09/01/2026
Mr. Berry was the greatest influence in my thinking and life’s work and journey for more than a decade. His passing will probably affect me more than anyone else’s outside of my closest personal circles.
The value of living a life in close connection with the rhythms of God’s creation and with respect for its limits greatly affected the course I set my family on.
I caught from him a warm fondness for the people who made themselves native to this land and worked it for generations. This affection has lit in me a fire to see that those integrated into this landscape can maintain and revivify our connections to land and community. Not just to reconnect us to our place, but also that the external pressures on our life ways might be abated.
Though it’s often fairly said that his works were long on nostalgia and diagnosis and short on practicable cure, this poem which hangs by my bed is a reminder to me that there is a beautiful goal for America’s rural landscapes people and life ways which can be aimed at if we will have the creativity character and vision to carry it out.
