Many people have written about Wendell Berry, the prolific author and agrarian advocate, since his death on August 31 this year. Berry, of course, wrote a great deal himself, leaving us much to reflect on in his many essays, poetry collections, and fiction. I’ve shared my own thoughts on his legacy elsewhere, but that assessment—like so many others—doesn’t capture the essence of the man I came to call my friend. I’ve no doubt others knew him far better than I and kept in closer contact. Some have embodied his ethic of responsible dependence in a world of limits more than I ever will. Yet, through letters, phone calls, and visits to his Kentucky farm, I gained an appreciation for the person behind the words that only Barbara Kingsolver’s recent essay in The New York Times comes close to sharing.
I first met Wendell on a farm co-owned by his daughter Mary. Mary has since founded the Berry Center in New Castle, Kentucky where she serves as executive director of a small organization dedicated to “putting Wendell Berry’s writings to work by advocating for small farmers, land-conserving communities, and healthy regional economies.” Before that, however, she was a friend who called her well-known father “Daddy,” and encouraged me to ask him if I might visit him. Wendell and Tanya Berry reserved Sunday afternoons to welcome guests to their tidy house on Lanes Landing Farm, and when I finally screwed up the courage to call, they of course said “yes.” I spent the week prior to that first visit searching for a suitable gift, and finally settled on a fifth of bourbon, a drink I’d sampled on occasion but knew little about. My wife Jill and I drove south from Cincinnati to the low rolling hill country along the Kentucky River. We’d driven that route before on when visiting Mary’s farm and I usually felt my mind clearing and my blood pressure dropping as we escaped the city’s busyness. That Sunday, however, I was nervously wondering what—if anything—I might say to one of America’s most distinguished writers. When we stepped onto his front porch, the man himself greeted us at the front door, where I clumsily presented him with our gift. Taking it, he smiled and said in the kindest way possible, “This is wonderful, Brian, but I have something even better I’d like to share with you.” And that’s how I ended up sipping Bulleit bourbon in Wendell’s living room, chatting with one of my literary heroes with Jill and Tanya joining us in a delightful conversation.
We made that journey several times thereafter—always on a Sunday, our conversations often graced with a tumbler of Bulleit and occasionally interrupted by an impromptu field trip to check on Wendell’s livestock. Riding in Wendell’s truck to visit his horses, he would regale us with stories of his sheep. He raised Cheviot sheep, a white-faced breed that originated in the hilly terrain of Northumberland and the Scottish Borders. As hardy as they are skittish, Cheviot sheep like to spread out when pastured. While this habit helps them find all the available feed in any given field, it renders the outliers more susceptible to predators, including a growing local population of coyotes. The dogs that guarded his sheep tended to hang at the edges of the flock, farther away than Wendell liked. When he asked a nearby farmer for advice, the man replied, “Them dogs are holding back in case one of the ewes bolts.” Then, after a pregnant pause, the farmer added, “Wendell, you may know something about writing, but them dogs know a hell of a lot more about sheep than you.” On that subject, another local farmer told him, “Wendell, when you look at it right, the writing you do almost seems like real work.”
Wendell loved hearing and telling jokes, even—perhaps especially—when he was the target. When I mentioned things I or others had written about his work, he briefly accepted the compliment before steering the conversation elsewhere. When I watched others approach him to express their admiration for his work, I saw how graciously he greeted their nervous hellos and recalled the welcome he extended to me and Jill on our first Sunday visit.
He had a mischievous streak, too. Once, Jill mentioned her work on STD control. Puzzled, Wendell asked “Now, what’s an S-T-D?” “Oh, a sexually transmitted disease,” Jill explained. He leaned back and took a sip of bourbon, then nodded. “I guess if you have to come down with a disease, that’s a pleasant way to get it.”
Another time my son Peter and I dropped by on our way to Mammoth Cave. Upon finding that Peter was apprenticing as a stonemason, Wendell grinned and said, “Peter, I have a pile of stones out back. I’d be happy to let you build a wall for me as long as you do it for free.” Rising to the occasion, Peter gave as good as he got, and I delighted in sitting back to watch the two of them banter, playful as puppies. One of my favorite photos shows Peter standing comfortably between Wendell and Tanya in their dining room with groaning rows of built-in bookshelves behind them.
To visit Wendell and Tanya on their farm was to see good people who knew where they belonged. Wendell had no quarrel with cities as such. What he objected to was the habitual disregard—sometimes bordering on contempt—in which many urbanites held rural communities. “What I stand for is what I stand on,” he wrote, and he grieved over the systematic degradation of the land that characterizes contemporary agribusiness. Far from prizing “scientific” efficiency, volume, and short-term profit, Wendell valued quality, appropriate scale, and sustainable, affectionate care. He loved the land, loved showing it to visitors, and I found that love contagious.
During a visit to his farm one rainy Sunday afternoon, Wendell stood up during a rare lull in our conversation and invited Jill and me to help feed his sheep. We donned our rain jackets and walked down the sodden hill toward a barn by the Kentucky River. I’m sure we continued talking during our brief descent, but what I remember most was the gentle sounds of the place Wendell called home. What I wrote after that visit attempts to capture that experience. To whatever extent it succeeds in doing so, I am indebted to the example of my friend.
Visiting (For Wendell) From steady rain we step to sheltered ground in the dark cathedral of the barn, breathe in scents of damp wood and hay, assume a reverent stillness. The dog, with the sudden confidence of one engaged, at last, in good work, trots through the barn’s far doorway heading seven white-faced ewe lambs. Not knowing me, they halt, uncertain, until you smoothly bucket corn from storage to trough, and they— as sheep will—follow where hunger leads. Hard teeth crack dry kernels in percussive counterpoint, a muted consort mimicking the fall of winter rain on wooden shingles. In entiring darkness, we stand, until from your post beneath the hayloft beams, you turn to me, grinning, and say, That’s a good sound. And it is.
Brian Volck is an author and retired pediatrician who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He practiced medicine on the Navajo Nation, in the mountains of Honduras, at inner-city clinics, and at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. He is the author of two poetry collections, Flesh Becomes Word and Chora, and a memoir, Attending Others: A Doctor’s Education in Bodies and Words. His essays, poetry, and reviews have appeared in DoubleTake, Health Affairs, IMAGE, and The Christian Century.
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