“Find the Place that Sustains You”

Steve Charles—The spring issue of Wabash Magazine came out last week, so I’m thinking of all the good stuff that didn’t make the cut.

Here’s one. From David Krohne’ s Earth Day Chapel Talk, "The Nightmare of Sustainability." This excerpt was supposed to make the Faculty Notes but was grotesquely edited by yours truly to fit the space we had.

Here’s the excerpt, which we’d titled: “The Dark and Bloody Ground Under Our Feet"

"Mike Bachner ’70 discovered Sugar Creek as a high school senior on a visit to the College. For the next 40 years Sugar Creek was his preferred habitat, the place that sustained him. It’s that kind of connection to a place, to a habitat, that we’re in danger of losing.

"I think we need to shift our focus to think about here. And “here” is getting paved over at the rate of 12 acres an hour in Indiana. Twelve football fields every hour of every day, 365 days a year. “Here” is the natural habitat where we really live. This is the habitat that actually sustains each of us.

"Every acre that NICHES Land Trust protects in Central Indiana filters the water we eventually drink, and it gives us one more place to feel the actual earth, what Aldo Leopold called “the dark and bloody ground” under our feet.

"Every protection the Friends of Sugar Creek ensures that the creek will continues to do for all of us what it did for Mike Bachner.

"So find that place that sustains you day in and day out, body and mind and spirit, your preferred habitat.  Protect it; restore it—and it will do the same for you."