Man in the Landscape

Man in the Landscape

 (for Paul Shepard) 

 At Houghton Point I once thought

 to move through the woods without changing

 them, impossible, but to try,

 to reduce the flattery to a minimum.

 Will the flowers show themselves?

 It is the wrong question.

 Or take the landscape as a whole:

 there’s nothing you can do for a rock

 except at the expense of beetles and grass.

 Hills need valleys, lakes rivers,

 where does the landscape end?

                                        Everything 

wants to grow according to its nature.

Every place is itself a growing thing.

Where I am I am part of the place.

 Moving through the land I am looking for the

 land

 where my tracks will root and grow

 behind me.

 --Samuel Moon

 from A Little Farther: Selected Works of Samuel Moon

 Poet and teacher Sam Moon and ecologist Paul Shepard were friends on the faculty of Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, when Shepard was teaching a course called "Man in the Landscape," which became the title of his first book published in 1967. Houghton Point is in Wisconsin, at Lake Superior.

 I’ve mentioned it before (and will again) but it bears repeating in reference to this poem: Gary Snyder (who Sam Moon brought to Knox for a week that changed more than one life there) talks about the Buddhist concept of ahimsa as doing the least possible harm.  It applies to everything, but it is always a matter of individual consideration, judgment, attention and intention.