Book Review Of A Sand County Almanac
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January
In January of Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold follows the tracks of a skunk on an early Spring treatise through the wood to determine its destination and learn its purpose. As the trail leads him from underbrush to glen he observes myriad tales echoed in the landscape. He is privy to a field mouse as it scurries between the sun melted breaks in the subarctic cause ways which wind their way to his foodstores. He watches as a hawk sworrls above, and he likens to a king fisher. And he is atune to the stirrings of a squirrel from the pinkish urinations it had left behind as a marker to its pas snowy scriptures tell where the lattices of a rabbit and an owl had overlapped in a background of survivalof life.
Leopold is methodical in his observations, yet he preserves the child-like aspect of nature. His writings and descriptions posess a sort of wide eyed wonder that captures the innocence or purity of wilderness and reader, unlike Throeau, who is a bit more esoteric.
Here Leopold is a spectator of nature. As much a part of as he is apart from it. Not unlike a baseball fan without whom, the sport would not exist. I feel as though Leopold is aware of a remoteness As he is lead further the struggle of life is unveiled to him as that he like Thoreau is fishing the same stream of consciousness in hopes of closing the gap.
February
February brings Leopold to the harvesting of wood for a fire and acquaints it to understanding what separates a man of nature from a man of civilization. He sse how one who deos not cut his wood does not truly know what it is to be warm, and he describes fire as the realease of sunlight wehich has been absorbed by the oak during its lifetime.
As he cuts into the oak with his saw he correlates each layer penetrated to a period in mans history and then recalls each historical moment with passion and remorse. He uses the oak metaphorically as a recordkeeper of both natural history and anthropologic history with the growth rings as place marks.
In his essay for May in the “Sand County Almanac”, Leopold relates the story of the upland plover. In Wisconsin, he says, the arrival of the plover in May is the final proof that spring has arrived. The plover flies over 4000 mile to return from Argentina each year. The plover returns to lay eggs and bring up the chicks. The chicks are fully grown in 30 days and by August they will be able to fly. Leoplold says that in the early 1900s Wisconsin almost lost the plover to hunters and the post-victorian taste for plover-on-toast. He says,”The belated protection of the federal migratory bird laws came just in time.”
QUOTES:
“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. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”
“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 long known, but lately forgotten.”
The Alder Fork-A Fishing Idyl Describes fishing trip.