Recent reading

Lately, I'm all about Michael Pollan. I read The Omnivore's Dilemma because of the controversy that WFM was involved in, and I loved it. I didn't agree with all of it. In fact, I rolled my eyes at large parts of it. But he made many good points, his arguments were interesting, and his writing is wonderful. Currently, I'm reading Second Nature, a kind of gardening memoir/meditation he wrote about fifteen years ago. Here is a paragraph that gave me something to think about on my way to work this morning. He is writing about a forest of old-growth pine trees that was destroyed by a tornado. Environmentalists wanted the debris to be left alone to let nature take its course, while the town nearby wanted to clear the fallen trees and plant new ones.

But the discovery that time and chance hold sway even in nature can also be liberating. Because contingency is an invitation to participate in history. Human choice is unnatural only if nature is deterministic; human chance is unnatural only if she is changeless in our absence. If the future of Cathedral Pines is up for grabs, if its history will always be the product of myriad chance events, then why shouldn't we also claim our place among all those deciding factors? For aren't we also one of nature's contingencies? And if our cigarette butts and Norway maples and acid rain are going to shape the future of this place, then why not also our hopes and desires?