Johnny Appleseed

One of the stories that's stuck with me the longest from elementary school is that of Johnny Appleseed (1774-1845), the pioneer who walked across much of the old Northwest Territory (Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois) planting apple trees everywhere he went. His path was followed, the story goes, by the American settlers heading west across the Appalachians from New England and the Mid-Atlantic states. Among them were many of my maternal ancestors from Maryland and Pennsylvania who settled in Bureau County, Illinois.

As an adult studying the history of American natural history at the beginning of the colonial period in the 1500s, I'm struck by another vision of the Johnny Appleseed story. Just like the settlers that followed them, those apple seeds weren't native to Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The very roots of our world today, of our Midwestern home, are born from those seeds. There's a lot of talk today about the potential that once we do establish permanent outposts on the Moon and Mars, we'll work on terraforming their surfaces to make them more habitable for us. The same thing happened during our Pioneer Days.

We should be more mindful of nature; both the nature that's always been here and the nature we crafted to our will. Despite our tree-lined streets, beautiful lawns, and water features in this Fountain City of ours, we still are a city of 2 million living on the prairie, a climate that can't naturally support a large population. All of us who've lived here for a while know nature's power firsthand. We need to live in balance with nature. We need to recognize that for all our innovations and industries we aren't more powerful than the Earth itself. As our climate changes, the fruit of those first apple seeds of colonial settlement, we're going to have to reckon with whether our way of life is sustainable in the long run.

Oh Lord, help us to be observant. Amen.

Seán is a Ph.D. Candidate in History in New York