Rating: 7
A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There
Aldo Leopold | 1949
Aldo Leopold’s renowned A Sand County Almanac is the oldest book I’ve reviewed for this Climate Reader, yet is by no means the least relevant to today’s issues. Perhaps it is such an important work for environmentalists because Leopold’s principles and ethical beliefs have held true in the seventy years since its publication, many of which have become pillars for the conservation movement. The book is a mixture of beautiful writing about natural landscapes and wildlife in various areas (primarily Wisconsin) and general thoughts on American development in reference to conservation practices. Robert Finch wrote—in the introduction for the edition I read—that Leopold’s “factual observation is presented in a richly allusive and metaphorical style. This is no mere affectation, a scientist’s attempt to be ‘literary,’ but an outgrowth of Leopold’s deep-seated belief that humanistic and scientific values must be integrated for a whole vision of nature.” I can’t think of a better description for the style of this book. Even when discussing the growth of a pine forest—a painfully boring subject for most readers, I assume—Leopold adeptly uses language and metaphors to transcend its scientific implications and reach humanitarian sensibilities. His ability to represent conservation as an ethical issue, combined with his beautiful writing, makes A Sand County Almanac a classic in environmental literature.
“I have read many definitions of what is a conservationist, and written not a few myself, but I suspect that the best one is written not with a pen, but with an axe. It is a matter of what a man thinks about while chopping, or while deciding what to chop. A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke he is writing his signature on the face of his land. Signatures of course differ, whether written with axe or pen, and this is as it should be.”
“Above all we should, in the century since Darwin, have come to know that man, while now captain of the adventuring ship, is hardly the sole object of its quest, and that his prior assumptions to this effect arose from the simple necessity of whistling in the dark.”