Land Literacy
How many people could recognize an ecological wound if they saw one?
Could we tell a natural arroyo from an eroding gully? Could we tell if plant pedestaling was a sign of proper land function or a sign of erosion? If we recognized a headcut in a wet meadow, would we be able to deduce why it was there or where it originated? Could we tell if a channel was aggrading or degrading or why we should care?
This issue hit home for me years ago when I heard Dan Dagget, an environmental activist, tell a story about a professor of environmental studies he knew who took a group of students for a walk one day in the woods near Flagstaff, Arizona. Stopping in a meadow, the professor pointed at the ground and asked the students, not so rhetorically, “Can anyone tell me if this land is healthy or not?” After a few moments of awkward silence, one student finally spoke up. “Tell us first if it’s grazed by cows or not,” he demanded.
The implication was clear: if cows grazed here, the land had to be unhealthy. If cows did not graze there, then things were “natural” and therefore fine. Dan’s point was that the actual condition of the land, visible as signs of health or ill-health, had become secondary to the political positions of the observers. The point that stuck with me over the years, however, was this one: we’ve become mostly land illiterate.
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