrow, or in twenty years? What wonder will be found here on the morning after my death? Though as a man I inherit great evils and the possibility of great loss and suffering, I know that my life is blessed and graced by the yearly flowering of the bluebells. How perfect they are! In their presence I am humble and joyful. Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
March 19, 2022
Both essays are fantastic, beautiful insights into our relationship with the planet. But in A Native Hill, I have never felt so connected, seen, and understood within a piece of literature like this before. Feelings that have been unfathomable to me have finally been given words. Officially my favorite essay, and I’m positive no other can top it.
February 28, 2022
An inspiring case for simplifying life, connecting with the needs of the Earth, and Thinking Little.
January 1, 2024
A very Big Little Book to round out my 52. Moving words.
“A man who is willing to undertake the discipline and the difficulty of mending is own ways is worth more…than a hundred who are insisting that the government and the industries mend their ways.”
“A man who is willing to undertake the discipline and the difficulty of mending is own ways is worth more…than a hundred who are insisting that the government and the industries mend their ways.”
December 31, 2024
The things about Wendell Berry books are peaceful, back to the nature, ordinary and simple life. It’s just that nice
May 25, 2025
A short, but very dense read, extremely quotable. All-in-all an excellent reminder of how to live a simpler more appreciative life wherever you’re at.
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