#a sand county almanac

[uwmspeccoll]

A Sand County Feathursday

One of the most noteworthy books to come out of Wisconsin is A Sand County Almanac by the equally noteworthy Wisconsin naturalist and conservationist Aldo Leopold (1887-1948). Considered a landmark in the American conservation movement, A Sand County Almanac is a collection of essays mainly concerning the land around Leopold’s home in Sauk County, Wisconsin, that advocates the author’s idea of a "land ethic," or a responsible relationship between people and the land they inhabit.

Our copy is a first edition published in New York by Oxford University Press in 1949 with illustrations by the American wildlife artist and fellow conservationist Charles W. Schwartz (1914-1991). The book was published a year after Leopold’s death so he never got to witness its significant impact on the conservation and environmentalist movements. 

Schwartz made a special emphasis on depicting the avian inhabitants of Sauk County, and we show a few of those images here that include Canada Geese (Branta canadensis), Black-capped Chickadees (Poecile atricapillus), American Woodcocks (Scolopax minor), and a Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos). A couple of other species shown here are from Leopold’s visits to Mexico and the American southwest, Gambel's Quail (Callipepla gambelii) and Clark’s Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana).

The image of the chickadee being annoyed by its newly banded leg has a particularly charming description:

65290 was one of 7 chickadees constituting the ‘class of 1937.’ When he first entered our trap, he showed no visible evidence of genius. Like his classmates, his valor for suet was greater than his discretion. Like his classmates, he bit my finger while being taken out of the trap. When banded and released he fluttered up to a limb, pecked his new aluminum anklet in mild annoyance, and hurried away to catch up with the gang. It is doubtful whether he drew any philosophical deductions from his experience,  . . . for he was caught again three times that same winter. . . . By the fifth winter 65290 was the sole survivor of his generation. Signs of genius were still lacking, but of his extraordinary capacity for living, there was now historical proof.

Our copy of A Sand County Almanac is from the collection of another heralded Milwaukee-area environmentalist and activist, Lorrie Otto. 

View more Feathursday posts.

#Feathursday #Aldo Leopold #Charles W. Schwartz #A Sand County Almanac #Oxford University Press #Canada Goose #Black-capped Chickadee #American Woodcock #Mallard #Gambel's Quail #Clark's Nutcracker #Lorrie Otto #wildlife art #bird art #birds #birbs!

[lionfloss]

"Our grandfathers were less well-housed, well-fed, well-clothed than we are. The strivings by which they bettered their lot are also those which deprived us of pigeons. Perhaps we now grieve because we are not sure, in our hearts, that we have gained by the exchange. The gadgets of industry bring us more comforts than the pigeons did, but do they add as much to the glory of the spring?"

- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (1949)

#cryyyy #im not normally a quote poster #but i forgot one of my amazing high school teachers gifted me this book #and like specifically highlighted this quote because of a convo we had #while we were reading 1984 in his class #omg i loved him #he was like so old and adorable and everyone loved him #and im having a v emotional day #aldo leopold #quote #quotes #a sand county almanac

[hexkrona]

Currently reading “A Sand County Almanac” by Aldo Leopold. It’s no wonder his works are so well known. His works read poetically and paint vivid pictures while delivering deep themes delivered from the natural world around him. Glad I picked this up when I did.

#aldo leopold #a sand county almanac #books #livres #book recommendations #conservation #reclamation

[almightynewt]

Me reading Aldo leopold’s “a sand county almanac” while he talks about how the economic view of life is destroying both the ecosystem and our enjoyment of things because things have worth outside of money

#aldo leopold #a sand county almanac

[passengerpigeons]

The pine's new year begins in May, when the terminal bud becomes 'the candle.' Whoever coined that name for the new growth had subtlety in his soul. 'The candle' sounds like a platitudinous reference to obvious facts: the new shoot is waxy, upright, brittle. But he who lives with pines knows that candle has a deeper meaning, for at its tip burns the eternal flame that lights a path into the future. May after May my pines follow their candles skyward, each headed straight for the zenith, each meaning to get there if only there be years enough before the last trumpet blows. It is a very old pine who at last forgets which of his many candles is most important, and thus flattens his crown against the sky. You may forget, but no pine of your own planting will do sou in your lifetime.

Aldo Leopold. A Sand County Almanac, December: "Pines above the Snow"

#pine #aldo leopold #sand county almanac #pinus #nature writing

[floraleevee]

Reading books on ecology and conservation

#brought to you by: A Sand County Almanac turns 75 this year. #and: silent spring is over 60 #trying to read well-known books on my subject that’re meant for the public #(outside the scope of reading these in classes. which feels very different) #and I just. idk man. #I need to start seeing a therapist again

[doecrossing]

I let this dude borrow my copy of Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac back in AUGUST and now every time I try and hang out with him again he cancels or something gets in the way of him coming.... please I just want my book back.

#sand county almanac is one of my fav books :(( i dont wanna have to buy a new copy #he also has my copy of Green Halo by Erazim Kohák but i dont care abt that one as much #though i would still like it back #txt

[gasolineweirdo]

It is not often that cold-potato mathematics thus confirms the sentimental promptings of the bird-lover.

#aldo leopold a sand county almanac #endearing sentence

[hylianengineer]

I am increasingly convinced that ecology is a spiritual experience. If it's not, you're doing it wrong.

#hylian rambles #hylian does science #I'm reading A Sand County Almanac and my worldview is shifting (again) #the inherent value and interconnectedness of all living and nonliving things is so fucking beautiful #and we see and understand such a tony portion of it #i am overcome with the desire to go out into the most isolated and wild place i can find and just. wander. and stare at things. #i love to wander and stare at things #environmental science #environmental studies

[shinhati]

"There are some who can live without wild things and some who can not... Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech."

Aldo Leopold, 1948. A Sand County Almanac.

[uovoc]

Aldo Leopold, "The Sand Counties," A Sand County Almanac

#aldo leopold

[grubloved]

environmental rhetoric class booklist (updated periodically)

music

Joni Michell, Big Yellow Taxi

poetry

Wendell Berry, The Peace Of Wild Things (link here)

movies

Soylent Green (1973)

essays, articles

Aldo Leopold, Thinking Like A Mountain (pdf link here)

Monsanto Magazine, The Desolate Year (a response to silent spring - pdf here)

The New Silent Spring (newspaper article, link here)

Terry Tempest Williams, The Refuge Of Change (link here)

Christine L. Oravec & James G. Cantrill, Tracking the Elusive Jeremiad: The Rhetorical Character of American Environmental Discourse, from The Symbolic Earth

Robin L. Murray & Joseph K. Heumann, The First Eco-Disaster Film? from Film Quarterly (2006) 59

Winona Laduke, Ricekeepers (link here)

John E. Ikerd, Towards an Economics of Sustainability (link here)

Susan Owens, Is there a meaningful definition of sustainability? in Plant Genetic Resources (link to request full copy here)

fiction books

Edward Abbey, Monkey Wrench Gang

nonfiction books

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

ML Lincoln & Diane Sward Rapaport, Wrenched from the Land: Activists Inspired by Edward Abbey

Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle

Alan S. Gross, The Rhetoric of Science

M. Jimmie Killingsworth & Jacqueline S. Palmer, Ecospeak: Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America

Carl G Herndl & Stuart C Brown, Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America

Christine L. Oravec & James G. Cantrill, editors: The Symbolic Earth: Discourse and Our Creation of the Environment

Sidney I. Dobrin & Sean Morey, Ecosee: Image, Rhetoric, Nature

Mark Meister & Phyllis M. Japp, editors: Enviropop: Studies in Environmental Rhetoric and Popular Culture

Noël Sturgeon, Enviromentalism in Popular Culture: Gender, Race, Sexuality, and the Politics of the Natural

Simon Dresner, The Principles of Sustainability

Susan Schrepfer, Nature's Altars: Mountains, Gender, and American Environmentalism

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

#long post #birde bookclub #ecospeak & the rhetoric of science are pretty dense rhetorical theory but the rest are pretty easy reading #added braiding sweetgrass

[tomatoluvr69]

I hate the term theyfab I need to get off the internet forever and read aldo leopold’s Sand County Almanac which is Walden for bitches with discerning tastes

#like we are never gonna be free lol…

[peregrination-studies]

23 books in 2023

Thank you for the tag @the---hermit !! I did this challenge last year (available here), and finished all the books on my main list just in the nick of time! I’ve been planning this list out since about July of last year, and I’m really excited to get started on it! I’m also doing a few additional lists (ocean-themed, seasonally themed, etc.) that I might post throughout the year. We shall see!

Environmental science/ecology

1) Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold (also recommended by friends) (read Dec 2023)

2) The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs: Use Outdoor Clues to Find Your Way, Predict the Weather, Locate Water, Track Animals — And Other Forgotten Skills by Tristan Gooley (read December 2023)

3) Listening to Whales by Alexandra Morton (read April 2023)

4) The World is Blue by Sylvia Earle (read August 2023)

5) Being Salmon Being Human by Martin Lee Mueller (read May 2023)

Classics/Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge

6) Timeline by Michael Crichton (read Jan 2023)

7) The Awakening by Kate Chopin (read Nov 2023)

8) Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen (read Nov 2023)

9) A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (read Nov 2023)

10) Outlander by Diana Gabaldon (read March 2023)

Reading around the world

11) The Lost City of The Monkey God by Douglas Preston (Honduras) (read Nov 2023)

12) Alone on the Ice: The Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration by David Roberts (Antarctica) (read July 2023)

13) Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela (South Africa) (read Nov 2023)

14) Beyond the Last Oasis by Ted Edwards (Western Sahara) (read December 2023)

15) The Blue Sky by Galsan Tschinag and Katharina Rout (translator) (Mongolia) (read Nov 2023)

Architecture and Design

16) The New Carbon Architecture by Bruce King (read Feb 2023)

17) Design with Life: Biotech Architecture and Resilient Cities by Mitchell Joachim and Maria Aiolova (read Feb 2023)

18) The Alchemy of Architecture: Memories and Insights from Ken Tate by Ken Tate and Duke Tate (read Nov 2023)

19) Houses that Can Save the World by Courtenay Smith and Sean Topham (read Jan 2023)

20) Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby (read Dec 2023)

Books recommended by friends

21) The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (Read Jun 2023)

22) O Pioneers! by Willa Cather (Read Dec 2023)

23) Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (Read Jan 2023)

BONUS

24) Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan

25) Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand

26) Defenceless: Gli Ultimi Romantici by Giulia Vola (second year of this on my list bc I think I’ll FINALLY be able to have access to my copy again!! Woohoo!!)

27) Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

28) Backpacked: A Reluctant Trip Across Central America by Catherine Ryan Howard

I really love this challenge, so I want to share it far and wide with the world, BUT I also know not everyone wants to do this, so absolutely no pressure tagging: @contre-qui @daydreaming-optimist @sweetlikehoneysteve @notetaeker @humble-boness @silhouette-of-sarah @willowstea @cheshire-castle-library @deirdredoodle @a-students-lifebuoy @phd-on-fire @amareteur @frithams @carefortheearth @ckmstudies @theskittlemuffin and anyone else who wants to!

#23 books in 2023 #bookblr #book recs #books #tagged #tag game #the—-hermit #Cris #friends #mutuals #Studyblr #studyspo #reading #reading recs #book lists

[godzilla-reads]

🏞️ Think Like a Mountain by Aldo Leopold (Penguin Green Ideas Series # 20)

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

Aldo Leopold was a forester and conservationist whose writings on wildlife ecology sowed the seeds of contemporary environmental thought, cumulated in his book “A Sand County Almanac”.

“Think Like a Mountain” contains some of the essays from Leopold’s book, finishing off the Penguin Green Ideas Series. I read the first two books in the series, got overwhelmed by the third, so I decided to start at the end. I had already read “A Sand County Almanac” and this is a great condensed version of the highlights from the book. It felt a little disjointed near the end, not really getting a “finis” feeling at the last sentiments, but I still enjoyed revisiting Leopold’s writing.

My favorite essay was the titular “Thinking Like a Mountain”, which is a very poignant reflection on the war on wolves in the United States.

“Perhaps this is behind Thoreau’s dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived by men.”

#godzilla reads #think like a mountain #aldo leopold #book review #penguin green ideas #penguin books #nature books #blue books #books and dogs #my pets #booklr #bookworm #reading #bookish #book blog

[miasmaticinfection]

November is, for many reasons, the month for the axe.

A sand county almanac