Director, Environmental Studies
Professor of English

STUDY QUESTIONS

Wendell Berry, “A Native Hill” part 2
At Home on the Earth, 65-76

1. For Berry, what is the character of a “path” and walking on a path? Why is the notion of a path significant to him, to this essay, and to the understanding of nature and place?

2. How does he depict his walk into the woods? How does it seem different from a walk you might take? Consider in particular the theme of going “down.”

3. What is the nature and role of the image of water in his description of the woods and his walk? What does he mean when he ways “All waters are one” and in the joining of streams “the work of the world is going on” (70)? In what way is “Its becoming is only incidental to its being” (70)?

4. How does Berry reflect on wildness and on “pristine” nature? See especially pages 67 and 75-76.

5. Berry often uses the term “creation.” What exactly does he mean by it? Does he use it in a way that is different form the conventional way? What is his attitude toward creation? What is the place of humans in creation and how should we respond to it?

6. How does Berry depict the relationship between humans and nature? Be attentive to a diversity in that description, e.g., both destructive and constructive, violent and harmonizing. What is the significance of his brief story of Bill White (72-73)? Why does Berry grow to have misgivings about hunting?

7. What assumptions does he say our culture lives by (72)? Do you agree? What alternative assumptions does he propose? What would it be like for our culture to really live according to them? What would be gained and lost?

8. What are the characteristics of a “sense of place” and of “living in place” in this essay?

9. Berry speaks, with some ambivalence, about the religious character of his vision. In what way is his view religious? In what way is nature sacred? How do his view of religion differ from the conventional views he criticizes? Why is he ambivalent about speaking in religious terms? What are the similarities and differences between his views and Belden Lane’s analysis of sacred space?

10. Are there any ways that Berry’s essay is related to the ideas and attitudes presented by Momaday and Silko? What are the differences between the ideal Berry is suggesting and those that Silko and Momaday present?

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