I was sitting in one of my favorite spots, by the side of the pond, enveloped in cattails, watching a little green heron poke in the shallows for frogs. It was mid-September, season of late bloomers. Maximilian sunflowers, blue sage, heath aster, tall thistle flaunted their colors against the waning grass. Above the flowers, an ethereal fabric of butterflies rose and fell. A few brushstrokes of cirrus clouds were all heaven had to show for itself that day.

The wind rattled the dry sticks. No other sound invaded my sanctuary. For a moment I felt mindless, as if I’d been transformed into a cattail myself. Such little interludes liberate me from the anxious businesses of the mind. I feel restored, reconnected to nature in that wild spot where nature has been given a free hand. In an extravagant mood, I might be tempted to pronounce it a sacred place.

Everybody is entitled at least to one sacred place, a personal Jerusalem. A hilltop lookout, a hideout beneath a ledge, a muddy stream where a catfish might be caught. Some childhood refuge missed by the bulldozers. A single tree will do. But most of those places have been violated and blotted out. Richard Wilbur wrote about “the punctual rape of every blessed day.” He might also have written of the meticulous plundering of every blessed place.

Mountains and deserts in the West are filling up with second homes. A picturesque cattle ranch in the Tetons I visited 30 years ago is said to be worth $100 million today. An acre goes for $1 million in Jackson Hole. It’s become a playground of celebrities. And you know they’ll ruin the place.

Few people think of Kansas as Paradise, except perhaps the visionary who created the concrete Garden of Eden in Lucas. But one of the state’s attractions is that it hasn’t been spoiled — yet. It may not boast majestic peaks or sandy beaches, but you can still find unblemished vistas, wide open spaces, some precious solitude.

Enlightened planners speak of “smart growth.” But smart or dumb, growth seems inevitable. Lawrence is sprawling in all directions. I look out my window and wonder: Do I want land values to keep on rising so that I can be rich in my dotage or do I want my view of the valley to remain uncluttered by a sea of roofs?

A friend who’s in the real estate business in Santa Fe says he butts heads with members of the city council who’d rather pass resolutions against the war in Iraq than deal with the city’s water problems. A no-growth policy in Boulder, Colo., has priced homes out of reach of all but the rich, I’m told. What’s the right balance between growth and quality of life? How can we resolve the conflict between tree huggers and subdividers?

The “sacred place” defense has been evoked to protect the Baker Wetlands from the South Lawrence Trafficway. But even when crouching among the cattails, I’m ambivalent about that designation as a strategy for protecting nature. What bothers me is its human emphasis — sacred to us. After all, aren’t we the problem? It’s the nonhuman aspect of my pond, its independence from my agendas and my ego, that redeems me. It’s a place that puts me in my place.

Moreover, our sacred places tend to become battlegrounds. The designation conjures up crusades, feuds, Lebensraum and bloodshed, Prince Hamlet pondering a war over “a little patch of ground that hath in it no profit but the name.”

Somewhere I read that the exile of the Israelites strengthened their faith, because afterward it traveled in their hearts and wasn’t nailed to a sacred place. Look what attainment of the Promised Land has brought their descendants.

We all long for an Eden, a lost paradise where we can live in harmony with nature. And when we find it, we carve it up, market and despoil it. A glossy magazine ad shows a lovely meadow dappled with sunlight falling through a canopy of trees. “Palmetto Bluff,” it reads. “The East Coast’s last land treasure.” And it’s for sale. Get it while it lasts. Going, going, gone.

Maybe we need to cultivate an attitude toward nature in which we’re on the sidelines, in which our own passions and prejudices are suspended. I imagine showing up at one of those oppressive civic meetings where people shout one another down and brandish signs such as “Wal-Mart Sucks.” I’d step to the podium and deliver the croak of the little green heron, or the guttural two-note call of the sandhill crane: kerrrgh, whirrrgh, kerrrgh, whirrrgh. Enough said.