A Native Hill
1. The story of his decision to leave academia in NYC and the connections to the literary world and move back to his home in Kentucky. The effect of the land on people. He distinguishes between a path and a road. A path is a habit that comes tight knowledge of a place. A path is minimally destructive. A road is embodies a resistance to the landscape. It is by nature destructive.
2. Berry meditates on a walk he takes in the woods. “There seems to be a law That when creatures have reached the level of consciousness, as men have, they must learn how to find into it and what its needs are and what it requires of them, or else pay a terrible penalty: the spirit of the creation will go out of them. And they will become destructive, the very earth will depart them and go where they cannot follow.” p18-19. We lived in the past with the assumption that what was good for us was good for the world and the even flimsier assumption that we knew what was good for us. We were wrong.
3. An ode to the forest and its impact on Berry when he goes into it.