Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac at 75

David A. Taylor

Fifteen years ago on a field trip with the Society of Environmental Journalists in Madison, Wisconsin, I visited the shack of Aldo Leopold, a pioneer of conservation, in Sauk County.

It was October 2009, and it was late afternoon when we got to the remote structure. This area inspired Leopold’s conservation ethic and his writing about nature. The late sunlight filtered through the fall leaves.

It was fascinating to visit by lamplight his raw-boned shrine to the study of nature, reading and writing. I found it moving to be in that space, surrounded by other writers with a similar curiosity.

Years later, I found myself making an episode about Leopold in our series with Spark Media, The People’s Recorder.

Leopold was between jobs and at a pivotal juncture in the 1930s. Late in that decade he contributed an essay on Conservation for publication in the WPA Guide to Wisconsin. This was a decade before his landmark book, A Sand County Almanac, came out after his death. In his 1930s essay describing the destruction of Wisconsin’s native forests and the dynamics with communities, writing for a broad audience, Leopold was finding his way toward his true voice.

We spoke with Leopold’s biographer, Curt Meine, who generously traced that time in Leopold’s growth as a writer. Curt also helped connect the dots for us in what came after Sand County Almanac, sharing Leopold’s influence on the budding environmental movement and in the creation of Earth Day in 1970.

I found it personally meaningful to help develop that episode. From the surprise of finding the fine-print acknowledgement of Leopold in the WPA guide’s front matter to pursuing the connections and context with Curt Meine, and helping to find sounds that helped us tell the story. All of that seemed to lead back to that visit to his shack in Wisconsin years ago, with the sun sinking into the trees as we left to return to Madison.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of A Sand County Almanac, a notable milestone from which to gauge the changes in how we view the landscape over the past century. You can join a Science Friday discussion of the book in November.

Before that, you might check out “A Voice for the Land,” episode 7 in The People’s Recorder.

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Sand County Almanac (Wikipedia)

The Aldo Leopold Nature Center is located near Madison, Wisconsin.