“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher standard of living is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.” Aldo Leopold.
This is an excerpt from the foreword to “A Sand County Almanac” written by Aldo Leopold in 1948. He was an American writer, conservationist, professor, forester, ecologist, naturalist, and environmentalist. Leopold’s early life was greatly influenced by the outdoors. It was in this domain that he learned informally about rivers, birds, forests, and more. After graduating from Yale Forestry School in 1909, he was assigned to the U.S. Forest Service in the Arizona and New Mexico territories. He served as an assistant at the Apache National Forest and was then transferred in 1911 to the Carson National Forest in northern New Mexico where he developed the first comprehensive management plan for the Grand Canyon, writing the Forest Service’s first game and fish handbook, and proposing Gila Wilderness Area, the first wilderness area in the forest service system.
Early in his career, Leopold was assigned to control bears, wolves, and mountain lions in New Mexico to protect local ranchers’ livestock. After fatally shooting a wolf one day, he became transfixed by a “fierce green fire dying in her eyes.” This experience changed him to become an ecologist and directed him on a path of conservation for native flora and fauna and to develop strategies for “primitive recreation” to promote ethical hunting, fishing, and hiking. This development of “ecological sensitivity” made him rethink the importance of predators and their role regarding the balance of nature.
In “A Sand County Almanac,” he describes two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from a furnace. He writes about “felling” an 80-year-old oak with a diameter of 30 inches. Through its growth rings, he surmises that the seedling laid the first ring in 1865, the end of the Civil War. Through this cutting, he tells a history from this tree. As the saw bites, each ring relates to a year, with the outside ring being the most recent. So, the tree was cut down in 1945. As the saw penetrates deeper, the depression years of the 1930s are revealed. As our saw bites into the 1920s’, everything grew bigger and better in heedlessness and arrogance; until 1929 when stock markets crumbled.
He reached the ring of 1924 when a great refuge was formed on the Upper Mississippi bottomlands. Now the saw bites into 1910-1920, the decade of the drainage dream, when steam shovels sucked dry the marshes to create farms which rid the landscape of waterfowl habitat which has still not recovered. The saw continues its path through the heart of the oak. When the blade passed through 1915, a federal law prohibiting spring shooting of pheasants was passed. Three years deeper into the cut, a “buck only” law was enacted protecting female deer. The year 1908 was cut, a dry year when forests burned fiercely, and Wisconsin lost its last cougar.
The history through the tree deepens. 1905 saw a great flight of goshawks which ate up all the local grouse. When 1899 was cut, the last passenger pigeon collided with a charge of shot near Babcock, Wisconsin. Three rings earlier, 25,000 prairie chickens were shipped to market from the village Spooner alone. When the rings of 1878 were reached, a deer hunter remarked prophetically, “the hunters promise to outnumber the deer.”
In 1877, two brothers bagged 210 blue-winged teal in one day on Muskego Lake. Likewise, as the blade buried deeper, a market gunner boasted in the American Sportsman of killing 6,000 ducks in one season near Chicago. Five years before, according to the rings, the last wild Wisconsin turkey was killed in 1872.
Our saw now cuts the 1860s when thousands died to settle the question: Is the man-man community lightly to be dismembered? They settled it, but they did not see, nor do we yet see, that the same question applies to the man-land community. Every word is in this fabulous book, verbatim.
You will find “red legs kicking” on page 127. This is a story when the young Leopold is traversing the “rabbit patch” in search of a cottontail. He noticed a mill pond with a small patch of open water void of the ice that covered the rest of the impoundment. He theorized that if there was a duck left in the country, it would have to settle on the only open water for miles around. He describes the brutally cold temperatures and how the cold penetrated him to the core with each passing hour. Then finally, at sunset, a lone black duck emerged from the west, and without circling, set his wings for the airhole. The shot was not recalled, just pure delight when his first duck hit the snowy ice, belly up.
Tragically, Aldo Leopold never saw his essays come to print. He died in 1948, while fighting a brush fire on a neighbor’s farm. However, the book was in draft form, and his son Luna edited the material, and it was published in 1949. In Leopold’s words, he states that we abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us instead of seeing land as a community to which we all belong. He goes on by saying the land is to be respected and loved, and we should dedicate ourselves not only to its preservation, but its enhancement through science-based ecology. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man.
When I observe locally, I see pristine, natural ecosystems that have been gutted to the core in the name of progress. I want to be optimistic that we will always have wild places with wild things thriving, but I fear this is a dream and a far-fetched one at that. Too many creek bottoms have been channelized, lined with rock, or totally filled in with concrete to recover now. They are gone forever. If there is any chance for hope we can mitigate losing precious country, it will be through the efforts of our children and grandchildren.
Christmas is just around the corner. I can’t think of a better stocking stuffer than a copy of “A Sand County Almanac.” Within this book lies a story and an ecological concept of what land means and what it can be and why it is worth saving. You could even write a short note on the inside cover to whomever you give a copy to, making it much more special to the recipient. In fact, I think it should be required for summer reading for all students. I feel that strongly about this. While you’re at the bookstore, pick up a copy for yourself, too, it will be worth the investment. Let me know what you think of it. I bet you will find yourself totally immersed in the contents. Who knows, we may even inspire a youngster to become the next Aldo Leopold. I can only hope so.
Until next time enjoy our woods and waters and remember, let’s leave it better than we found it. jeff.north@northag.net
