Companion to A Sand County Almanac: Interpretive and Critical Essays

1. Aldo Leopold’s Early Years

I *AIdo Leopold's Early Years CURT MEINE Ordinary eyes would have found litde to commend in the wasted acres that AIdo Leopold and his friend Ed Ochsner first looked over on that chilly day in January 1935. The land was all but barren . On one side of the road, young poppIes fringed a frozen marsh. On the other side, in what once were a farmer's fields, com stalks and sandburs stood stiffiy above the crust of snow. A line of gaunt elms led toward the remains of a burned-down farmhouse. Beyond, the Wisconsin River lay ice-locked in its winter channel. Yet, in Leopold's eyes, no land was without promise. "In country, as in people," he once wrote, "a plain exterior often conceals hidden riches, to perceive which requires much living in and with." I So with the abandoned Wisconsin farmstead: on that poorest ofland, in that deepest ofwinter, in those hardest oftimes, he saw possibilities. AIdo Leopold spent a lifetime sharpening his senses, recording his impressions, turning over within his mind the world he saw without. All ofus do the same, but few ofus have the desire, opportunity, or discipline to do it so thoroughly. Moreover, perception for Leopold was no mere aesthetic exercise, but an active , creative process. He took his findings and applied them, in word and deed, back to the world from which they came. He The research on which this essay is based was undertaken by the author while at the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His biography ofLeopold, Aldo Leopold: His Life andWork will be published in 1988 byThe University ofWisconsin Press. 17 CURT MEINE maintained the connection between the visionary and the practical that gives vitality to both, and provided that connection, as well, for an untold number ofcolleagues, students, listeners, and readers. Had Leopold grown up in other surroundings, or with other interests, he might have employed his perception as a poet, or a doctor, or an inventor, or an architect. Instead, he grew up in close contact with the outdoors, and his parents encouraged his love for "things natural, wild, and free" (vii). He became, finally, a naturalist. We label him as such, but we also need to qualify the label. We tend to think ofnaturalists as simple souls who content themselves in the call and response ofthe wild, who, blithely removed from human society, extol the natural wonders of their Selbornes, Waldens, Yosemites, Wisconsins. AIdo Leopold was not a simple man, however simple were his convictions. He lived only sixty-one years, but his birth and death bracketed a period of profound change on the American landscape and in our civilization . His words endure not because they ignore those changes, but because they account for them from a unique perspective. They speak to our need to know the place we live in and to understand the changes that bind the past to the future. They help us to appreciate what it is to be alive on this magnificent, improbable planet. Rand AIdo Leopold-the first name was dropped early onwas born in the Mississippi River town ofBurlington, Iowa, on January II, 1887. He was the oldest of Carl and Clara Leopold's four children, three boys and a girl. The family lived in a stately Victorian home atop Prospect Hill, one of several limestone bluffs surrounding Burlington and affording an impressive view ofthe Mississippi Valley to the east. AIdo's mother was a petite, pretty bundle of energy. Her father was Charles Starker, a native of Stuttgart who came to America in 18+8. A man of impressive talents, Starker prospered in Burlington as an architect, landscaper, engineer, banker, and businessman. He gave his daughter a private education, a love of natural beauty, and a thorough immersion in German romanticism . Her mother, Marie, taught her the social graces that 18 Aida Leopold's Early Years a young lady required and the homemaking skills-Clara was a particularly fine cook-that she would later employ as the Leopold family matriarch. Clara was intelligent, extroverted, mischievous, and no fragile flower; a talented ice skater, she enjoyed sports and loved to join her father in his continual gardening and groundskeeping activities on Prospect Hill. Despite hearing problems, she played piano well, and her greatest thrill, the highlight ofher year, was an annual trip to Chicago to attend the grand opera. This abiding...