Last summer we were given a copy of Voices of the Land a collection of essays and photographs. It was a gift from our friends from life Bonnie and Kai Underwood.  It sat on our coffee table unread and unthanked until it rained the other day.  It was our first real rain in about eight months and it put me into a nesting mood.  Part of that was picking up this delicious book and reading a few of it’s essays.  It is excellent.  A sampler from the essay Neatness is Not a Virtue by Charles Canham:

With the power to pervasively transform nature comes a responsibility to accept stewardship.

Neatness is not a virtue in nature.

We clear-cut virtually all of the forests of the Catskills in the mid-1800’s to use the bark to tan leather.