DANA MILBANK

Nearly three years ago, my wife and I bought a dilapidated farmhouse on a piece of land in Rappahannock County, Virginia, that had been overtaken by weeds and vines. My then-editor, David Shipley, proposed what I thought at the time to be a wacky assignment: I would write about my attempts to restore the land. I went along with it, mostly to humor the boss.

What happened next transformed my life. I took up hunting (yes, from my bathroom window). I bought a tractor (and promptly got it stuck in the mud). I shared my personal space with bugs and snakes. I injured myself with power tools. (As I write this, a splitting maul was just delivered to my front door. What could possibly go wrong?) I got certified as a master naturalist. I planted hundreds of trees and meadows full of wildflowers and native grasses. I wrote about my rural community’s struggles to develop housing, to secure broadband access and to keep the local newspaper going.

To my amazement, these columns have resonated with readers personally in a way my political columns generally don’t. Each one produces intense engagement, and often scores of notes from readers sharing their personal experiences - even readers who have no use for my political commentary. A guy high up in MAGA world wrote to say he shared my love of oaks. Another man, from rural Idaho, wrote to say that, “politically, we would not agree much over a beer,” but, after reading my “musings on life and nature last Sunday … I will now read your articles in a different light. Not saying I will agree, but we all have to stand on this same Earth.”

I believe my stories from the farm have tapped into something we are all feeling to some extent. We are living in a moment of existential dread and alienation caused by the savagery of social media, the ugliness of our politics, the AI takeover, our melting planet, a winner-take-all economy and a sense of social isolation that still hasn’t recovered from the dark times of the pandemic. We’re losing the connection to nature that has defined our species for 2 million years. At the same time, we are losing our connection to each other and to our communities — what Alexis deTocqueville called “the art of associating.” In short, we are losing our sense of what it means to be human — and the challenge of our time will be to recover what we have lost.

Now, I’ve decided to follow this passion. I’ve signed a contract to write a book about life on the farm and in my rural community. And this fall, my column will move from Washington Post Opinions to The Post’s new Futures section, an ambitious venture that aims to help our audience understand and act on the major forces and ideas transforming life in the 21st century.

I hope you will join me on this new journey. I’m betting that a lot of readers are searching for the same thing I am.

The core of the new column will be about “the tonic of wildness,” as Henry David Thoreau put it, and the fight to save what we can from the destruction of climate change and mass extinction. In the most basic sense, nature provides an escape from the misery of our current national discourse. In a deeper sense, science is finding that we are genetically programmed to seek a connection to nature, which boosts our emotional and cognitive functioning, as I described in a recent piece about hiking the Appalachian Trail. I’ll continue writing about the critters and plants I’m getting to know, and the outdoor pursuits in field and stream that have kept me sane (or slightly less insane).

But the column won’t be all flowers and fireflies. I’ll be asking questions about other ways in which we can restore our imagination and creativity and nurture our sense of awe and wonder. It will also be about how we rebuild our frayed social structures, in our communities and in our country. I will continue to engage in the political debate, by focusing on how we get out of the mess we’re in.

This will be an elaborate exercise in crowdsourcing. Please write to me, at dana.milbank@washpost.com, and tell me how you “rehumanize.” How have you found what my favorite pol, John McCain, used to call “a cause greater than self-interest”? How do you experience the sublime and the transcendental? Through nature or art? Music or the spiritual? Volunteer service? Watching TV and eating ice cream? How can we overcome the isolation so many of us feel from each other and from our communities? I know I don’t have the answers, but, with your help, I’ll devote myself to finding them.

Dana Milbank writes for the Washington Post, where this appeared. Follow him on Twitter @Milbank.

Email dana.milbank@washpost.com