The Land Ethic

In Ecology of a Cracker Childhood Janisse Ray’s outlines an important aspect of the land ethic, that being the need to connect with one’s environment, regardless of what it may be. She reveals how place is an essential part of her identity, which suggests that her idea about the Self extends beyond an abstract pile of character traits and moves identity into something more concrete (place), but still equally complex. By doing this, Ray implies that we should have an instinctual desire to avoid damaging or destroying those places that connect so intimately to ourselves. In the text, she points to how early Southern settlers ignored what should have been an reciprocal relationship between themselves and the land (using as a resource, but avoiding apocalyptic damage), but instead used the land without thinking of it as a part of themselves, of their own lives and histories. By including sections (set off by the pinecones) that outline the extensive damages caused by people, she indicates how dangerous that disconnect between the land and the human identity can be for, most obviously, the land, but also for the people themselves. Ray reflects on the absence of this connection in father’s childhood and the possible ethical and personal limitations that caused within her father, writing, “Suppose someone had found my father the boy and said, If you look closely, you will find palmetto bugs hardly bigger than apple seeds, and their iridescent black shells are walking onyx…Suppose. What then?” (216).

With that in mind, exposure to this connection seems to be the most important, if not the simplest, way to instill a commitment to preserving and ensuring the health of the land/environment. I can relate to Ray’s grounding of environmental ethics in the childhood memories that reveal the role of place in identity, but in more of a typical way. Growing up on a small farm allowed me to explore and appreciate nature in more of a subconscious way. I realize now how this naturalized connection to the land and to animals greatly influenced how I understand environmental issues. I also can see how even the simple interactions with nature (like Ray’s fascination with the pitcher plant) can naturally, if not dramatically, shape the environmental ethic to be less human-centered.