Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work

Ch. 5: Forest School (1906-1909)

5 Forest School (1906- 1909) ALES CHENEAUX in the summer of 1906, Aldo got his canoe. Carl Leopold finally gave in to Aldo's requests, and before long a large wooden crate arrived, which they opened right on the dock. Aldo beamed. His dream of entering the unmapped northland was now one long pull-stroke closer to reality. He quickly mastered the canoe, and then taught the rest of the family, treating his mother to moonlit rides on the bay, paddling forth with his brothers on fishing trips and camping expeditions along the Huron shore. The Les Cheneaux gang of teenagers-Aldo, Marie, Carl, Ballard Bradley, Gretchen Miller, the Clark girls-put the canoe to the test. Aldo eventually paid the canoe the ultimate compliment: "When I have paddled in it another year it will attain second honor among all my possessions-first place being, of course, for the old gun."! Aldo and Gretchen became aLes Cheneaux item. She was a member of the upper-class Lexington, Kentucky, contingent that summered at the club. A pleasant, sensible young woman, Gretchen had a down-to-earth quality that appealed to Aldo. She was the first serious object of his romantic intentions, enough so as to cause Clara some consternation. The "rumors of schooltime" came early for Aldo. He returned to New Haven in early September for a two-week course in surveying, his first forestry-related work. "I am ready to acknowledge now," he wrote to his mother, "that we did knock around a bit too much at night during the summer but nevertheless I cannot but call it the best vacation I have ever had."2 Carl Jr., too, left early for Lawrenceville, and Marie soon followed her brothers east to attend the Bennett School. When the cool equinox winds came over the bay, Carl Sr. was out after the ducks again, now with Frederic as his "head-assistant at the old game." Clara found herself alone in a very quiet shanty on a very quiet island. True to his resolution of the previous spring, Aldo arrived at New 62 Forest School Haven intent on working hard. He declared the surveying course "exactly to my liking, at least I feel as if I were learning something that counts, and learning it every day."3 He enjoyed surveying precisely because he was doing something, actually studying forestry and not just reading books. He signed up for classes in German, French, and composition, mechanics, mineralogy, and physical geography. He again took up running, and expressed a new desire to join a fraternity. With three Leopolds and assorted friends scattered about the East Coast, a crisscrossing network of correspondence formed to lay plans for attending one another's football games and dances. Elizabeth Clark and Gretchen Miller corresponded regularly with Aldo. He invited Dorothy Clark, another Burlington expatriate at Miss Bennett's School, to New Haven for the Yale-Princeton game. His austerity forgotten, he bought two Brooks Brothers suits, two more tailor-made shirts, and a pair of proper gentleman's shoes. (His mother responded, "Some years ago you were so extremely indifferent as to dress that I encouraged you to attach more importance to the subject. Now I am rather aghast at my complete success.")4 As the fall progressed, day trips to the woods were squeezed out of Aldo's schedule. Accounts financial and natural disappeared from his letters . What letters he did write were perfunctory. AIda's natural enthusiasm was missing; he was mired in "lange viele" days. On Thanksgiving, he did take a long walk alone into the rocks behind New Haven, arrived back late for dinner, foraged for leftovers, went to his room, and wrote his usual holiday letter home. It contained the only tramp account of the entire autumn . His mother and father enjoyed this "old-fashioned letter" that had "the same wilderness note as those which came . . . two years ago," but in truth, the similarity was only superficiaJ.5 The letter contained none of the vivid stories, lively descriptions, or detailed observations of the Connecticut countryside that the old ones did. The new Aldo just said that he found "numberless interesting things-geological, botanical, and what not. Everything went just great. After all one must plug and work twelve hours a day for a while before he can really enjoy things." He ended the letter on an uneasy note, allowing that "I am well content here in my room, apparently lonesome as blazes but in...