6 MAN ON THE LANDSCAPE 



plexity of organization. It rises to the ceiling set by the supply and 

 kinds of elements and climate to be found in each region. At the 

 ceiling, each region finally contains the best kinds of life it can sup- 

 port. The final, human triumph is to bring into a region any missing 

 elements and thus raise the ceiling, raise the fertility, raise the level 

 of life there. 



The sad story is that man, the acme of life, has generally failed to 

 do this natural, normal duty in enriching his home. He has become 

 a robber of the family goods and a fouler of his own nest. The en- 

 couraging story is that in still small but constantly growing number 

 he has realized his error and is correcting it. This reformation is most 

 evident in the agricultural revolution occuring now in the Tennessee 

 Valley, in the Muskingum Valley, in soil conservation districts across 

 the land. 



The reformation in land use is based on a belated recognition of 

 the values and lessons of natural organization on the landscape. Na- 

 ture's system kept the books balanced reasonably well. What life 

 took from the soil, it returned. Water and air were used over and 

 over. They nourished, and seldom injured, life. Each life form, 

 whether plant or animal, drew its substance from the landscape, lived, 

 and when it died its substance went back into the landscape where it 

 would benefit life to follow. 



Man, the Disorganizer. The organization set up by nature, with- 

 out benefit of man's technology, was an intricately geared set of 

 cycles. These cycles were intermeshed, driven by power from the sun, 

 and were relatively timeless. They could not run down and stop. Man 

 has, figuratively, straightened out the wheels of this living machine 

 and built a single track, one way road to the sea, the dump, the incin- 

 erator, and the cemetery, for the greater part by way of our cities. 

 The substance of the landscape is loosed from its mooring and traded 

 to the cities for money and fabricated goods. 



The chief product of the landscape, food, is largely routed through 

 the gullets and alimentary tubes of city people, then through the 

 sewers and down our reeking rivers to the sea. The return phase of 

 the mineral cycle does not operate to any significant extent. The soil 

 is weakened, weakened a little more each year. Minerals are being 

 withdrawn from the soil bank faster than nature can release new sup- 

 plies from the rocks. Scores of years ago, Victor Hugo warned that 

 the real wealth and strength of France was gushing out to sea through 

 the stone-walled guts of Paris, its sewers. The United States is a 

 younger, stronger land, but already our soils show unmistakable signs 

 of developing mineral shortages. On some 75 million acres the soil 

 itself is gone. If this continues long enough, the last gasp of Ameri- 

 can civilization may sound remarkably like, may be in fact, the 

 swooshing gurgle of a voracious watercloset. This ingenious device 

 will then sit, in its porcelain and functional beauty, as did its marble 

 prototype in Home, and wait a thousand years for nature to build a 

 new landscape once again to feed its insatiable maw. 



