Men may dam it and say that they have made a lake, but it will still be a river. It will keep its nature and bide its time, like a caged animal alert for the slightest opening. In time, it will have its way; the dam, like the ancient cliffs, will be carried away piecemeal in the currents.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the inherent power of nature and the inevitability of its return to its natural state despite human attempts to contain it.
Wendell Berry's quote illustrates the resilience of nature against human interference. Even when man constructs barriers like dams to control rivers, the fundamental character of the river endures. Over time, nature will find a way to reclaim its space, akin to a caged animal longing for freedom, ultimately rendering human efforts futile as the river will carve its path irrespective of man-made constructs.
In practice
A speaker discussing environmental protection could use this quote to emphasize the importance of respecting natural processes.
We weren't allowing our hopes to become expectations. Expectations are tempting, pleasant, maybe necessary. They are scary too, once you have had some experience. They are not necessarily and not always a bucket of smoke, but they can be and are even likely to be.
The uplands of my home country in north central Kentucky are sloping and easily eroded, dependent for safekeeping upon year-round cover of perennial plants.
A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.
WE ARE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY - I mean our country itself, our land. This is a terrible thing to know, but it is not a reason for despair unless we decide to continue the destruction. If we decide to continue the destruction, that will not be because we have no other choice. This destruction is not necessary. It is not inevitable, except that by our submissiveness we make it so.
Much of our waste problem is to be accounted for by the intentional flimsiness and unrepairability of the labor-savers and gadgets that we have become addicted to.
We had entered an era of limitlessness, or the illusion thereof, and this in itself is a sort of wonder. My grandfather lived a life of limits, both suffered and strictly observed, in a world of limits. I learned much of that world from him and others, and then I changed; I entered the world of labor-saving machines and of limitless cheap fossil fuel. It would take me years of reading, thought, and experience to learn again that in this world limits are not only inescapable but indispensable.
Today we're seeing that climate change is about more than a few unseasonably mild winters or hot summers. It's about the chain of natural catastrophes and devastating weather patterns that global warming is beginning to set off around the world.. the frequency and intensity of which are breaking records thousands of years old.
Tree sitting is a last resort. When you see someone sitting in a tree trying to protect it, you know that every level of our society has failed.
Once you've been in space, you appreciate how small and fragile the Earth is.
Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night.
It's the little details I love. How to fletch your arrows with owl feathers, because owls fly silently, so maybe your arrows will, too. How to carry fire in a piece of smouldering fungus wrapped in birchbark. These are the things which help a world come alive.
You may not agree, you may not care, but if you are holding this book you should know that of all the sights I love in this world β and there are plenty β very near the top of the list is this one: dogs without leashes.
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