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A Vision |
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 Monarch butterfly
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A Vision |
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Monarch butterfly
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As much as we Iowans like to look back at our proud heritage, to feel the roots that connect us to the land, and to admire what we have built from the abundance that our ancestors found here, we also need to look forward, and to dream.
With Iowa - Portrait of the Land, we're asking Iowans to look ahead, just as visionary leaders did when they prepared our first state conservation plan in 1933. In the process, our diverse people will see varied - often overlapping - images of our future, each colored by a different person's background. Families long for safe, happy, healthy lives. Farmers may wish for new crops that require less cultivation and fewer chemicals, promote biological diversity, thrive in all weather, produce large yields, command high prices, and rejuvenate the soil. Teachers seek eager students, supportive parents, understanding communities, and modern classrooms. Business owners and employees alike depend upon a stable economy.
We're unique, yet alike. Although our visions may diverge, they come into focus on a shared responsibility, a common hope: the quality of our land.
| Rooted in an understanding of
our land's past, Iowans can look to the future. The land is seen with a sense of
connection, protection, and reverence. Iowa can lead by example in the future
stewardship of the Earth. Photo by Marlene Ehresman.
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 Iowa's land has seen profound change. As earlier ways of life pass into history, the Earth's cycles and systems still continue around, beneath, and above us. While our children's future will not be our past, we can teach them to value the enduring resources and processes of the land that sustain life. Photo by Roger Hill. |
At first, we may look at the land as a history book, recording not only the natural events
but also the human experiences that have shaped the earth, this state, and our
lives. Gradually, however, we're discovering how to understand the more subtle
messages, the clues that show and tell us how we can sustain this land for future
generations. "Once you learn to read the land, I have no fear of what you will
do to it, or with it. And I know many pleasant things it will do to you," said
Burlington native Aldo Leopold.
The land is our infrastructure, the physical basis for all we are and for whatever we may become. Urban dwellers depend on the land and its complex parts just as much as rural people do - for the health of our bodies and of our souls. We each need clean water, fresh air, open space, and the chance to touch the natural marvels that surround us. A farmer impulsively climbs down to grab and crumble a handful of soil. A child stares in wonder at a honeybee on a dandelion. Food chains and geology and photosynthesis come alive when young students can plant a tree, frolic in a prairie, or pick up rocks in an unpolluted stream. Workday stresses may melt away on a stroll through a wooded urban park, a paddle on a quiet river, or a hike along an unmowed country roadside. In a hectic world, we relish simple pleasures, like savoring silence, gazing at the stars, or smelling a spring rain.
And when we touch or smell or see the land, or hear its winds and its animal voices, or taste the food it produces, the soul of that land in turn touches us. We feel a spiritual kinship with the Earth. Perhaps that dream is the one we should strive hardest to attain - the sense of connection to our land. Each of us is a citizen, bonded together in a natural community, with the land at the hub, sharing a dynamic, living landscape.
Our future, like our past, is wedded to that land and to the people, plants, and animals who live on it, in it, with it, and from it. As just one part of the land, will we be good stewards, good citizens, of that community? Good citizens also respect their neighbors and their property.
Iowans ask much of the land - and the land, in turn, challenges us. We farm the fields, use the water, build the homes and businesses, dig the mineral resources, bury the wastes, and play in the parks. Yet, as we live in and look at today's Iowa, we must strive to appreciate yesterday and to see tomorrow. Both our past and our future are rooted in Iowa's land and in its ability to work for us and with us. If we understand its geological history and its natural processes, then we can use that knowledge to conserve and renew the land. As we mold and remodel the land to suit our needs, we can help it adapt to the changes we impose upon it. Whether we choose to treat our land gently and with respect, or harshly and callously, we are shaping the legacy we leave for our children.
Will we decide upon clean water, clear air, sustainable farms, vigorous forests and prairies, diverse wildlife, and vibrant cities - or something else? We still have the choice; we can decide, by our action or inaction. Our future, in this vision of connections, is one of opportunity. We have the knowledge not only to repair the damage we already may have done to our land, but also to improve that land and to preserve it for our children. We have the wisdom, if we have the will.
 Photo by Iowa Dept. of Natural Resources. |
 Photo by Roger Hill. |
Our steps into the future will continue to show us what the word "natural" truly means. Natural places are increasingly unexpected in Iowa, and we risk losing what we don't expect to find. |
When we know that our land, the quality of our lives, and our livelihoods are intertwined, it will be easier for us to work as partners to improve all three. Farmers can then more fully appreciate the whistle of a meadowlark. Townspeople can share the pride in a family's century farm. We all can live in a state where agriculture is an integral part of a vigorous, lively landscape. Productive farms will blend with stream buffers and roadsides and woodlots and trail corridors. The combination will weave vitality and diversity throughout the agricultural patchwork quilt that blankets much of the state. We will see that "nature" need not be confined to a park or preserve, and that "farming" can mean growing plants and animals whose worth doesn't always have to be measured by dollars and cents. The harvest of Iowa's land can be in commodities set aside for the future. It can be what Aldo Leopold called "an aesthetic harvest" - getting to know and value the land. As we reach for these visions, we'll better ourselves as we maintain the land.
We'll give equal rank to the farm field and to the wetland, although we must measure their production in very different ways. We still may judge a cornfield by bushels harvested, by commodity prices, by fuel and fertilizer inputs, and perhaps by the soil that we retain after the corn is combined. Can we, with equal enthusiasm, judge the marsh in terms of the water it filters, the muskrat population, its reflection of the autumn sunset, or its cacophony of spring bird songs?
 Photo by John M. Zielinski. |
 Photo by Lowell Washburn. |
The harvest of Iowa's land can be in commodities set aside for the future. Tomorrow's harvests will depend on individuals who will teach their children to tend the health of the land as a living system. |
What about the prairie relict, still unplowed in the face of progress, or the plot of native grasses and flowers that we have seeded to emulate the prairie? Can we guard the one as jealously as we would a museum of priceless art work, and the other as a living laboratory, an experiment in mimicking the hand of nature?
We will learn to revere the forest, as well as the trees. Some of our woodlands can become parklands, preserves, timber crop producers, songbird sanctuaries, watershed protectors, and nutrient recyclers.
Ancient Indian mounds and village sites will inspire and humble us, as we hear in these historical treasures the voices of hundreds of generations of early Iowans. We will reflect on the accomplishments of these early people and learn from their generations of living with the land.
Perhaps we can learn to look at what we now call wastes and consider them resources instead. Livestock manure once again will become a valuable commodity, rather than a pollutant. Industries will profit from their by-products, rather than discarding them. As we move from the throw-away mentality to "reduce, reuse, recycle," we'll have less need for landfills.
In our decidedly rural state, the distinction between urban and rural may become blurred, as we recognize that our relationship to the land is only a matter of scale. An urban resident who grows wildflowers and backyard bird habitat may develop the same sense of stewardship as a farmer whose conservation practices make his or her land a model of profitable, sustainable agriculture. We will judge all our land-use decisions by their effects on the natural community and on our children's children, rather than solely upon short-term economic gain.
 Large turbines generate power from the wind, a source of clean, renewable energy. Photo by Clay Smith. |
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. - T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding |
All of us - private citizens, members of conservation and special interest groups, business leaders, government workers - will share the responsibility for our past shortcomings and for the challenge to build a better future.
Once again, Aldo Leopold's words can guide us. His "land ethic" proposed how we could define conservation, or harmony with the land. "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community," Leopold wrote. "It is wrong when it tends otherwise."
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The Hale-Bopp Comet was one of the most spectacular celestial events of the century.
This photograph was taken Easter Sunday, March 30, 1997, about forty-five minutes after
sunset,
and it won "Best of Show for Photography" at the 1997 Iowa State Fair. The
photographer,
John Wenck of Des Moines, was looking northwest over St. Paul's Church about ten miles
northeast of Boone. The historic church, built of wood in 1898, sits on a prominent
knoll of
glacial deposits left about 13,500 years earlier.
