A Sand County Almanac (Outdoor Essays & Reflections)

I just finished reading this conservation classic and I have to confess, I approached it with some trepidation. Knowing it is a beloved and enshrined text of environmentalists, from moderate to fanatical, I feared it might be more polemical than inspiring, more Al Gore than Henry David Thoreau, but was happy to find this fear misplaced. The text was left to the world in draft from when the author died tragically in 1948, helping a neighbor fight a wildfire. It was first published by his son in 1949, and in this reorganized edition in 1966. First, some information about Leopold himself. He was born in Iowa in 1887 and was educated at Yale before joining the Forest Service in 1909, serving in New Mexico and Arizona. He became one of the founders of the Wilderness Society and in 1924 formed the first wilderness in the Forest Service, the Gila National Forest. Then followed a long tenure as a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He writes with the brilliance of a science professor, the passion and soulfulness of a sentimental farm boy, and the messianic zeal of a visionary reformer who sees more deeply into things than most people can. This book is actually four slim books “welded together”, as the author says. The first part is the month-by-month almanac that that gives this present form of the book its title. The author takes the reader on a dazzlingly observed personal tour of his life and farm in Sand County, Wisconsin and we willingly accompany him on this warm and insightful narrative journey. Here, for example, is a sample of a couple throw-away lines from October: “Lunch over, I regard a phalanx of young tamaracks, their golden lances thrusting skyward. Under each the needles of yesterday fall to earth building a blanket of smoky gold; at the tip of each the bud of tomorrow, preformed, poised, awaits another spring.” He writes feelingly about the death of the last carrier pigeon, the last jaguar in Baja, the last grizzly to be killed in Arizona, his regret to kill a mother wolf and watch as the green light died out in her eyes; each death and each extinction diminishes us profoundly, for we are integrated into a world that we are ourselves diminishing. The second part of the book “The Quality of Landscape,” is a series of essays about places. The most hauntingly beautiful is “Chihuahua and Sonora,” an amazing report of his canoe voyage with his brother among the channels and lagoons of the Colorado River’s delta in Baja in 1922. Then it was a fabulously rich environment, teeming with wildlife and abundant flora. Now, of course, the great river has been dammed, managed, and consumed by the thirsty and growing populations of the southwest, so much so that the river never even reaches the Gulf of Baja now and all that fabulous world of flora and fauna has vanished. Leopold: “Man always kills the thing he loves, and so we the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we had to. Be that as it may, I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?” And here is another pellucid throw-away line in the essay “Manitoba”, about swans observed in a marsh: “A flotilla of swans rides the bay in quiet dignity, bemoaning the evanescence of swanly things.” We may all bemoan the evanescence of swanly things. The third part of the book is called “A Taste for Country” and it comprises a series of essays that are about things and ideas, rather than about places. In it, Leopold declares himself a conservationist. The difference between a conservationist and a preservationist is that the latter emphasizes excluding man from wild places, while a conservationist aims to make wise use of all natural resources, a range of uses that includes wilderness as one important value among many others. Indeed, the very word comes from the Latin verb conservare, which means “to make wise use of.” Here is Leopold: “Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. By land is meant all of the things on, over, or in the earth. Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators; you cannot conserve the waters and waste the ranges; you cannot build the forest and mine the farm. The land is one organism. Its parts, like our own parts, compete with each other and co-operate with each other.” And then later he adds: “What conservation education must build is an ethical understanding for land economics and a universal curiosity to understand the land mechanism. Conservation may then follow.” The final part of the book is a section called “The Upshot,” which is Leopold’s attempt to propose an action agenda that is under-pinned with ethics. It reads a bit dated now, having been formulated in the aftermath of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and at the dawn of the conservation era when advocates hardly even had a vocabulary for the new school of policy they were trying to form. And yet in some ways it is still fresh and interesting. Here is Leopold in an essay called “The Land Ethic,” writing about how disputes about conservation always cleave the disputants into two groups: “In all of these cleavages, we see repeated the same basic paradoxes: man the conqueror versus man the biotic citizen; science the sharpener of his sword versus science the searchlight on his universe; land the slave and servant versus land the collective organism.” Here is a great idea for the curious and open-minded student. Go read Thoreau’s masterpiece Walden (1854); then read Rowland’s Cache Lake Country: Life in the North Woods (1947); finally read Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac. It will be a wonderful voyage of discovery and a first class education in the transcendental ethics of wild America.

I really wish this could be reformatted into a larger font print. Aldo is the Main Man of the movement, and this collection is his best and most read work. Depending on your appetite for detail, you will either be thrilled or not. His descriptions contain historical facts interlaced with actions like cutting firewood or listening to birds in the predawn hours. Very dense descriptions which open the mind to consider where we are and where we've been. Thought provoking on every page.

good enough to take it.

Got the book I wanted. New condition.

Good book

This review does not relate directly to the information in the book which has been discussed in detail in many excellent reviews. This book is truly for the person who loves the outdoors and is in itself 5 starsMy comments relate to the quality of the materials and format of the book. A good friend of mine gives this book to many of his friends so that they can become more aware of the environment and world around them. I thought that this was a great idea since we are so busy with HDTV, IPODS, Blackberrys and cell phones. I purchased one copy of the Galaxy (Oxford)publication and several of the Ballantine. There is no comparison. The Ballantine is a typical, cheap paperback. The Galaxy (White cover with Geese) is much nicer and makes a much better gift. It is definitely worth the extra money. When one considers the information deleted from the Ballantine edition (see review by Reiheld), it makes the argument even more compelling. My final comments --enjoy the reading, but spend the extra dollar or so and really enjoy the book.

I saw a PBS special on Aldo Leopold whom I had never heard of. I am not a tree hugging conservationist, but I became captivated by the portrayal of the man as one of the vanguards of the conservation ethic. But he went beyond this and in this book, A Sand Country Almanac, he presents a common view but from a different perspective. He is astute and articulates the world around us in effective and efficient prose; his writing style is remarkable and will appeal to the Every Man in us - at least those who have some kind of consciousness of our actions. I came to realize how much we are responsible for the destruction and alterations in nature. When you tug on one thread in the grand tapestry of nature, we find it is interwoven and touches so many others. The book helped me realize what an important responsibility we have as caretakers of the land. Leopold was truly a remarkable man, ahead of his time and I can see this book as being formative in the conservation movement. Truly an enlightening and, at times, fun read.

This book was recommended by the leader of the Master Naturalist class I'm taking. After a couple pages, I was hooked. Aldo Leopold has a wonderful way of telling the story of all the goings on around his Sand County farm that most of us would never see or hear. For example, his two page philsophical discussion with himself about which of two trees to turn into firewood teaches us so much about trees without seeming like a lesson. Or his recounting of the ecological history of the area decade by decade as he saws through the rings representing the years that the nearly century old oak witnessed. He recounts how he figures out what animals inhabit the area, what there range is, what they eat and so much more in beautifully crafted language that is just pleasant to read. And there's so much more. A great read for anyone interested in learning about the natural world around us while be thoroughly entertained.

Leopold's views on conservation and how we mistreat the land that sustains us should be compulsory reading for politicians everywhere. But this is not a heavy read; there are lovely chapters on the wildlife Leopold saw around his cabin, and the book has lots of charming illustrations by Charles Schwarz.

Author. Philosopher. Scientist. Ecologist. Forester. Conservationist. Environmentalist. Those are the credentials Aldo Leopold took with him to the grave after he died of a heart attack while battling a wildfire in 1948. But the powerful warnings and challenges he eloquently issues in A SAND COUNTY ALMANAC are more important now than ever before.Now more than ever humankind wantonly and recklessly destroys our planet for personal gain, greed, commercialism, and just pure stupidity. And, make no mistake about it, Leopold boldly challenges us to do our part to protect the world we love.He writes, “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.”But, while scathingly critical of public and private sector conservation efforts, and his own land conservation errors, the book is not all doom and gloom. In polished and poetic prose, Leopold pays tribute to the wonders of Mother Nature; exploring the unspoiled beauty of the mountains, prairies, forests, deserts, and coastlines of the American landscape.With extraordinary vividness, Leopold takes readers on a spellbinding tour through the seasons, explaining at every turn the beauty and interconnectedness of the plants, animals, insects, marshlands, and trees. He identifies every bird and animal call, recognizes practically every insect and plant, and their vital place in the complex ecosystem.Where some people would see only weeds, he sees a dynamic part of the ecosystem. Where some might get bored wandering through a forest, Leopold would rather be there than any other place on the planet. Given a choice between the theatre and Mother Nature, he would gladly choose the magic and miracles of the great outdoors over any man-made entertainment.Perhaps Leopold best sums up his own book: “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.”If the news of the day has got you down and you want be re-inspired and re-invigorated, trust me, you can’t go too far wrong with this book.

Earlier, I owned the original US Library edition and finally lost to a friend who never returned it.!? This is one of my all time favourite book and one of the best apart from Thoreau, John Muir and Emerson. I recently bought this Mass Market cheap Paper back to add to my collection again. A great conservationist with lucid writing and practical ideas to conserve nature in the times of destruction. Any body who is interested in Nature must own this edition with tremendous description of nature and its denizens.!? An affordable copy and thanks for the Amazon to make it available for all of us.

This book was written over 70 years ago. Its message of conservation and care for Nature is just as fresh and important today as when these inspiring essays were written. Aldo Leopold took from nature what he needed without destroying what he loved. If the author decried what he saw as greed in the immediate post-war period I can think only that he would be appalled today. We seem to have learned nothing in the interim. This is the book I have on my bedside table..

Influential in the creation of the modern conservation movement. Eloquently put and well worth the time