Why Aldo Leopold ?

So why the land ethic inspired site name?  In gifting a copy of A Sand County Almanac (amazon link) to a friend from England I described Leopold as one of the three great voices in American Naturalist writing, alongside Thoreau, and Muir (with which some Scott’s may take issue).

If you’ve not read a Sand County Almanac, and you are reading this blog, stop and go take a run at it.  It’s a poetic tribute to the turn of the year, much set in Wisconsin, and it’s a far better use of your reading time than following my self-indulgent adventure.  If you haven’t read it lately, pick it up again and reread the closing chapter, the land ethic (I wouldn’t suggest you start here if you’ve not read the rest of the book, it’s thick, philosophical writing that shows that even  Ph.D in Forestry is a Doctor of Philosophy, you’ve got to know the man, and his connection to the land in his other chapters to want to wade through this treatise).

As I sit here at the turn of 2019, anticipating the start of my land ethic experiment, this book which the copyright tells me was published  70 years ago this closing essay could have been written last week. The issues resonate, the core questions around how our values are centered, our relations to the natural world, where our obligations begin and end, to each other, to the land, to the earth.  It’s a provoking treatise.

But Why Leopold’s ‘Land Ethic’ as the namesake for my experiment?

Thoreau is too easily dismissed as an urban romantic with some fine ideas, but a penchant for meals in town with his well heeled friends, rather than time hoeing his beans.  His experiment, and his writing, provokes action and thought but even in his idealized recounting it’s evident that this is a temporary lifestyle change, a bit like spending a 250k on a tiny house and leaving there for part of a year before returning to your job in Seattle.  A fine thing to do but not an experiment in long term sustainable living.

Muir also, has some connection to Wisconsin, his boyhood home.  As a long term (seemingly successful) transplant to the upper midwest it’s tempting to imagine that there’s something about this geography that shapes people.  There’s a beauty and appeal to the state that sits in the middle of three ecosystems with terrain both shaped, and spared, by glaciation. An attraction to a climate that is demanding enough to deserve attention and accomodation, but also forgiving enough to grow a good tomato.  Thinking back, unencumbered by careful research, it’s easy to imagine from both Muir’s writing, and Leopold;s, that Wisconsin in the early 1900’s was a land showing the signs of 100 years of ill use. And for a certain type of outdoors inclined young person, there remained enough delight in the outdoors, to also provoke dismay at it’s mistreatment.  This dismay seemed to lead Muir west, into the high country and the undisturbed wilderness and this childhood observation of an ecoystem so heavily trodden, provoked the passion for preservation of untrammelled wilderness that founded the Sierra club and inspired the preservation of the western national parks and the passionate but failed defence of the Hetch Hetchy valley.  Muir’s passion is inspiring but to me it’s inspiring in the way of the ascetic. His passion is protection and preservation which I fully respect but I myself am more inspired to pursue how can we live in harmony with, rather than protect and live apart from, the natural world. And so Leopold’s more pragmatic, agrarian and sportsperson leanings are more attractive and inspiring for my own experiment.  Can a family largely sustain themselves, sustainably, on 100 acres of paid-for land in the northern temperate latitudes?