Wendell Berry’s passing on Aug. 31 brought many thoughts to the surface. I wished I could go back to Port Royal, Kentucky, to bear witness to the importance of this man’s work even ‘way out here on the opposite side of the American continent. I contented myself with reading tributes from many newspapers and sharing poems and books with friends.
One relatively new journalist to Wendell Berry’s Kentucky is Connor Giffin, who writes for the Louisville Courier-Journal. Although I felt wary of some reporters’ take on Berry’s legacy, I was struck by the truth I found in Giffin’s two pieces. The first one had been structured from a thick file created by a former reporter who died last year, not an easy task — unless you had already begun to get acquainted with Berry’s work, which he had.
The second piece (on Sept. 2) seemed to come from his own comprehension, however new. A phrase he used early on smacked me as having nailed Berry’s essence. He wrote: “The work, for Berry, was a tireless advocacy for land, people and the load-bearing link between them.” The load-bearing link between people and land — that says it all.
That Berry’s advocacy for this thing — the load-bearing link — was tireless doesn’t mean that he didn’t get weary saying things that caused less-comprehensive people to call him “nostalgic” and worse. Being weary just didn’t make him stop. That very persistence is something people not in Kentucky or not in farming admire most, to the point of amazement, even bewilderment. I think that’s probably because for them, the load-bearing link is broken. That link is sustaining, not draining. He could speak for it because he lived it as fully as he could, and it maintained him.
I know people ‘way out here for whom that link is still alive. I think they are declining in number, although my ways of meeting people have shrunk and I might just be missing some of the newcomers. But the increasing concentration of land ownership makes it harder and harder for people to come into relationship with a piece of land and start building that link. We all are in danger from the reduction in numbers of people who have it and maintain it. All of us.
Connor’s second article tells us that Wendell’s daughter Mary said that his last weeks were worried, with the same worries he’d lived with all his life. “But he was hopeful… a hopeful man,” she said. “He thought hope was a duty.” Hope is a form of courage not all of us have.
Trying to figure out what I really feel, I found one of his poems that matches my sense of acknowledgment of his death, not resignation, more somber than sad.
Awake at Night
Late in the night I pay
the unrest I owe
to the life that has never lived
and cannot live now.
What the world could be
is my good dream
and my agony when,
dreaming it,
I lie awake and turn
and look into the dark.
I think of a luxury in the
sturdiness and grace
of necessary things, not
in frivolity. That would heal
the earth, and
heal men.
But the end, too, is part
of the pattern, the last
labor of the heart:
to learn to lie still,
one with the earth
again, and let the world go.
—Wendell Berry, “Selected Poems, 1957-1982”
Wendell Berry’s own load-bearing link to his land, his family and community has ended, but not without having enabled untold numbers of others to find and make their own. Life can improve even without harnessing up a Belgian to plow the back 40. Mindfulness is its own reward.
For those who do not have a clue who I have been describing, let me send you to the library again. If you like short stories, try “The Wild Birds.” Non-fiction: “The Hidden Wound” is a beautiful dip into his family history as small-scale slave owners. The small novel “Remembering” is a great read. Or whatever book by him that you find on the shelf. The need for the load-bearing link is in all of us. Reach for it.
Trudy Wischemann didn’t start reading Wendell Berry until 35 years ago, but it is never too late. Send her your favorite pieces of his writing c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247. This column is not a news article but the opinion of the writer and does not reflect the views of the Mid Valley Times newspaper.
