Explore "The Face of the Fields" by Dallas Lore Sharp on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Our hunger for clams and their present scarcity have not been the chief factors in the new national movement for the conservation of our natural resources; nor are the soaring prices of pork and lumber and wheat immediate causes, although they have served to give point and application to the movement. Ours is still a lavishly rich country. We have long had a greed for land, but we have not felt a pang yet of the Old World's land-hunger. Thousands of acres, the stay for thousands of human lives, are still lying as waste places on the very borders of our eastern cities. There is plenty of land yet, plenty of lumber, plenty of food, but there is a very great and growing scarcity of clams.
Of course the clam might vanish utterly from the earth and be forgotten; our memory of its juicy, salty, sea-fat flavor might vanish with it; and we, ignorant of our loss, be none the poorer. We should live on, -- the eyeless fish in the Mammoth Cave live on, -- but life, nevertheless, would not be so well worth living. For it would be flatter, with less of wave-wet freshness and briny gusto. No kitchen-mixed seasoning can supply the wild, natural flavors of life; no factory-made sensations the joy of being the normal, elemental, primitive animal that we are.