If the day comes when our descendants can venture with wonder into chestnut forests, we will have gained back more than a perfect tree. We will have gained a new reason for hope.

An editorial in the Los Angeles Times [1923] wistfully asked, ‘Will eating chestnuts by crackling log fires become one of the lost arts preserved by a devoted people only in poetry and romance?

This is where the will to grapple with our hard and pressing environmental problems begins: in relationship to something other that you love beyond any utility, beyond any logic.

If you can’t reuse or repair an item, do you ever really own it? Do you ever really own it? Do you ever develop the sense of pride and proprietorship that comes from maintaining an...