Jay Kovach WRIT 3315 02.17.13 Paper 1: Seeing the Land with Purpose.

Introduction My view of land-relationships exists somewhere between those views of Native Americans and Aldo Leopold. My view on the environment and working with it most strongly align with contemporary writers like Donnella Meadows, Andrs Edwards, and Bill McKibbens. I do not think that any land is required to have a purpose and nor should it, least not in the sense of needing to be defined by a term of purpose dictated by humans. A purpose assigned by a human does not assign something with worth beyond whatever currency is in vogue at the height of a particular civilization. Land and the community that comprises it has more worth to us than we often are capable of knowing let alone the untold values it holds for its inhabitants. I do believe in acting as a steward to the land and in particular, the property that I grew up on. When you spend enough time observing and interacting with the land land as a community, not property or soil you get a sense of its needs and wants. Not even an island is an island free from outside influences, so as the steward of this land my goal is to help it deal with human influence as a global force. The chemicals, UVs, climate changes or whatever else eventually makes its way here can potentially destroy what little bit of Nature is left on my family land. I plan to not only invert any negative environmental impact my family has, but I wish to contribute sustainably to the power grid and the land so that they are healthy and more capable of resiliency in times of instability. I then want to find a way to apply what I learn to other humanecological interactions in different landscapes. For example, I could apply the knowledge to bringing

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Nature back to the urban setting or teaching people to positively impact the land in the suburbs as part of their membership within the human-ecological community. My Land-Relationship My history with the land and Nature is one that I feel incredibly blessed and privileged to have had. I have been conceived and reared on the same homestead and for most of my childhood that homestead consisted of 120 acres of exploration and mystery. I have spilled blood, tears, seed, and sweat upon this land. It has seen me at my most alive to nearly dead. In the memories of the trees, and sometimes in the echoes of the winds, you can hear family fights, lovers mourning, the dead horses whinnies and the howls of wolves once proud, now broken and beaten back from their glacial homeland. Ive encountered a mother bear and her cub on the property, mated wolves, I always just miss the packs of coyotes but I get to enjoy their haunting cries on cool summer nights. We have Bald eagles that nest in the dead trees above the seasonal creek bed, which climate change has left dry more often than not in years past. My family has hunted these lands, rented them to farmers, raised our own food for preserving on the land, and the land has provided entertainment for many family celebrations. I am this land, everything pure, and good, and lasting in me will live on in this land when I am gone. It brings tears to my eyes, the emotions tied to this place, are so powerful that I cannot fight them with macho thoughts. Pets I put down rest here. My grandfather died here. My parents were married 2 miles away in the church I would be baptized and confirmed in. Even though my faith has changed, the memories that tie me to this land have not. My dog who, as crazy as it sounds, died of cancer the day I was diagnosed with a brain tumor (the crazy part being that I am convinced he had the deadly cancer so I would not), rests in these soils, and these same soils nursed me back to health when I worked them for our plants and critters while recovering from my neurosurgeries. Like Adam, my body has been shaped from the Earth.

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I Want My Land to Surthrive With everything that I have received from my familys (any possessive titling I give my homestead is not so much meant as in ownership, only as an identifier) land, I feel the need to give back. Like tithing to your faith, I try and contribute to the land as often as I can, even if only in small amounts. I have removed garbage and waste from the property. Any material capable of recycling has been shipped off and made into something else. I try to repurpose as many materials on the property as possible and if I cant find a use I make sure that reusable items are sent to Goodwill or a similar nonprofit group. This year I am trying to convince my family of the merit of taking a break from our large scale produce production and focus more on repairing what we have. For our vegetable plots we should plant clover cover-crops to break up the soil and add organic nitrogen. They also need to be heavily composted as some of my late grandfathers horticulture practices were not as in-tuned with the land as the things I have learned since his passing. Any veggies that we have to have can be planted in open spots amongst the landscaping. We also will be focusing on replacing fruit trees weve lost, and hopefully this year we will have cherries for my mother instead of ones unfit for even the birds. I keep pushing for the patching of dead spots in the lawn with no-mow and low-mow alternatives and Gemma and my father seem to be finally entertaining the idea. We also are taking steps to ensure our house is energy efficient and more green friendly. I am always looking into the possibility of adding solar technology to the property. The Longview My long term goal for the family homestead is to have a net-zero home that makes money by selling energy back to the grid. I want, and have discussed with several family members, to use the homestead that I love as a place for me to practice my studies on the environment and sustainability.

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My big dream is to have a green company or source of income and I get to use the family homestead as a demo, model, or component of that income source. A sad realization I have come to accept is that at least some of my time, probably most of my year may have to be spent elsewhere. My health problems are most manageable during Minnesota summers as the cold and erratic weather problems tend to make things worse for me. At first I could only think of how much I would miss being here, but being bed-ridden and full of pain isnt developing my land-relationship anyway. Now I look forward to time spent elsewhere. It will give me an opportunity to understand how this bond is formed by watching myself do it someplace new. I will also get to test theories and try and practice what I preach, what I have learned about, in a situation that might need it a lot more it if, say, it is in a Southern city of less-than-stellar repute on quality of life or environment. I also would be able to experience an entirely new ecosystems worth of flora and fauna in the new human-ecological community I would be joining. In closing, the land needs no purpose to be valuable, but the land gives me a sense of purpose, a sense of being. It is our responsibility to mitigate the ecological sins of our forefathers and protect the future of all living organisms within Nature. We need to start with our land-relationships, with our entire human-ecological community. The greatest action we can take to build a better world isnt solving problems like hunger or famine; it is making a difference in our own backyards, by setting an everyday example. If everyone cared about the well-being of their human and non-human neighbors and gave willingly to their health and the communitys health as a whole, everyones quality of living would go up. The land could heal.

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