A Discussion Guide for

A Sand County
Almanac

With Text from:

• Foreword
• Good Oak
• Axe-In-Hand
• Marshland Elegy
• Thinking Like a Mountain
• The Outlook

 —— Who Was Aldo Leopold? ——
Aldo Leopold’s life and legacy are hard to
categorize. He is best known as the author of
A Sand County Almanac. Published one year
after he died in 1948, the book has become a
classic expression of an ecological perspective

There are some who can on people and land.

The Early Years
Aldo Leopold was born in Burlington, Iowa in

live without wild things 1887. Through his family’s influence, he became
interested in the outdoors at a very young age,
spending much of his childhood observing,
sketching, and interacting with the natural

and some who cannot. world. His love of the outdoors helped him
decide to become a forester, and he graduated
from the Yale Forest School in 1909.

These essays are the delights The Young Forester

During his career with the U.S. Forest Service,
Aldo Leopold worked in Arizona and New Mexico, blazing the trail for new
developments in range, recreation, game, fire, and watershed management. In 1922,

and dilemmas of one who he developed a proposal to make part of the Gila National Forest the country’s first
Wilderness Area. It became the model for what are now more than 100 million acres
of such areas designated by Congress.

cannot. The Professor

Leopold returned to the Midwest in 1924, where he began to lay the groundwork
for the new science and profession of wildlife management. In 1933 he accepted a
chair of game management, the first in the nation, in the Department of Agricultural
Economics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he would work on
the problems of Wisconsin’s eroded and exhausted lands in the midst of the Great
Depression.

The Shack
In 1935, he and his family bought a worn out farm along the Wisconsin River outside
of Baraboo, Wisconsin. Planting thousands of pine trees, restoring the prairie, and
keeping careful track of the changes in the natural landscape inspired Leopold to
write many of the essays that would eventually make up A Sand County Almanac.

The Land Ethic

In the last essay in A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold made the case for [the
evolution of ] an ethical relationship [or, for the extension of ethics] to the land
community—soils, waters, plants and animals as well as people. He believed it was
critical that people have a close personal connection with land, writing “we can be
ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise
have faith in.”
 
 ­—— Foreword —— we dissenters rationalize our dissent. Only the very sympathetic reader will wish to
wrestle with the philosophical questions of Part III. I suppose it may be said that
these essays tell the company how it may get back in step.
Key Concept: Community 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.
Leopold encouraged people to expand their vision of the world When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with
around them to include the natural world in their community as love and respect. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized
they would their neighbors. When people begin to looks at plants, man, nor for us to reap from it the esthetic harvest it is capable, under science, of
animals, soils, and waters in that way, they may consider them in contributing to culture.
a different way.
That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved
and respected is an extension of ethics. That land yields a cultural harvest is a fact

T
here are some who can live long known, but latterly often forgotten.
without wild things, and some These essays attempt to weld these three concepts.
who cannot. These essays are
Such a view of land and people is, of course subject to the blurs and distortions of
the delights and dilemmas of one who
personal experience and personal bias. But wherever the truth may lie, this much is
cannot.
crystal-clear: our bigger-and-better society is now like a hypochondriac, so obsessed
Like winds and sunsets, wild things were with its own economic health as to have lost the capacity to remain healthy. The
taken for granted until progress began to whole world is so greedy for more bathtubs that it has lost the stability necessary to
do away with them. Now we face the build them, or even to turn off the tap. Nothing could be more salutary at this stage
question whether a still higher ‘standard than a little healthy contempt for a plethora of material blessings.
of living’ is worth its cost in things
Perhaps such a shift of values can be achieved by reappraising things unnatural, tame,
natural, wild, and free. For us of the
and confined in terms of things natural, wild, and free.
minority, the opportunity to see geese is
more important than television, and the Aldo Leopold
chance to find a pasque-flower is a right Madison, Wisconsin
as inalienable as free speech. 4 March 1948
These wild things, I admit had little
human value until mechanization
assured us of a good breakfast and until Questions for Discussion
science disclosed the drama of where they come from and how they live. The whole
conflict thus boils down to a question of degree. We of the minority see a law of • Compare your values with Leopold’s: Is the ability to see geese more
diminishing returns in progress; our opponents do not. important to you than television? Are you one who can live without wild
things or one who cannot? How do various groups in American society
One must make shift with things as they are. These essays are my shifts. They are currently determine the value of wild things? How is this demonstrated?
grouped in three parts. How do disagreements about values play out?
Part I tells what my family sees and does at its week-end refuge from too much • Leopold talks about the need to “get the company back in step.” Who is the
modernity: ‘the shack.’ On this sand farm in Wisconsin, first worn out and then company? What does Leopold suggest might be needed for the company to
abandoned by our bigger-and-better society, we try to rebuild, with shovel and axe, get back in step? Has the definition of conservation changed or stayed the
what we are losing elsewhere. It is here that we seek—and still find—our meat from same since Leopold’s time?
God.
• What does Leopold refer to when he talks about “community” in the essay?
These shack sketches are arranged seasonally as a ‘Sand County Almanac.’ Who is part of your community? Your family, friends, neighbors? Does it
Part II, ‘Sketches Here and There,’ recounts some of the episodes in my life that include the trees in your yard or the birds at your feeder? How about the
taught me, gradually and sometimes painfully, that the company is out of step. These soil in your garden?
episodes, scattered over the continent and through forty years of time, present a fair • How have attitudes toward the natural world changed since Leopold’s time?
sample of the issues that bear the collective label: conservation. Since the first settlers arrived in America? In all human history?
Part III, ‘The Upshot,’ sets forth, in more logical terms, some of the ideas whereby

 
 —— Good Oak —— the product either of rabbit negligence or of rabbit scarcity. Some day some patient
botanist will draw a frequency curve of oak birth-years, and show that the curve
humps every ten years, each hump originating from a low in the ten-year rabbit cycle.
(A fauna and flora, by this very process of perpetual battle within and among species,
achieve collective immortality.)
It is likely, then, that a low in rabbits occurred in the middle ‘sixties, when my oak
began to lay on annual rings, but that the acorn that produced it fell during the
preceding decade, when the covered wagons were still passing over my road into the
Great Northwest. It may have been the wash and wear of the emigrant traffic that
bared this roadbank, and thus enabled this particular acorn to spread its first leaves to
the sun. Only one acorn in a thousand ever grew large enough to fight rabbits; the
rest were drowned at birth in the prairie sea.
It is a warming thought that this one wasn’t, and thus lived to garner eighty years of
June sun. It is this sunlight that is now being released, through the intervention of
my axe and saw, to warm my shack and my spirit through eighty gusts of blizzard.
And with each gust a wisp of smoke from my chimney bears witness, to whomsoever
it may concern, that the sun did not shine in vain.
My dog does not care where heat comes from, but he cares ardently that it come,
and soon. Indeed he considers my ability to make it come as something magical, for
Key Concept: Connections when I rise in the cold black pre-dawn and kneel shivering by the hearth making a
We are connected to the world around us through the food we eat fire, he pushes himself blandly between me and the kindling splits I have laid on the
and the resources we use. Work can connect us to the pieces of the ashes, and I must touch a match to them by poking it between his legs. Such faith, I
natural world that support us and to the history they embody. suppose, is the kind that moves mountains.
It was a bolt of lightning that put an end to wood-making by this particular oak. We
were all awakened, one night in July, by the thunderous crash; we realized that the
bolt must have hit near by, but, since it had not hit us, we all went back to sleep. Man

T
here are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of brings all things to the test of himself, and this is notably true of lightning.
supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat Next morning, as we strolled over the sandhill rejoicing with the cone-flowers and the
comes from the furnace. prairie clovers over their fresh accession of rain, we came upon a great slab of bark freshly
To avoid the first danger, one should plant a garden, preferably where there is no torn from the trunk of the roadside oak. The trunk showed a long spiral scar of barkless
grocer to confuse the issue. sapwood, a foot
wide and not yet
To avoid the second, he should lay a split of good oak on the andirons, preferably yellowed by the
where there is no furnace, and let it warm his shins while a February blizzard tosses sun. By the next
the trees outside. If one has cut, split, hauled, and piled his own good oak and let day the leaves
his mind work the while, he will remember much about where the heat comes from, had wilted, and
and with a wealth of detail denied to those who spend the week end in town astride we knew that the
a radiator. lightning had
bequeathed to
* * * us three cords of
The particular oak now aglow on my andirons grew on the bank of the old emigrant prospective fuel
road where it climbs the sandhill. The stump, which I measured upon felling the tree, wood.
has a diameter of 30 inches. It shows 80 growth rings, hence the seedling from which
it originated must have laid its first ring of wood in 1865, at the end of the Civil War. We mourned the
But I know from the history of present seedlings that no oak grows above the reach loss of the old
of rabbits without a decade or more of getting girdled each winter, and re-sprouting tree, but knew
during the following summer. Indeed, it is all too clear that every surviving oak is that a dozen of

 
 of trunk are up-ended one by one, only to fall apart in fragrant slabs to be corded by
the roadside.
There is an allegory for historians in the diverse functions of saw, wedge, and axe.
The saw works only across the years, which it must deal with one by one, in sequence.
From each year the raker teeth pull little chips of fact, which accumulate in little piles,
called sawdust by woodsmen and archives by historians; both judge the character of
what lies within by the character of the samples thus made visible without. It is not
until the transect is completed that the tree falls, and the stump yields a collective
view of a century. By its fall the tree attests the unity of the hodge-podge called
history.
The wedge, on the other hand, works only in radial splits; such a split yields a collective
view of all the years at once, or no view at all, depending on the skill with which the
its progeny standing straight and stalwart on the sands had already taken over its job plane of the split Is chosen. (If in doubt, let the section season for a year until a
of wood-making. crack develops. Many a hastily driven wedge lies rusting in the woods, embedded in
unsplittable cross-grain.)
We let the dead veteran season for a year in the sun it could no longer use, and then
on a crisp winter’s day we laid a newly filed saw to its bastioned base. Fragrant little The axe functions only at an angle diagonal to the years, and this only for the
chips of history spewed from the saw cut, and accumulated on the snow before each peripheral rings of the recent past. Its special function is to lop limbs, for which both
kneeling sawyer. We sensed that these two piles of sawdust were something more saw and wedge are useless.
than wood: that they were the integrated transect of a century; that our saw was The three tools are requisite to good oak, and to good history.
biting its way, stroke by stroke, decade by decade, into the chronology of a lifetime,
written in concentric annual rings of good oak. * * *
* * * These things I ponder as the kettle sings, and the good oak burns to red coals on
It took only a dozen pulls of the saw to transect the few years of our ownership, white ashes. Those ashes, come spring, I will return to the orchard at the foot of
during which we had learned to love and cherish this farm. Abruptly we began to the sandhill. They will come back to me again, perhaps as red apples, or perhaps
cut the years of our predecessor the bootlegger, who hated this farm, skinned it of as a spirit of enterprise in some fat October squirrel, who, for reasons unknown to
residual fertility, burned its farmhouse, threw it back into the lap of the County (with himself, is bent on planting acorns.
delinquent taxes to boot), and then disappeared among the landless anonymities of
the Great Depression. Yet the oak had laid down good wood for him; his sawdust was
as fragrant, as sound, and as pink as our own. An oak is no respecter of persons.
Questions for Discussion
The reign of the bootlegger ended sometime during the dust-bowl drouths of 1936,
1934, 1933, and 1930. Oak smoke from his still and peat from burning marshlands • Leopold worries people no longer truly know where heat or food comes
must have clouded the sun in those years, and alphabetical conseryation was abroad from. Think about what you had for breakfast. Do you know where it
in the land, but the sawdust shows no change. actually came from? Have you ever been to a farm? Do you heat your
home with coal, natural gas, wood, corn, electricity? How is the electricity
Rest! cries the chief sawyer, and we pause for breath. generated?
* * * • Do you agree that there could actually be a “spiritual danger” in not
We have cut the core. Our saw now reverses its orientation in history; we cut knowing the source of your food and energy? Why or why not?
backward across the years, and outward toward the far side of the stump. At last • This essay not only connects the natural and cultural aspects of our land, it
there is a tremor in the great trunk; the saw-kerf suddenly widens; the saw is quickly also describes one of the Leopold family’s physical activities, making wood.
pulled as the sawyers spring backward to safety; all hands cry ‘Timber!’; my oak leans, Have you ever cut, split, hauled firewood? What tools did you use?
groans, and crashes with earth-shaking thunder, to lie prostrate across the emigrant
road that gave it birth. • The oak tree acts as a history book telling the history of conservation in
Wisconsin. Imagine using a tree in your yard to tell a history of your
* * * town, neighborhood, and family. What would your story be?
Now comes the job of making wood. The maul rings on steel wedges as the sections

 
 —— Axe-in-Hand —— I find it disconcerting to analyze, ex post
facto, the reasons behind my own axe-
some weight, but none of them carries
very much.

T
in-hand decisions. I find, first of all, that So I try again, and here perhaps
he Lord giveth, and the Lord not all trees are created free and equal.
taketh away, but He is no Ionger is something; under this pine will
Where a white pine and a red birch are
the only one to do so. When ultimately grow a trailing arbutus, an
crowding each other, I have an a priori
some remote ancestor of ours invented Indian pipe, a pyrola, or a twin flower,
bias; I always cut the birch to favor the
the shovel, he became a giver: he could whereas under the birch a bottle gentian
pine. Why?
plant a tree. And when the axe was is about the best to be hoped for. In
invented, he became a taker: he could Well, first of all, I planted the pine with this pine a pileated woodpecker will
chop it down. Whoever owns land has my shovel, whereas the birch crawled in ultimately chisel out a nest; in the birch a
thus assumed, whether he knows it or under the fence and planted itself. My hairy will have to suffice. In this pine the
not, the divine functions of creating and bias is thus to some extent paternal, but wind will sing for me in April, at which
destroying plants. this cannot be the whole story, for if time the birch is only rattling naked
the pine were a natural seedling like the twigs. These possible reasons for my bias
birch, I would value it even more. So carry weight, but why? Does the pine
Key Concept: Decisions I must dig deeper for the logic, if any, stimulate my imagination and my hopes
behind my bias. more deeply than the birch does? If so, is
Leopold asserted that each piece of land looks the way it does today
because of past decisions. He suggests that any decision reflects The birch is an abundant tree in my the difference in the trees, or in me?
our personal and collective values and biases. Each person will township and becoming more so, whereas The only conclusion I have ever reached
formulate their decisions differently, but by thinking about the pine is scarce and becoming scarcer; is that I love all trees, but I am in love
ultimate effect of your actions, you can choose the evidence you will perhaps my bias is for the underdog. But with pines.
behind for others. what would I do if my farm were further
north, where pine is abundant and red * * *
birch is scarce? I confess I don’t know. I find my biases more numerous than
Other ancestors, less remote, have since My farm is here. those of my neighbors because I have
invented other tools, but each of these, The pine will live for a century, the birch individual likings for many species that
upon close scrutiny, proves to be either for half that; do I fear that my signature they lump under one aspersive category:
an elaboration of, or an accessory to, the will fade? My neighbors have planted no brush. Thus I like the wahoo, partly
original pair of basic implements. We pines but all have many
classify ourselves into vocations, each of birches; am I snobbish
which either wields some particular tool, can see just how the branches intertwine, about having a woodlot
or sells it, or repairs it, or sharpens it, or and what growth occurred last summer. of distinction? The pine
dispenses advice on how to do so; by such Without this clear view of treetops, one stays green all winter, the
division of labors we avoid responsibility cannot be sure which tree, if any, needs birch punches the clock
for the misuse of any tool save our own. felling for the good of the land. in October; do I favor
But there is one vocation—philosophy— the tree that, like myself,
I have read many definitions of what is
which knows that all men, by what braves the winter wind?
a conservationist, and written not a few
they think about and wish for, in effect The pine will shelter a
myself, but I suspect that the best one is
wield all tools. It knows that men thus grouse but the birch will
written not with a pen, but with an axe.
determine, by their manner of thinking feed him; do I consider
It is a matter of what a man thinks about
and wishing, whether it is worth it to bed more important
while chopping, or while deciding what
wield any. than board? The pine
to chop. A conservationist is one who
November is, for many reasons, the is humbly aware that with each stroke will ultimately bring ten
month for the axe. It is warm enough to he is writing his signature on the face dollars a thousand, the
grind an axe without freezing, but cold of his land. Signatures of course differ, birch two dollars; have I
enough to fell a tree in comfort. The whether written with axe or pen, and this an eye on the bank? All
leaves are off the hardwoods, so that one is as it should be. of these possible reasons
for my bias seem to carry

10 11
The Plants of Axe-In-Hand because deer, rabbits, and mice are so to blossom forth annually as a successful
avid to eat his square twigs and green seer and prophet.
In this essay, Leopold mentions numerous plants for or against which he holds a bias.
bark and partly because his cerise berries
Today, many people do not recognize the plants around them—a Worldwatch study It is evident that our plant biases are in
glow so warmly against November snow.
has found that Americans can recognize 1,000 corporate logos, but fewer than 10 part traditional. If your grandfather liked
I like the red dogwood because he feeds
plants or animals native to their region. Do you know these plants? hickory nuts, you will like the hickory
tree because your father told you to. If,
White Pine (Pinus Bittersweet Our biases are indeed on the other hand, your grandfather
strobus) White pine (Hamamelis
has thick, gray bark virginiana) a sensitive index to burned a log carrying a poison ivy vine
and recklessly stood in the smoke, you
and clusters of 5 Bittersweet is a
needles at the ends climbing woody our affections, our will dislike the species, no matter with
of its branches. It has a feathery look. vine which can be identified in the fall what crimson glories it warms your eyes
by it’s bright red berries in yellow bracts.
tastes, our loyalties, each fall.
Red Birch (Betula
nigra) Also called Hickory (Carya our generosities, It is also evident that our plant biases
River birch or Black ovata) Shagbark reflect not only vocations but avocations,
birch, this tree has hickory is a large and our manner of with a delicate allocation of priority
pinkish, flaky bark tree with gray, as between industry and indolence.
that can be peeled off in sheets. It often shaggy bark and wasting weekends. The farmer who would rather hunt
grows along river banks. edible nuts. grouse than milk cows will not dislike
October robins, and the prickly ash hawthorn, no matter if it does invade his
Wahoo (Euonymus Poison Ivy because my woodcock take their daily
pasture. The coon-hunter will not dislike
atropurpurea) Also (Toxicodendron sunbath under the shelter of his thorns. I
basswood, and I know of quail hunters
called Burning radicans) Stay like the hazel because his October purple
who bear no grudge against ragweed,
bush, this shrub has away from this feeds my eye, and because his November
bright red berries catkins feed my deer and grouse. I like despite their annual bout with hayfever.
one! Poison ivy
surrounded by pink bracts in the fall. has groups of three the bittersweet because my father did, Our biases are indeed a sensitive index
glossy leaves and and because the deer, on the 1st of July to our affections, our tastes, our loyalties,
Red Dogwood of each year, begin suddenly to eat the our generosities, and our manner of
many people get an itchy rash from
(Cornus stolonifera) new leaves, and I have learned to predict wasting weekends.
touching it.
Also called Red osier this event to my guests. I cannot dislike
dogwood, this shrub Hawthorn Be that as it may, I am content to waste
a plant that enables me, a mere professor, mine, in November, with axe in hand.
is readily identified (Crataegus spp.)
by its bright red Hawthorn is a
branches. It grows in clones, spreading small, spreading
through its roots, and tends to take over tree with thorny
branches and plentiful white flowers.
Questions for Discussion
in wetter areas.
Basswood (Tilia • Leopold states that pines are his favorite trees. Do you have a favorite kind
Prickly Ash
americana) of tree? What is it about that particular species that you like? Does liking it
(Zanthoxylum
Basswood is a native make you want to think of ways that you could favor its growth?
americanum) As
its name suggests, tree with broad, • How has the land where you live changed within your lifetime? Are there
Prickly ash is a tall heart-shaped leaves decisions you have made that have become your “signatures” on the land?
shrub with light gray branches lined and light brown, smooth bark. • Leopold writes there are many definitions of a conservationist; his own
with thorns. Ragweed (Ambrosia definition is one who is thinking “while chopping, or deciding what to chop.”
Hazel (Corylus artemisiifolia) Can you relate to this idea? How would you define a conservationist?
americana) Ragweed is an • Leopold writes, “Signatures or course differ...and this is how it should be.”
American hazelnut herbaceous plant Can you think of examples where people have made very different decisions,
is a shrub that with lacy-looking both wanting to do what is right for the health of the land?
produces edible leaves. Its pollen triggers summer
nuts. In fall its leaves turn deep pink. allergies in many people.

12 13
 —— Marshland Elegy —— habitat where the oncoming host again
may live and breed and die.

A
dawn wind stirs on the great marsh. With almost imperceptible slowness it To what end? Out on the bog a crane,
rolls a bank of fog across the wide morass. Like the white ghost of a glacier the gulping some luckless frog, springs his
mists advance, riding over phalanxes of tamarack, sliding across bog-meadows ungainly hulk into the air and flails
heavy with dew. A single silence hangs from horizon to horizon. the morning sun with mighty wings.
The tamaracks re-echo with his bugled
certitude. He seems to know.

* * *
Our ability to perceive quality in nature
begins, as in art, with the pretty. It
expands through successive stages of the
beautiful to values as yet uncaptured
by language. The quality of cranes lies,
I think, in this higher gamut, as yet
beyond the reach of words.
This much, though, can be said: our Understanding Crane
appreciation of the crane grows with the
slow unraveling of earthly history. His Migration
tribe, we now know, stems out of the
• Nina Leopold Bradley has been
remote Eocene. The other members
keeping three phenological entries
Key Concept: Impacts of the fauna in which he originated
on sandhill cranes since 1974.
Leopold’s sobering message asks us to consider how we can protect are long since entombed within the
She has found that they typically
and cherish something at the same time. He warns that beyond the hills. When we hear his call we hear no
arrive in Wisconsin around
impacts we make when we degrade land in multiple ways, the act of mere bird. We hear the trumpet in the
March 5, she sees the first young
admiring nature can have impacts of its own. orchestra of evolution. He is the symbol
cranes close to May 7, and the
of our untamable past, of that incredible
last cranes head to their wintering
sweep of millennia which underlies and
grounds on about November 18
Out of some far recess of the sky a tinkling of little bells falls soft upon the listening conditions the daily affairs of birds and
each year.
land. Then again silence. Now comes a baying of some sweet-throated hound, soon men.
the clamor of a responding pack. Then a far clear blast of hunting horns, out of the • By November, the chicks born
And so they live and have their being—
sky into the fog. in May are ready to fly south on
these cranes—not in the constricted
their own. Wisconsin’s cranes
High horns, low horns, silence, and finally a pandemonium of trumpets, rattles, present, but in the wider reaches of
go to Florida for the winter, but
croaks, and cries that almost shakes the bog with its nearness, but without yet evolutionary time. Their annual return is
sandhill cranes in the western
disclosing whence it comes. At last a glint of sun reveals the approach of a great the ticking of the geologic clock. Upon
flyway spend the winter in New
echelon of birds. On motionless wing they emerge from the lifting mists, sweep a the place of their return they confer a
Mexico and Arizona, and some
final arc of sky, and settle in clangorous descending spirals to their feeding grounds. peculiar distinction. Amid the endless
travel as far as Mexico.
A new day has begun on the crane marsh. mediocrity of the commonplace, a crane
marsh holds a paleontological patent of • The biggest threat to sandhills
* * * nobility, won in the march of aeons, and is loss of suitable wetland and
A sense of time lies thick and heavy on such a place. Yearly since the ice age it has revocable only by shotgun. The sadness riparian areas to use as stopovers
awakened each spring to the clangor of cranes. The peat layers that comprise the discernible in some marshes arises, during their migration. Eighty
bog are laid down in the basin of an ancient lake. The cranes stand, as it were, upon perhaps, from their once having harbored percent of all sandhills migrate
the sodden pages of their own history. These peats are the compressed remains of cranes. Now they stand humbled, adrift through the Platte River in
the mosses that clogged the pools, of the tamaracks that spread over the moss, of the in history. Nebraska, and development along
cranes that bugled over the tamaracks since the retreat of the ice sheet. An endless the river puts pressure on cranes.
caravan of generations has built of its own bones this bridge into the future, this * * *

14 15
Thus always does history, whether
of marsh or market place, end in
—— Thinking Like a Mountain ——
paradox. The ultimate value in
these marshes is wildness, and the
crane is wildness incarnate. But Key Concept: Humility
all conservation of wildness is self-
Leopold’s own misdeeds lead him to be very concerned about the
defeating, for to cherish we must
impacts of those with good intentions, but incomplete information.
see and fondle, and when enough
According to Leopold, blind pursuit of “success” or as he describes it
have seen and fondled, there is no
“paradise” needs to be viewed cautiously.
wilderness left to cherish.

A
* * *
Some day, perhaps in the very process deep chesty bawl
of our benefactions, perhaps in the echoes from rimrock
fullness of geologic time, the last to rimrock, rolls
crane will trumpet his farewell and down the mountain, and
spiral skyward from the great marsh. fades into the far blackness
High out of the clouds will fall the of the night. It is an
sound of hunting horns, the baying outburst of wild defiant
of the phantom pack, the tinkle of sorrow, and of contempt
little bells, and then a silence never to for all the adversities of the
be broken, unless perchance in some world.
far pasture of the Milky Way. Every living thing (and
perhaps many a dead one as
well) pays heed to that call.
Questions for Discussion To the deer it is a reminder
of the way of all flesh, to the
• Leopold uses very evocative and descriptive language like “silence” giving pine a forecast of midnight scuffles and of blood upon the snow, to the coyote a
way to “pandemonium” of “trumpets, rattles, croaks, and cries” to describe a promise of gleanings to come, to the cowman a threat of red ink at the bank, to the
new day on the crane marsh. Have you ever seen or heard cranes? Can you hunter a challenge of fang against bullet. Yet behind these obvious and immediate
tell the difference between cranes, geese, herons, and swans? hopes and fears there lies a deeper meaning, known only to the mountain itself. Only
• “A sense of time lies thick and heavy on such a place,” writes Leopold. Have the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf.
you ever had an experience where time seems to stand still, or where you Those unable to decipher the hidden meaning know nevertheless that it is there, for it
experience something that you can imagine having happened time and is felt in all wolf country, and distinguishes that country from all other land. It tingles
again over the course of history? in the spine of all who hear wolves by night, or who scan their tracks by day. Even
• In art appreciation, your understanding and knowledge increases as you without sight or sound of wolf, it is implicit in a hundred small events: the midnight
learn more about the techniques and mediums used by impressionist painters whinny of a pack horse, the rattle of rolling rocks, the bound of a fleeing deer, the way
or sculptures. Have you ever seen anything so beautiful that you weren’t shadows lie under the spruces. Only the ineducable tyro can fail to sense the presence
able to describe it adequately with words? Can the process of appreciating or absence of wolves, or the fact that mountains have a secret opinion about them.
nature be compared to appreciating art? Do you agree that if you know My own conviction on this score dates from the day I saw a wolf die. We were eating
more about something it becomes even more beautiful? lunch on a high rimrock, at the foot of which a turbulent river elbowed its way. We
• Leopold describes the unfortunate paradox in wanting and needing to saw what we thought was a doe fording the torrent, her breast awash in white water.
“fondle” things in order to better understand them with the reality that this When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her tail, we realized our error:
handling, in particular with natural things, can often lead to its destruction. it was a wolf. A half-dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang from the willows
Have you ever picked a beautiful flower only to see it quickly wilt? Can you and all joined in a welcoming mêlée of wagging tails and playful maulings. What
think of ways that could people can appreciate and understand parts of the was literally a pile of wolves writhed and tumbled in the center of an open flat at the
natural world without unintentionally destroying them? foot of our rimrock.
In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. In a second

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 Leopold’s Changing Ideas
We all strive for safety, prosperity, long life,
on Predators and dullness.
The way Leopold thought about the
role of predators on the landscape of its own too-much, bleach with the * * *
changed 180 degrees over the bones of the dead sage, or molder under We all strive for safety, prosperity,
course of his career. Looking back the high-lined junipers. comfort, long life, and dullness. The
at his writing, we can see that shift I now suspect that just as a deer herd deer strives with his supple legs, the
occurring: lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does cowman with trap and poison, the
a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. statesman with pen, the most of us with
1919 And perhaps with better cause, for while machines, votes, and dollars, but it all
“The advisability of controlling a buck pulled down by wolves can be comes to the same thing: peace in our
vermin is plain common sense, which replaced in two or three years, a range time. A measure of success in this is all
nobody will seriously question.” pulled down by too many deer may fail well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to
we were pumping lead into the pack, but of replacement in as many decades. objective thinking, but too much safety
1920 with more excitement than accuracy:
So also with cows. The cowman who seems to yield only danger in the long
“It is going to take patience and how to aim a steep downhill shot is run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau’s
always confusing. When our rifles were cleans his range of wolves does not realize
money to catch the last wolf or lion in dictum: in wildness is the salvation of
empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup that he is taking over the wolf ’s job of
New Mexico. But the last one must
was dragging a leg into impassable slide- trimming the herd to fit the range. He the world. Perhaps this is the hidden
be caught before the job can be called
fully successful.” rocks. has not learned to think like a mountain. meaning in the howl of the wolf, long
We reached the old wolf in time to watch Hence we have dustbowls, and rivers known among mountains, but seldom
1930 a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I washing the future into the sea. perceived among men.
“No predatory species should realized then, and have known ever since,
be subjected to control. ...Rare that there was something new to me in
predatory species, or species of those eyes, something known only to her Questions for Discussion
narrow distribution and exceptional and to the mountain. I was young then, • Politicians are often criticized, called “flip floppers,” for changing their
biological interest or aesthetic value and full of trigger-itch; I thought that minds or positions on issues. However, it is critical for scientists to be able
should not be subjected to control.” because fewer wolves meant more deer, to do just this, sometimes referred to as a “paradigm shift.” Can you think
that no wolves would mean hunters’ about a time when you learned more about a subject and that your earlier
1934 paradise. But after seeing the green fire assumptions were incorrect you were able to consciously change your mind
die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the about something?
“[In Germany] the culling function mountain agreed with such a view.
of predators seems to be universally • This essay identifies many different perspectives, that of the wolf, the hunter,
recognized as a biotic necessity. Will Since then I have lived to see state after the rancher, and ultimately the mountain. Leopold is challenging the reader
this happy day come to America state extirpate its wolves. I have watched to read landscape from the mountain’s perspective. What does that mean
before, or after, our magnificent the face of many a newly wolfless to you?
predators are gone?” mountain, and seen the south-facing
slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer • Leopold describes the power of seeing the “green fire” die in the wolf ’s eye,
trails. I have seen every edible bush but he didn’t understand until many years later why his actions felt wrong.
1939 Have you ever done something you thought was right, but regretted it later?
and seedling browsed, first to anaemic
“The fight over predator control is no desuetude, and then to death. I have What made you realize you were mistaken?
mere conflict of interest between field- seen every edible tree defoliated to the • At the end of the essay Leopold seems to be asking if complacency, or
glass hunters and gun-hunters. It is height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain “safety,” will ultimately result in danger and that “wildness” is a type of
a fight between those who see utility looks as if someone had given God a new reminder that people cannot, or perhaps even should not, try to control
and beauty in the biota as a whole, pruning shears, and forbidden Him all everything. Do you agree?
and those who see utility and beauty other exercise. In the end the starved
only in pheasants and trout.” bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead

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 —— The Outlook ——
Key Concept: Ethics
Ethics provide context for our individual actions relative to larger
social values. Leopold understood that ultimately the health of
land, and in turn human health, would be determined by people’s
values. A Sand County Almanac ends with Leopold’s challenge
to individuals and communities to join in the “intellectual and
emotional” evolution of a land ethic.

I
t is inconceivable substitutes for
to me that an wood, leather, wool,
ethical relation and other natural
to land can exist land products suit
without love, respect, him better than the
and admiration for originals. In short,
land, and a high land is something
regard for its value. he has ‘outgrown.’
By value, I of course Almost equally
mean something far serious as an
broader than mere obstacle to a land
economic value; I label, ecological training is scarce. expedient. A thing is right when it tends
ethic is the attitude to preserve the integrity, stability, and
mean value in the of the farmer for The case for a land ethic would appear
philosophical sense. hopeless but for the minority which is beauty of the biotic community. It is
whom the land is wrong when it tends otherwise.
Perhaps the most still an adversary, in obvious revolt against these ‘modern’
serious obstacle or a taskmaster that trends. It of course goes without saying that
impeding the keeps him in slavery. economic feasibility limits the tether of
evolution of a land Theoretically, the I have purposely what can or cannot be done for land. It
ethic is the fact that mechanization of always has and it always will. The fallacy
our educational farming ought to cut
presented the land the economic determinists have tied
around our collective neck, and which
and economic
system is headed
the farmer’s chains,
but whether it really
ethic as a product of we now need to cast off is the belief that
economics determines all land-use. This
away from, rather does is debatable. social evolution because is simply not true. An innumerable host
than toward, an One of the requisites
intense consciousness of land. Your true for an ecological comprehension of
nothing so important as of actions and attitudes, comprising
perhaps the bulk of all land relations, is
modern is separated from the land by
many middlemen, and by innumerable
land is an understanding of ecology,
and this is by no means co-extensive
an ethic is ever ‘written.’ determined by the land-users’ tastes and
physical gadgets. He has no vital relation predilections, rather than by his purse.
with ‘education’; in fact, much higher The bulk of all land relations hinges on
to it; to him it is the space between cities education seems deliberately to avoid The ‘key-log’ which must be moved to
on which crops grow. Turn him loose for release the evolutionary process for an investments of time, forethought, skill,
ecological concepts. An understanding and faith rather than on investments of
a day on the land, and if the spot does of ecology does not necessarily originate ethic is simply this: quit thinking about
not happen to be a golf links or a ‘scenic’ decent land-use as solely an economic cash. As a land-user thinketh, so is he.
in courses bearing ecological labels; it is
area, he is bored stiff. If crops could be quite as likely to be labeled geography, problem. Examine each question in I have purposely presented the land ethic
raised by hydroponics instead of farming, botany, agronomy, history, or economics. terms of what is ethically and esthetically as a product of social evolution because
it would suit him very well. Synthetic This is as it should be, but whatever the right, as well as what is economically nothing so important as an ethic is ever

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 intentions which prove
to be futile, or even
dangerous, because
they are devoid of
critical understanding
either of the land, or
of economic land-use.
I think it is a truism
that as the ethical
frontier advances
Perhaps such a shift in
from the individual
to the community, its
intellectual
increases.
content values can be achieved
The mechanism of
‘written.’ Only the most superficial
student of history supposes that Moses
‘wrote’ the Decalogue; it evolved in the
operation is the same for any ethic: social
approbation for right actions: social
disapproval for wrong actions.
by reappraising things
minds of a thinking community, and By and large, our present problem is one
Moses wrote a tentative summary of it
for a ‘seminar.’ I say tentative because
of attitudes and implements. We are
remodeling the Alhambra with a steam-
shovel and we are proud of our yardage.
unnatural, tame, and
evolution never stops.
We shall hardly relinquish the shovel,
The evolution of a land ethic is an
intellectual as well as emotional process.
Conservation is paved with good
which after all has many good points,
but we are in need of gentler and more
objective criteria for its successful use.
confined in terms of things
Questions for Discussion natural, wild, and free.
• Leopold suggests that a land ethic can never really be written, rather it
evolves over time through society’s thinking and actions. Has your thinking
about right and wrong ever changed?
• The “Land Ethic” essay challenges not only individuals but also communities
to develop a land ethic. Can you think of examples from history where our
society has changed the way it thinks about the natural world? Do you
think American society has the kind of land ethic like Leopold describes?
Why or why not?
• The land ethic described by Leopold advances through both an “intellectual
and emotional process.” Do you rely more heavily on information or
intuition when you make decisions?
• A Sand County Almanac closes with an analogy of remodeling the Alhambra
with a steam shovel and proposes the problem is one of “attitudes and
implements.” Do you know what the Alhambra is and where it is located? If
you were going to remodel it, which would be more important to determining
the goals and outcomes of the project, attitudes or implements?

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About the Aldo Leopold Foundation
Fostering a Land Ethic
through the legacy
of Aldo Leopold

The Aldo Leopold Foundation owns and manages the Leopold Shack and Farm,
where, in 1935, Aldo Leopold and his family undertook a revolutionary experiment
in returning health to a worn out farm. Celebrated in Leopold’s classic A Sand
County Almanac, the transformed land now supports vibrant forests, wetlands, and
prairies and draws visitors from around the world. First published in 1949, A Sand
County Almanac has sold over two million copies in ten languages.

The foundation’s headquarters in the Leopold Center, located less than a mile from
the Leopold Shack and Farm. As the primary interpreter of the Leopold legacy, the
foundation serves as the executor of Leopold’s literary estate, manages the extensive
Leopold Archives and acts as a clearinghouse for information regarding Aldo Leopold,
his work, and his ideas. Each year, thousands of visitors are inspired through tours,
seminars, and workshops in the same landscape that deeply moved Leopold.

The five children of Aldo and Estella Leopold established the Aldo Leopold Foundation
as a not-for-profit conservation organization in 1982.

The Aldo Leopold Foundation

P. O. Box 77
Baraboo, WI 53913
608.355.0279
www.aldoleopold.org

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