Photo Courtesy of Nebraska Tourism

I would therefore write a kind of elemental poetry that doesn’t just avoid the indoors but doesn’t even see the doors that lead inward—to laboratories, to textbooks, to knowledge. I would not talk about the wind, and the oak tree, and the leaf on the oak tree, but on their behalf. –from “Winter Hours,” Upstream: Selected Essays, Mary Oliver, 2016

In her essay, “Winter Hours,” Mary Oliver declares that she couldn’t be a poet without the natural world, that, for her, “the door to the woods is the door to the temple.” She’s not alone. Over the centuries, there have been many writers, artists, naturalists, and pioneers for whom the door to the natural world was the door to the temple. Like Oliver, they respected the natural world, revered its beauty and power, and were keenly aware that their destinies were irrevocably linked to it. And like Oliver, they strove to represent the wind, and the oak tree, and the leaf on the oak tree on their behalf.

I couldn’t help but think of artists like Oliver, of William Wordsworth and Henry David Thoreau, of Aldo Leopold and Annie Dillard–to name just a few–as I watched the finale of the popular Paramount Plus series, Yellowstone, which aired just before Christmas. Inspired by the 2,500 acre Chief Joseph Ranch in Darby, Montana, the series’ fictional Yellowstone Dutton Ranch is portrayed to be the size of Rhode Island, a whopping 1,034 square miles. Although Yellowstone offers a variety of colorful and unforgettable characters (some who will reportedly star in their own spinoff series), the land itself is the protagonist. The struggle to keep and preserve it is central to the plot in every episode. Throughout the series, the family strives to keep the ranch for their heirs, honoring ancestor and pioneer James Dutton’s legacy profiled in the series’ prequel, 1883. In spite of their commitment and hard work, however, a host of developers and leaders of the Broken Rock Indian Reservation continue to threaten this legacy, throwing roadblocks and creating chaos in each season. When the family finally comes to the painful but inevitable realization that they can no longer cover the ranch’s enormous tax burden, they sell it to the Broken Rock Reservation for a price tag that ensures the Reservation will be able to pay the taxes ($1.25 an acre) and with an agreement to preserve the land for all time.

Yellowstone’s creator, Taylor Sheridan, profiles ranchers and indigenous people in their complex fight to preserve a way of life. And the preservation of this way of life is wholly dependent upon the preservation of the land. Sheridan is not the first, nor will he be the last, to chronicle this fight. Certainly, his series and its prequels have ignited a renewed interest in and passion for the West and its remaining undeveloped spaces.

To those who argue that that this theme has been done–perhaps overdone–and that there’s little more to be gained by plumbing it further, I offer these words from Oliver’s “Winter Hours”: “The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves—we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other’s destiny.” Next to my father, Oliver is my favorite poet, and her mention of the Platte River here solidifies this standing. For years, my parents routinely hosted visiting poets, and when Oliver visited the University of Nebraska-Kearney, she actually slept in my childhood bedroom (be still my heart!) I don’t know this for fact, but I like to think that she and my father discussed their shared love of the natural world over coffee at the dining room table where so many other poets sat and visited. As they talked, I know that my father would’ve shared his love for the Platte River, for the Nebraska Flyway that attracts as many as a million sandhill cranes, geese, ducks, and other shorebirds annually. I like to think that when Oliver wrote these words, she remembered her visit to Kearney. And I like to think that she remembered my father, who, too, spent his life writing the kind of elemental poetry on behalf of the Platte River, the sandhill cranes, the roadside ditches lined with coneflowers, the acres of buffalo grass, the wonderful and terrible natural world.

Oliver claimed that “[t]he farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, then closing the list.” And why should we close the list? Why should we forget the family to which we belong? Why should we refuse to see that we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together? Yes, the theme of land preservation has been done and redone; still, we seem to need and welcome the reminder, the renewed awareness, and the wonder of even the smallest and meanest thing in the natural world. We need and want the Mary Olivers and Taylor Sheridans, the Wendell Berrys and Don Welches. Each, in his or her own right, brings new eyes to the natural world that too many take for granted.

A few months ago, I heard someone remark that a new poet was just another in a long line of “nature poets, the likes of Mary Oliver.” And he wondered aloud if Oliver was really as good a poet as people thought she was, or if she just rode out her illustrious career on the laurels of some early–and perhaps lucky–success. Undoubtedly, he would identify me as just another nature poet, too, and certainly not one of Oliver’s caliber. For awhile, I thought seriously about my own writing and about the journals that had rejected it. Could it be that they found my work derivative of nature writers like Oliver and Berry whose themes they’d thrown over for newer social themes? Perhaps so.

I suspect Taylor Sheridan will continue to make television series regarding land preservation. If Mary Oliver and my father were still alive, I know they’d continue to write on behalf of the land they loved so dearly. If they were both alive, I’d invite them to walk the trails with me each morning. And in those moments before dawn, we wouldn’t talk about the muskrat in the north pond and the cedar trees and the berries on the cedar trees–but on their behalf.