Seventy-seven years ago, Aldo Leopold stated “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.
When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect”.

Over the last three quarters of a century, Americans have moved more towards the artificial world of technology, with a smaller percentage of us gardening, hunting, fishing and spending time outside in anyway than previous generations.
Today instead of time outdoors, we spend our time, consuming technology. A recent study from Yale finds that greater than 50% of Americans spend less than 5 hours outside a week and greater than 75% spend less than 10 hours. In some ways, the artificial world can inform people about the natural world and connect people over long distances, but we know the majority of an individual’s technology time is spent death scrolling and zoning out on videos. Data from a
variety of sources clearly shows that successive generations of people in the 20th and 21st century are spending less time
in the natural world (it’s not all the internet’s fault), and hence less time cultivating a connection to the land and
hopefully seeing themselves as a component of the natural community.

America has long celebrated the individual. The individual that has pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and found
success. Success at all costs and the end justifies the means mindset is well rooted. A common theme to these stories is
that they are individualistic and do not recognize community. I would suggest that “heroic” self-made individual stories
that we celebrate play a role in allowing people to act selfishly, at times to the community’s detriment.

We all interact with and have an impact on the world through our use of resources and how we live in our environment and can all therefore be classified as stewards of the earth/ land/ waters. Yes, even the person that dumped the sofa set along the edge of the Friends of the Kankakee property which our volunteers removed. The person who dumped the sofa set just isn’t a good steward, because they are operating selfishly without regard to other people or for the natural world. Good land stewardship encompasses a range of practices and strategies aimed at preserving and enhancing the natural quality of land. It is guided by principles of respect for the land and the species that make the land home, responsible management, and a long-term vision for the health and vitality of the environment and the surrounding community.

Not too surprising, Friends of the Kankakee has not been keeping the answer to how to culƟvate respect and love for
community from people and society, but we are leveraging the success the organization has had acquiring land over the
last 20 years that connects 20,000 acres of important natural lands in Illinois and Indiana and are trying to address these
quesƟons with lands open to the public, hikes and workdays that connect people to the natural world, as well as
facilitating people working together to improve the quality of the land for native plants and animals. We are engaging in
the work of developing a connection to the land and operating with love and respect for the natural world and to each other.

May these seeds sprout, the roots run deep and gloriously bloom