Life Is a Miracle

I admire Berry and enjoy his essays. He is a conservationist in the way I wish more environmentalists were (cf. A Sand County Almanac).

A part of what I admire is that Berry veers off into places I won’t go. If I can read your entire book saying “yes,” then either I’m not thinking or you aren’t. Berry is always a challenge. I would like to live like he does, and I most decidedly would not like to.

This is the first long work I’ve read by him. It’s interesting, and I certainly agree with his argument against the mechanization of life. Ultimately though his focus is too specific for me. He’s essentially rebutting a book I don’t know by an entomologist I don’t know, taking it as representative of a general tendency. Fine, but I’m too cut off from the source to be moved here.