Aldo Leopold spent
his working life in the United States government service and
academia. But his influence is based mostly on a series of articles
he wrote for magazines such as American Forests, Journal of
Forestry, and Journal of Wildlife Management. These, published
after his death as parts of his book A Sand County Almanac,
are Leopold's enduring legacy. With the precision of a scientist
and the sensitivity of a poet, he catalogues the emotional strands
that join us to the natural world. The following short
extracts from his published work indicate the scope and depth of
his thinking.
Killing the Wolf
We saw what we
thought was a doe fording the torrent, her breast awash in white
water. When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her tail,
we realized our error: it was a wolf. A half-dozen others,
evidently grown pups, sprang from the willows and all joined in a
welcoming melee of wagging tails and playful maulings. What was
literally a pile of wolves writhed and tumbled in the center of an
open flat at the foot of our rimrock.
In those days we had never heard of passing up a
chance to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the
pack, but with more excitement than accuracy; how to aim a steep
downhill shot is always confusing. When our rifles were empty, the
old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into impassable
side-rocks.
We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce
green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever
since, that there was something known only to her and to the
mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought
that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would
mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I
sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a
view.
"Thinking Like a Mountain" inA Sand County
Almanac
The Land Ethic
"The land ethic simply enlarges the
boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and
animals, or collectively: the land.
"The Land Ethic" from A Sand County Almanac
Passenger Pigeon, extinct
We
have erected a monument to commemorate the funeral of a species. It
symbolizes our sorrow. We grieve because no living man will see
again the onrushing phalanx of victorious birds, sweeping a path
for spring across the March skies, chasing the defeated winter from
the woods and prairies of Wisconsin.
Men still live who, in their youth, remember
pigeons. Trees still live who, in their youth, were shaken by a
living wind. But a decade hence only the oldest oaks will remember,
and at long last only the hills will know. ...
The pigeon was a biological storm. He was the
lightening that played between two opposing potentials of
intolerable intensity: the fat of the land and the oxygen of the
air.
"Wisconsin" in A Sand County Almanac
Food and Fuel
There are 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 the furnace.
To avoid the first danger, one should plant a
garden, preferably where there is no grocer to confuse the
issue.
To avoid the second, he should lay a split of
good oak on the andirons, preferably where there is no furnace, and
let it warm his shins while a February blizzard tosses the trees
outside.
"February" in A Sand County Almanac
Hunting Ethics
Voluntary
adherence to an ethical code elevates the self-respect of the
sportsman, but it should not be forgotten that voluntary disregard
of the code degenerates and depraves him. For example, a common
denominator of all sporting codes is not to waste good meat. Yet it
is now a demonstrable fact that Wisconsin deer-hunters, in their
pursuit of a legal buck, kill and abandon in the woods at least one
doe, fawn, or spike buck for every two legal bucks taken out. In
other words, approximately half the hunters shoot any deer until a
legal deer is killed. The illegal carcasses are left where they
fall. Such deer-hunting is not only without social value, but
constitutes actual training for ethical depravity elsewhere.
"Wildlife in American Culture" from A Sand County
Almanac