An edition of the early writings of Charlotte Brontë Book

Wendell Berry has inspired many, including writers, Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, and Bill Mckibben. I can't tell you how many farmers, home gardeners, or aficionados of the local food movement have been influenced by his writing, but I'm sure they are many. Even though this is the first book of Berry's that I've read, I'm familiar with him because of his far-flung influence, his quotes that I've come across in other books. I'm glad I finally got down to reading one of his books. I didn't realize there was an order to his Port Williams books when I began reading, but in no way did I feel handicapped by reading this one out of order. It is a complete and sparkling jewel, all on its own.

My first impression of Jack Beechum is that of a man who is fully present in his life. As his nephew, Mat, meets the cows coming in from the pasture, Jack feels Mat's stiffness and pain, both emotional and physical. Jack knows Mat's movements because he is familiar with the rhythms of a life that moves with the seasons and the daily work of caring for a farm and its creatures. He is, however, less present than I at first thought, for Jack is now an old man, living more in the past than the palpable world around him. But what a vivid and alive memory! Jack's mind takes flight, going back to an idyllic day when he rides out over the farm with his brother-in-law Ben, and Mat, then five years old, to show them his stock. Everything about the day settles in upon Jack, a memory just as vibrant as the day it occurred.

Two of Jack's brothers die in the Civil War when Jack is four years old. Within a year, his mother is dead as well. Jack is raised by his older sister, Nancy, who cares for him and their father. Even more than that, however, he is raised by the fields and the woods that surround his home. With all the sorrow the house has seen, Jack is more comfortable outside, where mother nature nourishes and teaches him, answers his curiosity and gives him purpose. Later when he marries Ruth Lightwood and their marriage is not as he'd hoped, he again finds assuagement under the great open sky and the fields that open to him with possibility.

The community of friends and kin are as important as the landscape in this novel. Berry writes of them so distinctively, Ben Feltner's good eyes, how he sits astride his horse, at ease; of Ruth Lightwood, "The look of her reminds him of a young girl on a horse, simply trusting herself to a power she has not measured and does not know," of Sims McGrother, a neighboring farmer with whom he will find himself at odds "His hand would, with equal indifference, ruin a horse's mouth or a hillside." In a few words, he describes a core personality, a person that I can see and know. This is a world where the farmer's code places a high value on physical labor. Men who look for a way to avoid work are known and not valued as much as the man who lives by his sweat. My parents and grandparents were gardeners and I have to go back to a great-grandfather to find a farmer, but physical labor was valued in my family as well. In my family, there began to be a move away from the land toward town, furniture work, and later, a push toward higher education. I see a push-pull. The land is a hard taskmaster; we began to think that an education made life easier. Berry makes you think about these things and what we've lost as we moved away from nature and the land. The way Berry writes about nature and farming feels spiritual. Jack's physical nature was embedded in and with the spirit of nature. Although Jack's life is hard physical work, he also knows how to be still and reflective. Even though his mind has mostly left the present, he was the kind of man who lived a life of engagement with mind and body alert and aware. This seems a rare person, to be fully present in daily life. Most of us have to meditate to achieve that, but Jack lived everyday life as if it were a meditation, a working life as holy as any monk's.