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Aldo Leopold's "A Sand County Almanac"

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Aldo Leopold's "A Sand County Almanac"

Sullivan
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Joined: Jan 12, 2008
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Posted 01/18/08 - 06:10 AM: Subject: Aldo Leopold's "A Sand County Almanac"	#1
I've just read part 1 of Aldo Leopold's "A Sand County Almanac." In it, Leopold - a naturalist - artistically accounts for historical events in Wisconsin pertaining to the environmental inhabitants, the habitat itself, man's relation (positive and [mostly] negative) to the ecosystem, and the transformations the environment undergoes in a year's time. The chapters are the months of the year, in each of which different species of plants or animals are described in some historical context and their behavioral mannerisms among one another and interaction with the rest of the environment. Now, I am a huge fan of Henry D. Thoreau, a well received naturalist. I have read much of his work. Leopold, I (and others like Sterling North) argue that Aldo Leopold is a better writer, and more importantly a better naturalist. The historical aspect of the book seems dull -- I know. I don't particularly like history; I never really did very well in it; it's boring. Leopold's historical account transcends history books. His rhetoric throughout the book is consistently powerful, particularly the way he uses personification (to the extent it's no longer noticed) to level all of the environment and what's contained to ourselves (humans are actually portrayed very poorly, as what I'd call a virus and a selfish one at that) to avoid the perspective of "This is us, that's THEM." Aldo Leopold's rhetoric and insight into society and environmental ethics in this book has established itself as THE staple to the field of Envrionmental Ethics, which developed in the 60's, though this book was written and published in 1949. Leopold is regarded as one of the three Gods of the field of Environmental Ethics (with Henry Thoreau and I forgot the third). Included in Leopold's poetic prose are piles and piles of profound insights into man's morality and involvement in the environmental crisis, social commentary that'll make you chuckle, and eye-stopping sentences you're forced to stare at. I'm the kind of guy that writes in his own books, underlining lines and such that I really like. I find with Thoreau to do this every couple of paragraphs. With Leopold I have multiple sections, sentences, and paragraphs underlined on every page. This is one of the few books in my reading life, which I'm reluctant to say is short, that I've started and completed in the same day. The only others were: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut and God's Debris by Scott Adams (the Dilbert cartoonist. offers a novel approach to the understanding of God and a dialectic rivalling Plato's work). If there's any questions or what have you, I'll be happy to attempt to answer them.
We exist in infinite infinities. You've already lived for an eternity. Changing Faces & Change The World Philosophy Tomorrow

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