A Eulogy For A Dying Land

I am a picky reader. I want to be intrigued. I want to learn. I want something either deep or funny, but always entertaining, insightful, and well written. You can imagine that this leads to difficulties finding the right books to read. Sticking with authors I know and love helps, but that can become stale.

Recently, a friend mentioned that she was reading a book so good that she was pacing herself so as not to finish it too fast. I took a look and have to admit that the cover did not intrigue me one bit, and the name, A Sand County Almanac And Sketches Here and There....Well, who wants to read an almanac? Wait. Now that I think about that question I'm remembering that as a kid, I enjoyed perusing almanacs along with atlases, encyclopedias, and the Genus Book of World Records.

And so this unassuming classic by Aldo Leopold, a naturalist whose writings top even those of John Muir, wound up in my hands. I, too, am so mesmerized by his word choice and outlook on the death of the natural world and his tributes to that which remains thriving that I am savoring each section. Can't plow right through it...must save some more to engross myself in tomorrow.

Before sharing some of my favorite quotes, let me provide context. A Sand County Almanac was written mid-20th century by an educated ecologist who decided to get back to nature by moving his family to marginal farmland in rural Wisconsin. Though the land was under-performing in terms of mass food production, it was a cornucopia of wild flora and fauna derived inspiration. But while Leopold's land flourished in this sense, nearby lands reminded him of the destructive advancement of "progress" which destroys and makes uniform everything in its path.

Leopold pays homage to the last of wildflower breeds, dwindling bird populations, undervalued tree stocks, and all that is wild and struggling to keep a grip on the prairie before it is completely paved over and turned into cookie cutter farms and suburbs.

And so, here are some of my favorites. Favorites because of word choice, observation, or image conjured.

"How like fish we are: ready, nay eager, to seize upon whatever new thing some wind of circumstance shakes down upon the river of time! And how we rue our haste, finding the gilded morsel to contain a hook."

"The months of the year, from January up to June, are a geometric progression in the abundance of distractions."

"The gadgets of industry bring us more comforts than the pigeons did, but do they add as much to the glory of the spring?"

"Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things of lesser worth?"

"He who owns a veteran bur oak owns more than a tree. He owns a historical library, and a reserved seat in the theater of evolution." -- This quote comes from a section in which he follows the passing of time by connecting events to each ring in a felled tree.

"If I were to tell a preacher of the adjoining church that the road crew has been burning history books in his cemetery, under the the guise of mowing weeds, he would be amazed and uncomprehending. How could a weed be a book?" -- Again, Leopold shows how the natural world is connected to the past and holds the story of our evolution.

"Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language." -- And so it sometimes takes a deeper knowledge to appreciate the "ugly" species.

And my favorite passage, unfortunately, is too lengthy to type here, so please take a moment to travel to another page to read it.