"Washing the future into the sea" and the God who gathers back the waters

Reflections on Aldo Leopold and the world inherited by the meek

“The face of the land itself is a more eloquent and revealing document than all the written records.” — Daniel Hillel

¹I’m not a Bible scholar by any means; piddling around in God’s Holy Word and exploring the past three-thousand years of literature it has provoked is but a pastime—though a fun one! What little training I have is in the field of forestry: things like forest conservation, ecology, and the industrial world of forest products and their procurement in God’s green earth. It doesn’t make me a Bible scholar, but it does inform my reading of the Bible.

One of the world’s foremost conservationists was an American forester, Aldo Leopold, known mostly today for his series of essays in A Sand County Almanac and his influence in the worlds of ecology and environmental ethics.

Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) was a lifelong hunter and scholar

His writings reveal an intimate familiarity with an ecological crisis that has plagued humanity since agriculture began in the no-longer-so-fertile crescent: anthropogenic (human-caused) erosion. Try as we might, we humans seem incapable of seeing the world through a lens wider than our own short years. Instead of learning “to think like a mountain,” as Leopold put it, “we have dustbowls, and rivers washing the future into the sea.”²

As a forester myself, thinkers like Leopold have a profound impact on me. As I travel through my little corner of the world I see it changing, and I mostly don’t like the changes. It’s filling up with huge houses and biologically inert lawns, muddy rivers and unhealthy forests, invasive species and abandoned farms. It’s a relatively recent phenomenon here, but old hat to much of the world.

The Old Testament authors spoke about why the natural world suffers, and the reason might surprise you:

There is no faithfulness or steadfast love,
   and no knowledge of God in the land;
there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery;
   they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.
Therefore the land mourns,
   and all who dwell in it languish,
and also the beasts of the field
   and the birds of the heavens,
   and even the fish of the sea are taken away. (Hos 4:1-3)

The earth lies defiled
   under its inhabitants;
for they have transgressed the laws,
   violated the statutes,
   broken the everlasting covenant.
Therefore a curse devours the earth,
   and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt; (Isa 24:5-6)

³We make the land what it is through our sin—how far are we humans from stewards of the earth!

Erosion has been a key player in the degrading and denuding processes occurring in many ecosystems. Paul Brand (1914-2003), a devout Christian and pioneering surgeon in treating leprosy, told a story about growing up as a child of missionaries in the mountains of South India that taught him the importance of soil and the danger of erosion. It’s a cautionary tale:

I was playing in the mud of a rice field with a half-dozen other little boys. We were racing to see who would be the first to catch three frogs. It was a wonderful way to get dirty from head to foot in the shortest possible time. Suddenly, we were all scrambling to get out of the paddy. One of the boys had spotted an old man walking across the path toward us. We all knew him as “Tata,” or “Grandpa.” He was the keeper of the dams. He walked slowly, and was stooped over a bit as though he were always looking at the ground. Old age is very much respected in India, and we boys shuffled our feet and waited in silence for what we knew would be a rebuke.

He came over to us and asked us what we were doing. “Catching frogs,” we answered. He stared down at the churned-up mud and flattened young rice plants in the corner where we had been playing. I was expecting him to talk about the rice seedlings we had just spoiled. Instead, the elder stooped down and scooped up a handful of mud. “What is this?” he asked. The biggest boy took the responsibility of answering for us all.

“It’s mud, Tata,” he replied.

“Whose mud is it?” the old man asked.

“It’s your mud, Tata, this is your field.”

Then the old man turned and looked at the nearest of the little channels across the dam. “What do you see there, in that channel?”

“That is water, running over into the lower field.”

For the first time Tata looked angry. “Come with me and I will show you water.” A few steps along the dam he pointed to the next channel, where clear water was running, “That is what water looks like,” he said. Then we came back to our nearest channel, and he said again “Is that water?”

We hung our heads. “No, Tata, that is mud.” The older boy had heard all this before and did not want to prolong the question-and-answer session, so he hurried on. “And the mud from your field is being carried away to the field below, and it will never come back, because mud always runs downhill, never up again. We are sorry, Tata, and we will never do this again.”

Tata was not ready to stop his lesson as quickly as that, however. He went on to tell us that just one handful of mud would grow enough rice for one meal for one person, and it would do it twice every year for years and years into the future. “That mud flowing over the dam has given my family food since before I was born, and before my grandfather was born. It would have given my grandchildren and their grandchildren food forever. Now it will never feed us again. When you see mud in the channels of water, you know that life is flowing away from the mountains.”

The old man walked slowly back across the path, pausing a moment to adjust with his foot the grass clod in our muddy channel so that no more water flowed through it.⁴

A terraced rice field | photo by Quang Nguyen Vinh (2021)

Terraced agriculture like Brand referred to is an ancient practice, and it can actually be a sustainable option for farming in hill country. It was the only option available when the ancient Israelites entered the Promised Land, for all the best intermontane valleys were occupied and they were, for a time, relegated to the uplands. They farmed these lands by “collecting stones off the ground and using them to construct rock walls on the contours, thus dividing the slope into a series of terraces. Furthermore, to restore soil fertility they allowed the land to rest for one year out of seven, a sort of sabbatical known as shmitah.”⁵ The terraces were created via backbreaking effort and required constant maintenance—and therein lies the problem.

Israel has a bloody history as a people constantly under threat of invasion. Their attempts to be no more a nomadic people were hindered by exiles and wars, sometimes deserved⁶ and sometimes not. Our shared world’s environmental problems have rarely been a result of a lack of science or modern scholarship. They are the result of a cursed world inhabited by people who seek domination, oppression, and power instead of peace, communal living, and harmony. Bloodshed hinders our ability to take care of ourselves in a way that takes care of the earth.

Let me sing for my beloved
   my love song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
   on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones,
   and planted it with choice vines…

And now I will tell you
   what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
   and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
   and it shall be trampled down.
I will make it a waste;
   it shall not be pruned or hoed,
   and briers and thorns shall grow up;
I will also command the clouds
   that they rain no rain upon it.

For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts
   is the house of Israel,
and the men of Judah
   are his pleasant planting;
and he looked for justice,
   but behold, bloodshed;
for righteousness,
   but behold, an outcry!

Woe to those who join house to house,
   who add field to field,
until there is no more room,
   and you are made to dwell alone
   in the midst of the land. (Isa 5:1-8)

I care about this world because I don’t see it as a place I’m merely passing through on my way to over yonder. There’s no rapture coming—this is the world I expect to spend eternity in. It’s a broken world, and I don’t think we humans can fix it. How could we expect to, since we broke it in the first place?

If this makes you sad—good! It should. Aldo Leopold experienced this melancholia as he rode a bus through Illinois, watching a withering world fly by his window:

A farmer and his son are out in the yard, pulling a crosscut saw through the innards of an ancient cottonwood…It is the best historical library short of the State College, but once a year it sheds cotton on the farmer’s window screens. Of these two facts, only the second is important.

The State College tells farmers that Chinese elms do not clog screens, and hence are preferable to cottonwoods. It likewise pontificates on cherry preserves, Bang’s disease, hybrid corn, and beautifying the farm home. The only thing it does not know about farms is where they came from. Its job is to make Illinois safe for soybeans…

A worried farmer, his fertilizer bill projecting from his shirt pocket, looks blankly at the lupines, lespedezas, or Baptisias that originally pumped nitrogen out of the prairie air and into his black loamy acres. He does not distinguish them from the parvenu quack-grass in which they grow. Were I to ask him why his corn makes a hundred bushels, while that of non-prairie states does well to make thirty, he would probably answer that Illinois soil is better. Were I to ask him the name of that white spike of pea-like flowers hugging the fence, he would shake his head. A weed, likely.

A cemetery flashes by, its borders alight with prairie puccoons. There are no puccoons elsewhere; dog-fennels and sowthistles supply the yellow motif for the modern landscape. Puccoons converse only with the dead…

[T]he passengers talk and talk and talk. About what? About baseball, taxes, sons-in-law, movies, motors, and funerals, but never about the heaving groundswell of Illinois that washes the windows of the speeding bus. Illinois has no genesis, no history, no shoals or deeps, no tides of life and death. To them Illinois is only the sea on which they sail to ports unknown.⁷

Leopold's perspective was often pessimistic and his skeptical optimism, when he could find it, was founded in humankind's increasing understanding of the natural world and shaky centralizations of authority and technique in civilization's attempt to protect it. Whether he attributed the natural world’s plight to the curse of human sin is doubtful, but he certainly saw the environment for what it was in its current state:

An atom at large in the biota is too free to know freedom; an atom back in the sea has forgotten it. For every atom lost to the sea, the prairie pulls another out of the decaying rocks. The only certain truth is that its creatures must suck hard, live fast, and die often, lest its losses exceed its gains.⁸

Leopold knew humans couldn't solve the problem on their own. “We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve, but to strive.”⁹

However, I remain hopeful, for my hope lies not in humankind but in the Lord (Psa 62:5). Somewhere in that sadness hope is planted, for Jesus says,

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. (Matt 5:3-5)

The Beatitudes are a calling—a calling to live as if the “New Jerusalem” has already descended to earth (Rev 21:1-3). For so it has, in God's Spirit poured out on those who believe, and so it will, when we see God's throne with our very eyes. In the meantime, we live a life of meekness knowing justice for the oppression destroying our natural world will someday come. We will replace the oppressors as caretakers of earth; it is God's inheritance (cf. Psa 82:8) and ours as co-heirs (cf. Rom 8:16-24).

Do not fret because of those who are evil

   or be envious of those who do wrong;

for like the grass they will soon wither,

   like green plants they will soon die away…

Be still before the Lord

   and wait patiently for him;

do not fret when people succeed in their ways,

   when they carry out their wicked schemes.

Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;

   do not fret—it leads only to evil.

For those who are evil will be destroyed,

   but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land.

A little while, and the wicked will be no more;

   though you look for them, they will not be found.

But the meek will inherit the land

   and enjoy peace and prosperity…

Better the little that the righteous have

   than the wealth of many wicked;

for the power of the wicked will be broken,

   but the Lord upholds the righteous.

The blameless spend their days under the Lord’s care,

   and their inheritance will endure forever.

In times of disaster they will not wither;

   in days of famine they will enjoy plenty.

But the wicked will perish:

   Though the Lord’s enemies are like the flowers of the field,

   they will be consumed, they will go up in smoke…

I was young and now I am old,

   yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken

   or their children begging bread.

They are always generous and lend freely;

   their children will be a blessing.

Turn from evil and do good;

   then you will dwell in the land forever.

For the Lord loves the just

   and will not forsake his faithful ones.

Wrongdoers will be completely destroyed;

   the offspring of the wicked will perish.

The righteous will inherit the land

   and dwell in it forever…

Hope in the Lord

   and keep his way.

He will exalt you to inherit the land;

   when the wicked are destroyed, you will see it.

I have seen a wicked and ruthless man

   flourishing like a luxuriant native tree,

but he soon passed away and was no more;

   though I looked for him, he could not be found.

Consider the blameless, observe the upright;

   a future awaits those who seek peace. (Psa 37, NIV)

We won't fix the world by being meek and nonviolently resisting evil, but we can't fix it by repaying evil with evil either (Rom 12:17-21). All we can do is live meekly, knowing it is the Lord who saves and the Lord who graciously gives us an inheritance.

Living this way means saying “no” to wealth afforded to others, but Leopold saw beauty in the poor (in this case ecologically so) places of the world:

Only gravel ridges are poor enough to offer [pasque-flowers] full elbowroom in April sun. They endure snows, sleets, and bitter winds for the privilege of blooming alone.

There are other plants who seem to ask of this world not riches but room. Such is the little sandwort that throws a white-lace cap over the poorest hilltops just before the lupines splash them with blue. Sandworts simply refuse to live on a good farm, even on a very good farm, complete with rock garden and begonias. And then there is the little Linaria, so small, so slender, and so blue that you don’t even see it until it is directly underfoot; who ever saw a Linaria except on a sandblow?¹⁰

A pasque flower, whose name is derived from the Hebrew word for Passover, pasakh

¹¹Will the world inherited by the meek be the damaged world we see today? I don't think so. Though we accelerate erosion of earth into sea, I worship a God who can separate the waters and restore dry land (Gen 1:6-9, 8:1-3). A special river pours (in the already) and will pour (in the not-yet) from His throne. Ezekiel described it long ago:

Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar. Then he brought me out by way of the north gate and led me around on the outside to the outer gate that faces toward the east; and behold, the water was trickling out on the south side.

Going on eastward with a measuring line in his hand, the man measured a thousand cubits, and then led me through the water, and it was ankle-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was knee-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was waist-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the water had risen. It was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be passed through. And he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen this?”

Then he led me back to the bank of the river. As I went back, I saw on the bank of the river very many trees on the one side and on the other. And he said to me, “This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, and enters the sea; when the water flows into the sea, the water will become fresh. And wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish. For this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes. Fishermen will stand beside the sea. From Engedi to Eneglaim it will be a place for the spreading of nets. Its fish will be of very many kinds, like the fish of the Great Sea. But its swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they are to be left for salt. And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither, nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.” (Ezek 47:1-12)

And described again by John:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. (Rev 22:1-5)

Instead of a river that scours the earth and washes “the future into the sea,” this is a river mirroring God's creative acts as He gathers back the waters and restores the dry land. The world we inherit will be a healed one.

1. Opening quotation from Out of the Earth: Civilization and the Life of the Soil. University of California Press, 1991.

2. Leopold, A. 1949. Think Like a Mountain. In: A Sand County Almanac with Essays on Conservation from Round River. Oxford University Press.

3. Biblical quotations will be in ESV unless otherwise noted.

4. Paul Brand. 1985. A Handful of Mud. In: Loren Wilkinson et al, Stewards of the Earth: Christianity and Creation Care, Best of Christianity Today. Pp. 59-61. Lexham Press, 2022.

5. Hillel, D. 1991. Out of the Earth: Civilization and the Life of the Soil. Pp. 99. University of California Press.

6. Deserved in a biblical sense, as illustrated by books like Deuteronomy. I do not mean to suggest it is ever morally acceptable to invade or go to war with another nation.

7. Leopold, A. 1949. Illinois Bus Ride. In: A Sand County Almanac with Essays on Conservation from Round River. Oxford University Press.

8. Leopold, A. 1949. Odyssey. In: A Sand County Almanac with Essays on Conservation from Round River. Oxford University Press.

9. Leopold, A. 1953. Natural History. In: A Sand County Almanac with Essays on Conservation from Round River. Oxford University Press.

10. Leopold, A. 1949. The Sand Counties. In: A Sand County Almanac with Essays on Conservation from Round River. Oxford University Press.

11. Photo by Otro13 licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0