09/02/2026
WENDELL BERRY, a man who wrote good, meaningful, and worthwhile things and lived a good, meaningful and worthwhile life, has died at age 92. Writer and environmentalist, agrarian champion and contrarian, poet and purveyor of a social conscience, he lived most of his life on a small farm in Kentucky. He plowed the ground behind horses. He wrote (over 50 books--novels, poems, essays, and fiction) with a pen or pencil on paper, in a cabin without electricity. He protested that modern, industrial agriculture was killing the land and destroying rural life.
Mostly, he was a real and authentic person who wrote about real and authentic things. Sometimes with aching beauty and simplicity. Here is one of my favorite poems--which is, perhaps, the poem for our times.
THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear for what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water
and where the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
(This post is also available on Substack, where you can subscribe by googling Substack Notes From The Campfire@douglaswoodauthor)
