a sand county almanac and sketches here and there

Although influenced by the nature-as-utility argument (he was a farmer, after all), Leopold went on to reject Pinchot’s purely anthropocentric, economic determinism. Pinchot, controversially, advocated commodification of nature as human resource, in the belief (and I think mistaken), that humans would consent to abundance on the understanding that rewards are reaped economically. Leopold was a Yale forestry graduate, employed later by Gifford Pinchot’s newly formed USDA Forest Service.

Here, I introduce Leopold, the book in three sections, the “Land Ethic” and his implicit, yet broad, call for ecological literacy. They present a case for both a shift in ethical considerations of natural and technological worlds, and a cultivation of ecological literacy, in a multi-disciplinary sense, with consequential positive actions of humankind. Combined, the language and imagery don’t ostracise the reader but retain a strength of statement. The accompanying drawings by Charles W Schwartz, are perhaps undervalued by reviews in the past, and bring a sense of biophilia 3 firmly into the occasion. At the time, of course, there was no single word for it in English. “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.”2Īs someone who has had a lifetime’s passion for nature and the living world, I’m familiar with the strong emotion that is solastalgia, though I’m comforted this book intended to counter it. It is not beyond reason that those enlightened with understanding basic ecological principles should find emotional distress, solastalgia 1, in the destruction of such systems ~ home ~ as well as a profound sense of the illogic. Leopold bore close witness to human/nature discordancy, and his anger emerges from time to time. It is a shortish book of thoughtfully communicated knowledge, loaded with ideas and with a spine of steel. The process must have been, at once, difficult for them yet cathartic.

It was re-named Sand County Almanac, and the essays were edited by his son, Luna, friends and colleagues.

It’s an assembly of pieces originally intended by the author to be called, “Great Possessions.” Sadly, Leopold died unexpectedly a week after Oxford University Press accepted his submission. It was published in 1989, one hundred years after his birth and hosts a faithful introduction by Robert Finch. I own a well thumbed Special Commemorative edition of A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There, by Aldo Leopold.

A sand county almanac and sketches here and there