Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf … I was young [when] … I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean a hunter’s paradise. But after seeing the green fire die [in a wolf’s eyes] I sensed that neither wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view … I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes—something known only to her and to the mountain. I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades. — Aldo Leopold, “A Sand County Almanac”
I return to Aldo Leopold after a brief mention last month. When I went back to Leopold’s “Thinking Like A Mountain” essay in his book “A Sand County Almanac,” published in 1949, I felt that his experiences, expressed in the long quote above, quicken one’s own responses to wildlife and wild lands.
In 1921, Aldo Leopold (January 11, 1887 – April 21, 1948), working as a forester in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest, conceived of the creation of a wilderness area not to be altered for human use. On June 3, 1924, the district forester, agreeing to the conception, signed the Gila Wilderness Area—500,000 acres in the Gila National Forest—into existence, the first such designation in the world. In 1935, Leopold was among the founders of The Wilderness Society, a band of conservationists dedicated to preserving America’s wildest places. At the time, forests and other wild lands were viewed merely as resources to be logged, mined, and used for other material exploits: not so different from the thinking and goals of many of our contemporaries.
In Aldo Leopold’s words:
We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we regard land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect … Perhaps such a shift of values can be achieved by reappraising things unnatural, tame, and confined in terms of things natural, wild, and free.
Underway, open for your participation at this moment and through March 8, free of charge, “Leopold Week 2024: Natural, Wild, and Free, March 1 – 8” is underway. See you there!
THIS AFTERNOON, March 2, 2 through 4 p.m.: Tickets available at the door for Berkshire Botanical Garden’s 27th Annual Winter Lecture with Fergus Garrett, “Biodiversity at Great Dixter, How a Flower Garden Can Support Some of the UK’s Most Threatened Species.” Location: Lenox High School, Lenox, MA. For information, visit Berkshire Botanical’s website.
