Agriculture And Memory Jan Zwicky Summary

Agriculture and Memory – Jan Zwicky and the Intersection of Personal and Eco-political Relations with Land

Near my grandparents’ farm the land swells in half-hills dotted with patches of brush, and between their farm and the next is an ungravelled grid road with grass growing between two tracks of dirt. It exists in my mind in perpetual August, hot, wheat and barley and rye and hay ripening in fields on all sides. Looking south I see the main gravel road, border to an open expanse of grassy space turned to gold. But to the north the road descends into thin poplars and chokecherries, aspen leaves flickering in a stiff breeze. The road is narrow and deserted, an exploration, dipping down into mud and shadow. But it begins in sun, at a junction of dust-hazy old wire, a green tree tunnel, and adventure. And it was on these roads that I saw prairie chickens, grouse, prairie lily, all the icons I belonged to. To me Saskatchewan was farmland. In terms of time, the city comprised most of my childhood, but in significance it was the fields, the highway, open spaces, and that farm I visited throughout the summers. Memory hovers at that junction of possibility, where the air is filled with grass like baking

And what is the “correct” moral stance on agriculture, as a good eco-citizen? Zwicky enters this dilemma through the problem of destroying beavers on a family farm, choosing to kill one natural thing in defence of another (in this case, trees). She reminds us that even those close to nature make choices in their relationship with it, and tend to select the aspects of nature that are more suited to their own perceptions. Generations of farming have created “a certain way of appreciating nature” (190). Zwicky struggles in this essay with the “interface between wilderness and agriculture” (191) – how much the two can be the same, and at what point they come into