A Land that Waits for Us to Change

ancient Egyptian farming (ca 1300 B.C.E.)

I remember in middle school being taught the word "delta".  We were in a history class, learning how the ancient Egyptian civilization developed around the delta of the Nile River where it made its outlet into the Mediterranean.  It was explained to us how that area was a fertile area because it was there that the river's branching rivulets created a triangular plain of rich soil built up of sediments from the shifting water.

The importance of that phenomenon was imprinted upon our minds by it being pointed out that in Greek the letter "delta" was a small triangle.  Moreover, the mathematical symbol delta (a small triangle) stood for change, because it was those regular changes of the river delta -- being covered with water and then draining -- that made the soil fertile.  The strength of that Egyptian civilization was thus based on the strength of the natural delta, which supported many forms of life, providing humans both fishing and farming.

William Faulkner

From thoughts of that civilization 5,000 years ago, my thoughts now turn to a story by the 20th-century U.S. writer William Faulkner.  It is a shift in time and place, but there is a common denominator -- the delta.  In Faulkner's story "Delta Autumn,"  a small group of men are making a journey to a wilderness area for their annual hunting.  To get there, however, they have to head towards where the last hill ends and an "alluvial flatness" begins -- a delta!  In his characteristic writing style, Faulkner describes the power that rich land has held for generations of humans in this way:  " [T]he rich black land, imponderable and vast, fecund up to the very doorsteps of the Negroes who worked it and of the white men who owned it; which exhausted the hunting life of a dog in one year, the working life of a mule in five and of a man in twenty."

Although that theme of the vast, sustaining power of the delta is thus described early in Faulkner's short story, the theme of change is also more subtly introduced.  From the conversation of the men in the car on their drive to the delta, the reader is able to pick up that they are living in a larger world that has been greatly changed by forces far beyond the county in Mississippi where most of Faulkner's fiction is set.  The men in the story are living on the brink of the U.S.'s entering World War II, and so some of their banter is about whether U.S. people are more powerful than Hitler.  Their exchanges reveal a degree of uncertainty about what the future might bring.

That theme of change in human society is threaded through with the theme of Nature being guaranteed to change in a rhythmic way.  That is because the story takes place in autumn, a time of change, despite the predictability of fall hunting trips.  Two words, both symbolizing change, are thus paired in the story's title:  "Delta Autumn."

As I re-read the story, in my mind's eye I see a vast, darkish delta surrounding the men.  It would be darkish with the men's melancholy about the unrecoverable past and the shrinking wilderness. It would also be darkish with their uncertainty about the future.  However, as the passage quoted above indicates, it would be Nature, the land, represented by the delta, that could still sustain life, if it was allowed to do so.

~~~

Most of us live in cities, but do you recall a piece of land that provided sustenance?

(The quote is from William Faulkner's "Delta Autumn,"

 which can be found in The Portable Faulkner, ed. Malcolm Cowley, © 1974.)

(The photograph of Faulkner is by Nobel Foundation, and is used by its being in the public domain.)