Happy Birthday, Aldo!

Today is the 132nd anniversary of the birth of Aldo Leopold. We've visited the Aldo Leopold Center and, closer to our hearts, the Leopold "shack" a couple of times in the past few years. We don't remember how old we were when we first read A Sand County Almanac, probably during our college years or just before or after. We've reread it many times since. Our preferred edition, published by the Oxford University Press, includes Essays on Conservation and photographs by Michale Sewell.

main building, Aldo Leopold Center

Photo by J. Harrington

Aldo Leopold, Ian McHarg, and Donella Meadows are among those who have been major shapers of our perspective on the relationship among humans and nature. Throw in some Gene Hill, Frank Woolner, and John Gierach and we've largely covered the waterfront. Our parents took the family on outdoor day trips but were not really into camping, fishing or hunting. We think our early exposure to pony rides, swimming, and a few similar excursions got us started and, like Topsy, we "just growed."

"The Leopold Shack"

Photo by J. Harrington

Almost all of the close friends we've had over the years have been those with whom we've fished, or hunted, or both. Much of our professional career focused on environmental protection, restoration, and balancing the built environment with the natural one. Those, and related factors, may well explain why we've never been willing to accept a trade-off between jobs and the environment. Done properly, we can have both, just not necessarily in exactly the same place. We learned a lot from Aldo but we're still trying to learn to think like a mountain.

Above Pate Valley

By Gary Snyder

We finished clearing the last

Section of trail by noon,

High on the ridge-side

Two thousand feet above the creek

Reached the pass, went on

Beyond the white pine groves,

Granite shoulders, to a small

Green meadow watered by the snow,

Edged with Aspen—sun

Straight high and blazing

But the air was cool.

Ate a cold fried trout in the

Trembling shadows. I spied

A glitter, and found a flake

Black volcanic glass—obsidian—

By a flower. Hands and knees

Pushing the Bear grass, thousands

Of arrowhead leavings over a

Hundred yards. Not one good

Head, just razor flakes

On a hill snowed all but summer,

A land of fat summer deer,

They came to camp. On their

Own trails. I followed my own

Trail here. Picked up the cold-drill,

Pick, singlejack, and sack

Of dynamite.

Ten thousand years.

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