Earth Day responded to a convergent evolution of environmental consciousness gathered from around the globe. From 1903 to 1935, Andre Voisin, Rachel Carson, Mansanobu Fukuoka, Bill Mollison, and the youngster Allan Savory were born. Their ideas converged in the 1960s, and Americans responded with Earth Day in 1970. The problem? We have struggled to bring the theory to the ground practically and meaningfully.

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

Henry David Thoreau

These regenerative pioneers came from different environments, geography, and social structure. Until we grasp that reality, our foundations are shifting and crumbling. Everyone’s situation differs, and we cannot copy what others do because our context will be unique.

Art involves taking a principle and making it relevant to your context. That practical application revolves around people making decisions at the soil surface in the context of their situation. We have 50+ years and two generations of land managers learning to apply these theories. Many have made progress in building foundations beneath the castles, and the library of regenerative practices continues to grow. We can use this library to leverage Earth Day.

For Earth Day, I challenge you to identify a contemporary book that has captured a small slice of being regenerative. Leverage that books message by getting it into the hands of someone that might add another small slice of how, or what we can do. For example, Andrea and I recently had a young farming couple spend a weekend with us. They knew I had written a book, and the obvious subliminal, if not overt scream, was to, “Buy my book!” But pause… and consider…

Chris Casad, of Casad Family Farms in Madras, Oregon is a farmer through and through. He raises the most delicious and scrumptious potatoes I have had. I have no knowledge or experience in farming. My context revolves around healing soil with herds of cattle on perennial grasslands. My book, Green Grass in the Spring: A Cowboy’s Guide to Saving the World, is set in the sprawling sagebrush steppe of Wyoming’s Wind River Range foothills. It explores the parallel of life’s cycle, needing disturbance, avoiding too much disturbance, allowing recovery, and interrupting overrest on the range, in our personal lives, and for humanity. It has nothing to do with potatoes or farming.

I gave Chris my copy of Gabe Brown’s book, Dirt to Soil.

THE CHALLENGE: Share a book that resonated with you. Something that better connects you to life. Give the book to someone who needs it and can use the message. Be sure that message provides perspective and not prescriptions.

If you’re still with me, scroll to the end of the blog and put your top two or three works in the comment section for all to benefit. After the title and author, write a sentence or three on what this work meant to you and how it helped you make better decisions.

Here are a few of mine:

Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson

A gift from my mother, I have read this book many times. Emerson reminds us to be cautious when all around are telling you what to do. Others don’t and cannot know your personal context. “…envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide.”

Hollis Williford- The Crossing At the River- by Eric Grant

This book drew me into the lives of Native Americans drawing life from a landscape. The subjects of Hollis’s work demonstrate the art of life and living. The artist, Hollis Williford, captured that quest. Eric Grant, the author of this book, captured the life of an artist recording that journey.

For the Love of Soil- by Nicole Masters

I read this book twice and am looking forward to a third time. Nicole’s relaxed humor kept me engaged in the complexity of soil health. She opened my mind to life below the grass and hooves where my life used to end.

Bringing Earth Day to the Soil Surface