Wendel Berry Meets Louis L'Amour

Between school and Easter I have not had the time to post anything.  I could add a few other excuses, too, like a cold, and a film shoot, and LIFE, but that's another story.

 My Advanced Comp. teacher suggested that I post my first paper from that class, the one that I was trying not to write when I started this blog, and the one that prevented me from posting again sooner.  It is a synthesis paper that brings together the essays of Wendell Berry and a short story by Louis L'Amour.  I highly recommend both authors.

                        Mirror Valley Meets Wendell Berry
When outsiders come in and try to change the ways a community does things, we find two problems. The first is that the community doesn't trust the strangers. The second is that the strangers don't know the community. In order for us to effectively solve problems in an area, we must first become a part of that area, and then educate ourselves and others in order to find the best solution for the problem.

"Merrano of the Dry Country" is a short story written by "western" author Louis L'Amour. It tells the tale of a young man who returns to the community that drove his parents away to claim his inheritance. They hated his father because he was different, a Mexican "greaser," and because he married the girl they all wanted. The ranchers of Mirror Valley hated Merrano because he dared to return, and dared to stay when they tried to drive him out. And they hated him because he succeeded where the others were failing.
    Louis L'Amour and Wendell Berry had very different lives, yet both have many of the same ideals. The themes of strong community, respect for the environment, and self sufficiency are common in the works of both men. In his essay We have Begun, Wendell Berry outlines those things that should be "obvious" to a person familiar with the land they work. He says:

1. This is land that needs to be farmed with great care by people who know it well.
   
2. It needs perennial vegetation—trees or grass.
   
3. The steeper slopes should be permanently forested.
   
4. In any year, most of the land that is not forested should be in grass.
   
5. Any farming that is none here should make use of grazing animals.
   
6. The bottomlands, ridgetops, and gentler slopes can be planted in row crops, but they should not be continuously in cultivation. On most farms no more than 5 or 10 percent should be plowed in any year, the crops should be grown in small plots or in strips. No land should remain in cultivation for more than a year or two.
   
7. Even grazing should be done with close attention and care, and on an appropriate scale, in order to avoid both overgrazing and the heavy treading that will expose the soil to erosion. (13)
   

When we read the description of Merrano's ranch, we can see how it reflects nearly every point. That the land is farmed, or ranched, in this case, with care is obvious in the knowledge Merrano shows of the area. He knew water would be a problem, so he created dams to hold the water for the dry season. He knew what grasses were native and he planted them, along with an orchard. This covers Berry's second point–that there should be perennial vegetation. Merrano makes use of grazing animals, but is very careful not to over graze. In contrast, the ranchers of Mirror Valley do not follow this idea of grazing on an appropriate scale; rather they put too much stock on the range, and the result was too little water, too little grass, and eventual drought. The ranchers saw the huge herds of buffalo and believed that the range would support as many cattle. In Merrano's words, the ranchers "came into a rich, new country, and nothing [would] convince [them] it would not always stay rich" (L'Amour 50). Unfortunately, they were wrong, and because of their error they were in danger of ruin.
But can we really blame the ranchers? This was a land the likes of which they had never seen. This is, I think, true for many of the ecological problems. People don't know. They think they know, but they can't see far enough ahead to realize the implications of their actions. Even seeing the results of the overgrazing, it was easy for the ranchers to blame it on "climate change" (L'Amour 46). But it wasn't the climate that changed; it was the way the land reacted to the climate. The eroded soil could no longer hold what little moisture it received. So how can we change the way people react to the land? In his essay "The Working Wilderness," Courtney White asked Julia Davis-Stafford, of the progressively managed, 100,000 acre, CS ranch in northeastern New Mexico, how to change the land ethics of the ranchers, as the ethics of the Davises were changed. Her answer to him is an answer for us: "We didn't change our ethics. We're the same people we were 15 years ago. What changed was our knowledge" (Working Wilderness 162). This distinction between ethics and knowledge is an important one, because in recognizing it we can avoid jumping to conclusions about one side of an issue or the other, and in acknowledging it, we can open ourselves up to a greater understanding of the issue at hand.

The beauty of fiction is that it can give us a more complete understanding of an event than we usually see with a "true" story. This is because, with reality, we are stuck in the position of the observer. There are things we do not, and cannot know, although we may assume them. As Wendell Berry said, "Imagination knows more than the eye sees." When we read a story, we know what is going on in the characters' minds, at least so far as the author is willing to show us. Also, in a short story such as Merrano of the Dry Country, the problems are simple. The cattle are dying, and nobody likes Merrano. The solutions are also simple. Get off your high horse and listen to Merrano. But what about real life? Can these principles of community, knowledge of the land, and peaceful resolutions really work outside the world of fiction and essays? Certainly not as simply, but definitely yes.

In Bringing the Society Back In- Grassroots Ecosystem Management, Accountability, and Sustainable Communities, Edward Weber studies three communities, Willapa Bay, Washington, Henry's Fork Watershed, Idaho, and Applegate Valley, Oregon, that have had successfully overcome serious disagreements by working within the community to resolve differences. Like in Merrano, the issue had escalated to the point of threats of violence. However, the two sides were a little more complicated. Each of the communities relied on the health of the environment for the health of their communities and economies. And each of the communities found themselves divided between the environmentalist groups and the loggers, ranchers, and farmers who made their living from the land (45). As Wendell Berry puts it, "The effort is not only defined by the problem but is limited by it (75)." Neither side could find resolutions, because neither side was willing to see beyond their own problems. As one person put it, it was "owls versus jobs, fish versus people," an entirely too simplistic approach to the problem (Weber 48). No one believed that both the environment and the economy could win.

Fortunately, there were leaders and citizens within these communities who realized that there had to be a solution (Weber 60). They began a conversation with one another, as Merrano did with the Drakes. Wendell Berry says of conversation:

Nobody beginning a conversation can know how it will end. And there is always the possibility that a conversation, by bringing its participants under one another's influence, will change them, possibly for the better. (122)

As a result of these conversations, the citizens created institutions to reconnect society with the government institutions, thereby giving people their voice back. Previously, there had been this feeling that the government was "inaccessible, biased, inefficient, and ineffective" (Weber 52). Also ineffective was the method of breaking things into subcategories, and trying to fix each part separately. The allegiance created by one community pointed out:

A sustainable community needs to be developed by the people who make up the community. It cannot be designed by a consultant. It cannot be implemented by experts hired specifically for the project. It needs to be implemented every day by the people who live and work in the community. (qtd. Weber 194)

Berry talks about how the knowledge should be carried from the university to the regions it supports, in the agricultural extension system, and how information needs to be likewise carried back to the university, telling them what works and what doesn't (124), again bringing the community and education together.

This is what we see in L'Amour's story, as well. Once the ranchers were able to realize that Merrano wasn't just a greaser and that he knew what he was talking about, mainly by the example he was able to show them on his own ranch, they were willing to change what they were doing. As long as he was an outsider, they wouldn't listen. Why should they? Hadn't they run more cattle than he had, and on that range? But by going in and seeing the grass, and seeing the water, and seeing the healthy cows, they were able to realize that these were things they could and should do, too. And they did them. The cases on the west coast are not isolated incidences, either. Courtney White talks about ranching communities who, like the Davises, have come together as a community to implement new ideas in conservation. "Alone, it is doubtful that any one ranching operation can survive economically or socially by itself anymore," White quotes Frank Hayes, in his book Revolution on the Range. "Together they can make a difference among themselves and as a group. (qtd. in White 75)

It's the easiest thing in the world to sit back and say what other people ought to be doing. It is also easy to keep doing what we are doing, and consider our failures to be the fault of something beyond our own control. It is much harder to work with others and take the chance of learning something new about them, and about ourselves. Yet the rewards for the latter far outweigh those of the former. These are things Wendell Berry and Louis L'Amour have both recognized and shared.

Works Cited

Berry, Wendell. The Way of Ignorance. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint Press, 2005. Print

L'Amour, Louis. "Merrano of the Dry Country." L'Amour, Louis. The Strong Shall live. Bantam    Reissue / September 1992. New York: Bantam Books, 1980, reprinted 1992. 43-79. Print

Weber, Edward P. Bringing Society Back in : Grassroots Ecosystem Management    Accountability, and Sustainable Communities. eBook ISBN: 9780585446721.    Cambridge, Mass.: MIT    Press, 2003. Accessed netlibrary.com 27 Feb. 2010    <http://www.netlibrary.com.proxy.elm4you.org/Reader/> Ebook.

White, Courtney. Revolution on the Range: The rise of a New Ranch in the American West. Washington, D.C.: Shearwater Books, 2008. Accessed on Amazon.com 1 March 2010    http://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Range-Rise-Ranch-American/dp/1597261742/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267491445&sr=8-1#reader_1597261742 Ebook.

White, Courtney. "The Working Wilderness: A Call for a Land Health Movement." Berry, Wendell. The Way of Ignorance. Berkley, CA: Counterpoint Press, 2005. 159-180. Print