Pull harder for a new vision

I live a few miles away from Middlesex Fells Reservation — 2,500 acres of protected land in the Boston area. On warm days, my daughter and I go walking there. She likes to spot birds; I like to sit by the pond.

Over the centuries, demands on the land in this area have been intense. And today, Middlesex County is the most populous in New England — home to 1,800 people per square mile. Yet the Fells has been protected, and I’m grateful for that.

When it comes to land, the idea of conservation — manifest so clearly in places like the Fells — causes us to think within a framework best described as humility-in-action. This is a vital counterweight to our impulse to aggressively master the land for our narrow purposes. Because while there is much that can be done to the land, the consequences of those actions are often hard to anticipate. Given the interconnectedness of ecological systems, even the most targeted intervention will inevitably ripple across the entire network.