I was smitten.
I've always loved the outdoors--fishing, skiing, swimming; all the things that kids do. When I was introduced to camping overnight in a remote, lightly traveled wilderness... well... the rest was history. I found myself in love with nature, and it's a love I carry forward today in many of the same hobbies: fishing, backpacking, canoeing, cycling, running, swimming, and just enjoying the views wherever they may come.
This love of the outdoors led naturally into a passion for what we might term "environmental causes." In college this was a huge thing for me. I worked for Lutherhaven Ministries one summer as a camp counselor and then came back as an off-site trip leader, which was a fantastic synthesis of my passions for God and the outdoors. Camp reenforced many of my ideologies, and I returned to school passionate for several causes. Like any good environmentalist I despised all the things that led to global warming and I was into organic stuff and all sorts of things. I listened to statistics and became interested in things like the "world hunger problem." I had made the seamless transition from outdoor-lover to environmentalist and I assumed that's where I'd stay.
But I didn't. In fact, I really didn't stay in that camp very long at all, because one day not long after college I came across agrarianism care of Wendell Berry. When I found Berry I realized the nascent doubts I had about these causes. It's not that I felt lied to (full disclosure: I still think global warming, fossil fuel dependency, and world hunger are problems), but I realized that what environmentalism lacked was a coherent vision for improving the situation that didn't involve legislation and buying green foods--both of which felt like cop outs to me. This is because environmentalism is an "-ism" and as such it is concerned with solving for form rather than dealing with the particulars of a local environment. I'll let Berry explain:
Photo credit: Dan Carraco
A typical example of industrial heroism is to found in the present rush of experts to "solve the problem of world hunger"--which is rarely defined except as a "world problem" known, in industrial heroic jargon, as "the world food problematique." As is characteristic of industrial heroism, the professed intention here is entirely salutary: nobody should starve. The trouble is that "world hunger" is not a problem that can be solved by a "world solution." Except in a very limited sense, it is not an industrial problem, and industrial attempts to solve it--such as the "Green Revolution" and "Food for Peace"--have often had grotesque and destructive results. "The problem with world hunger" cannot be solved until it is understood and dealt with by local people as a multitude of local problems of ecology, agriculture, and culture. (Wendell Berry, "The Gift of Good Land")