Nature's Logic

It all began with a watermelon. Four-year-old Michael Pollan was hanging out between the hedges at his family home on Long Island when he planted a few seeds from the fruit he had just consumed. Three months later the boy discovered a full-grown melon, an event that permanently imprinted Pollan with a powerful realization: Human behavior is intrinsically linked with changes in the natural world. The fruit itself ended up like "Humpty Dumpty" smashed against the back steps after the child tripped in his excitement to show mom his creation. Yet the event fired an ongoing passion within him to understand nature and its interconnected relationship with humans.

Gardening has been Pollan's path of professional development. His chosen career as a writer gave him plenty of time to contemplate and write about the natural world. His first book, "Second Nature," chronicled Pollan's education as a gardener. "The vegetable garden in summer made an enchanted landscape, mined with hidden surprises, dabs of unexpected color and unlikely forms that my grandfather had taught me to regard as treasures," he wrote.

Such prolific prose combined with a nose for unique stories helped Pollan quickly rise to the A list of American authors. When "Second Nature" was published, he was already the executive editor of Harper's Magazine. Since then he has published two other award-winning books: "A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder," and "The Botany of Desire." "Michael Pollan's writing is so powerful in part due to his mastery of storytelling," says Utne Reader editor, Jay Walljasper. "He gently weaves his personal insights into a story, while maintaining a journalist's perspective. It creates thoroughly enjoyable and informative reading that also inspires a reader to want to do something."

"Second Nature" provided Pollan with an opportunity to portray the human experience with nature through the eyes of a man working the land to produce food. A highlight of the book focused on his war with a woodchuck that was devastating his garden. The experience had a tremendous impact on his worldview, and helped shape the sensibility of much of his future writing.

"It became my personal Vietnam, with these escalating series of measures I was willing to take to eradicate the woodchuck. I was, of course, in the role of General Westmoreland, fully prepared to destroy the garden in order to save the garden," he said. The climax of the woodchuck war had Pollan pouring a gallon of gasoline down its burrow with full expectations of burning the creature to a crisp. Instead, the flames shot out the hole, singed him, and nearly set his entire garden ablaze. "It made me realize that I was behaving badly. But I was behaving a lot like our species does when confronted with the intransigence of other species."

As a result of dealing with the woodchuck, Pollan experienced the rage that nature provokes when its power leaves humans out of control. Thus, he realized the imperative for the industrial agricultural system that now grows most of the food consumed on the planet. It became easier to understand why humans would splice fish genes into strawberries, spray multiple carcinogens on food, and feed livestock hormones and antibiotics in order to manipulate the natural world. "The experience helped me identify with people who use these type of methods to try to control nature," he said. "Humans have a strong sense of entitlement and have figured out ingenious ways to exert their power to deal with nature's intrusions. However, it has produced a system with many failings. Last year alone there were 75 million cases of food poisoning in America."

Ultimately Pollan protected his garden from woodchucks, deer, rabbits, and moles by a five foot fence (a foot of which was buried to deter certain burrowing nuisances.) He considered it an appropriate intervention to keep nature's pests from destroying his treasured work. In this case by utilizing a fence, he chose not to turn his garden "into a toxic waste site" by using poisons and other methods of controls for pest protection. Instead he uses organic methods. "I think there are better ways to approach farming and food production.' he said. "The garden has taught me great lessons about the logic of nature. Solutions are available to create a far more sustainable food system that would also have the capacity to feed the world's growing population. We just have to find and apply them."