Aldo Leopold
A Sand County Almanac
, published posthumously in 1949, of American writer and naturalist Aldo Leopold celebrates the beauty of the world and advocates the conscious protection of wild places.
His effect on resource management and policy lasted in the early to mid-twentieth century, and since his death, his influence continued to expand. Through his observation, experience, and reflection at his river farm in Wisconsin, he honed the concepts of land health and a land ethic that since his death ever influenced in the years. Despite more than five hundred articles and three books during the course of his geographically widespread career, time at his shack and farm in Wisconsin inspired most of the disarmingly simple essays that so many persons found so thought-provoking.
Life story of Aldo Leopold, the development of his career as a conservationist, scientist, and philosopher, and his open-mindedness, his vision, and the evolution of his thinking throughout his life inspire other persons to start or to further their own intellectual journey of discovery. A closer engagement with his story, his inspiration, and his family helps persons better to understand the contours of environmental history and the role in culture and to reflect on their own in the complex weave of the way in which our society relates to land. His vision of a society that cares about the connections between people and land provides a starting point for thinking about modern-day cultures, economies, ecosystems, and communities.
“At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant.”
“I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.”
“What avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?”
“Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”
“One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of a March thaw, is the spring.”
“There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.”