A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
Aldo Leopold suggests that the best definitions of a conservationist are
written not with a pen, but with an axe: “A conservationist is one who
is humbly aware that with each stroke he is writing his signature on
the face of his land” (68). After this Leopold speculates on why, when
he comes upon the choice of the white pine or the red birch, he will
always cut the birch, concluding that “I love all trees, but I am in love
with pines” (70). While it would not be especially fair to say that if you
like this sort of sentiment, then
A Sand County Almanac
is for you, it would not be
altogether wrong. As he notes in his forward, “There are some who can live without
wild things, and some who cannot.” This concoction of rambling meditations on the
natural world were first published a year after Leopold’s death, and they range from
the personal observations keyed to the months of the year to the philosophical, or
some would say political, in the last quarter of the book, when he addresses such
issues as the esthetics of conservation, wilderness, and “the land ethic.” Consider the
following ethical advice Leopold offers near the end of his book: “A thing is right when
it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is
wrong when it tends otherwise” (224-5). Or maybe this sort of passage appeals to you
more: “Pines, like people, are choosy about their associates” (86). Or consider this
almost casual observation in the small essay entitled “Thinking Like a Mountain,” when
Leopold reflects on killing a wolf: “I was young then, and full of trigger-itch” (130).
Whatever your preference, this important book deserves to be read closely and
carefully.
Author Information
As Robert Finch observes in his introduction to the 1987 edition
of
A Sand County Almanac
, Aldo Leopold was both “a trained
scientist” and “a schooled humanist,” and he possessed a
“strong poetic sensibility.” Born in Burlington, Iowa, in 1887,
Leopold received his master’s degree in forestry from Yale
University in 1909 and joined the U.S. Forest Service. First
posted to the Carson National Forest in northern New Mexico in 1911, he devised a
handbook for forest service officers and became active in promoting enforcement of
game laws and development of game refuges. He became Associate Director of the
U.S. Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1924, but in 1928 he left the
Forest Service to work independently, and in 1933 was appointed to the chair in Game
Management at the University of Wisconsin, a position he held for the rest of his life. In
1935 he purchased 120 acres of an abandoned farm on the Wisconsin River which was
to become his retreat and personal nature preserve. While he lived with his wife and
two sons in Madison, he restored the land and worked out of an old chicken coop he
called “the Shack.” Leopold authored a classic text,
Game Management
(1933), which
