Title: A Sand County Almanac (Outdoor Essays & Reflections) Pdf
Author: Aldo Leopold
Published Date: 1970
Page: 269
“We can place this book on the shelf that holds the writings of Thoreau and John Muir.”—San Francisco Chronicle A profoundly affecting work. I first read this in a college ecology class and its a book I return to again and again for mental and spiritual grounding. Simple, beautiful, important and imperative.Teri Henry, Director of Subsidiary Rights
“We can place this book on the shelf that holds the writings of Thoreau and John Muir.”—San Francisco Chronicle
These astonishing portraits of the natural world explore the breathtaking diversity of the unspoiled American landscape—the mountains and the prairies, the deserts and the coastlines. Conjuring up one extraordinary vision after another, Aldo Leopold takes readers with him on the road and through the seasons on a fantastic tour of our priceless natural resources, explaining the destructive effects humankind has had on the land and issuing a bold challenge to protect the world we love.
Wait for it (wait for yourself) A note for anyone who finds the book difficult, boring, unreadable (these people exist, as one can see from the reviews of other versions besides this treasure chest from The Library of America). It took me a long while before it sunk in, the meaning of this book, its significance. I am afraid to write that, because the fault was in me. I look at it now, and read lines, and wonder why I didn't get it before. This is perfect writing. With its "non-fiction" label, I suppose I was expecting more of a narrative. It is about our world, but its reflections on that world and its life and objects are more akin to poetry than not. That means it is best read while chewing slowly every bite. The back cover photograph should be examined closely, because Aldo Leopold writes like he looks. He does not consume, but takes what he needs. He is not delicate, although his prose might sometimes be so. His writing is wiry and his remarks are dry and sarcastically witty. He is not afraid to shoot a gun, nor to eat his kill. But he doesn't brag or boast about it. A quote: "Further on I find a bloody spot, encircled by a wide-sweeping arc of owl's wings. To this rabbit the thaw brought freedom from want, but also a reckless abandonment of fear. The owl has reminded him that thoughts of spring are no substitute for caution." In sum, my review reads thus: slow down. taste. savor. Glory to those who find this book when young, who have a lifetime to ponder over every line. How lucky you are to have this prairie hut companion, this child of Thoreau, and of his country.Enduring Conservation Classic 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.
Self-Reliance and Other Essays pdf
My First Summer in the Sierra (Modern Library Classics) pdf
Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners - Updated Edition (Illustrated) pdf
Southeast Home Landscaping, 3rd Edition (Creative Homeowner) 54 Landscape Designs with Over 200 Plants & pdf
Walden and Civil Disobedience pdf
Amazing Kittens pdf
Amazing Jungle Life pdf
Tags: 0345345053 pdf,A Sand County Almanac (Outdoor Essays & Reflections) pdf,Aldo Leopold,A Sand County Almanac (Outdoor Essays & Reflections),Ballantine Books,0345345053,101957,Ecosystems & Habitats - Mountains,Environmental Conservation & Protection - General,Natural history - United States,Natural history;Outdoor books.,Natural history;United States.,Nature conservation - United States,Nature conservation;United States.,Essays,MASS MARKET,NATURE / Ecology,NATURE / Ecosystems & Habitats / Mountains,NATURE / Environmental Conservation & Protection,NATURE / Essays,NATURE / Natural Resources,Natural Resources,Natural history,Nature,Nature/Ecology,Nature/Environmental Conservation & Protection - General,Nature/Natural Resources,Non-Fiction,national parks; biology; classics; classic; ecology; environmental ethics; environmental; environment; environmental history; environmental studies; environmentalism; ethics; essay; essays; history; literature; memoir; nature conservation; natural history; reference; philosophy; preservation; seasons; aldo leopold; sustainability; wilderness; conservation; outdoors; nature; nature writing; science; wildlife conservation; usa; wisconsin; wildlife; 20th century; science books; adult; biography; nature books; earth; zoology,national parks;biology;classics;classic;ecology;environmental ethics;environmental;environment;environmental history;environmental studies;environmentalism;ethics;essay;essays;history;literature;memoir;nature conservation;natural history;reference;philosophy;preservation;seasons;aldo leopold;sustainability;wilderness;conservation;outdoors;nature;nature writing;science;wildlife conservation;usa;wisconsin;wildlife;20th century;adult;biography;science books;nature books;earth day books;earth,Essays,NATURE / Ecology,NATURE / Ecosystems & Habitats / Mountains,NATURE / Environmental Conservation & Protection,NATURE / Essays,NATURE / Natural Resources,Natural Resources,Nature/Environmental Conservation & Protection - General,Nature/Natural Resources,Nature,Nature/Ecology,Natural history
