Reflect

How is it that in 1858, three years before the beginning of the U.S. Civil War, a young man named Frederick Law Olmsted was able to envision the need for New York City’s Central Park? What sort of extraordinary imagination did he possess to understand how necessary this natural space would be to the evolution of the city? Whether it’s Central Park, a long stretch of beach somewhere, a favorite trail, or a neighborhood garden, most everyone has a place in the natural world that they love and cherish. And we get to enjoy these places because someone before us understood that something both tangible and ineffable would be lost without the protection of these spaces — that we need them not just for exercise or leisure but for our souls. Wendell Berry writes, “There are no unsacred places; / there are only sacred places / and desecrated places.” Every place offers itself as sacred, but avoiding desecration is dependent upon our care overriding our greed, our sense of the holy overriding our materialism, our awareness of future generations overriding our self-interest. How will we protect what we cherish?