There are some surprising insights that emerge from being out in the desert, if we’re willing to take the time to really look. A deeper understanding of the desert flora and fauna – one might say a deeper understanding of the biology and the desert ecosystem – might also inform the way we look at the economy and at our social systems. And long-time Tucsonan, Dr. Joseph Wood Krutch, took that time to look. But why the heck would the University of Arizona name a memorial garden after Joseph Wood Krutch? (You did pronounce it as “Krewch” or “Krootch”, didn’t you?)
Joseph Wood Krutch (November 25, 1893 – May 22, 1970) earned a doctorate in English literature from Columbia University in 1923, completing his dissertation, “Comedy and Conscience After the Restoration.” But it was his transition from a Columbia English professor to a celebrated nature writer and conservationist, and his book The Desert Year, that persuaded me to return to Tucson when the University of Arizona invited me to accept a sabbatical in 2011.
Although he was a prolific literary and drama critic, Krutch also became equally well known in later life as a conservationist. Upon retiring from Columbia University in 1952, Krutch relocated to Tucson. Although never hired as faculty there, he remained a prominent literary and naturalist figure associated with the university, later becoming a founding board member of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. The University of Arizona dedicated the Joseph Wood Krutch Garden to his memory in 198
As noted in the New York Times story of his passing in 1970, Krutch had written, “Man’s humanity is threatened by the almost exclusively technological approach in social, political and philosophical thought.” In his books, including The Voice of the Desert (1955) and his 1954 volume, The Measure of Man, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, Krutch expressed a longing for an older, more contemplative way of life and a distaste for many of the inventions of the 20th century. He commented, “If you drive a car at 70 miles an hour, you can’t reflect or think about anything, you can’t do anything but keep the monster under control.” Pondering this notion, we might join him in asking, is this “the metaphor of our society as a whole?”
In the spirit of a more contemplative way of life, we might honor Krutch by visiting the University’s Memorial Garden, and thinking through ways to shift the economic growth monster to support more fully Tucson and Pima County’s social, environmental, and community well-being. Krutch famously called the desert a place where a smaller number of species, facing harsher restrictions, manage to live without the overcrowding and aggressive competition seen in the tropics. Still a lesson to be learned?