Sand County Almanac

A Sand County Almanac is a collection of essays about nature written by author Aldo Leopold and compiled by his son after his death in 1949. Leopold considered the relationship of land to the people that live on it, the people who use it.

Leopold writes with a wry sense of humor, and he tends to look upon humans as doomed to always put self-interest above the interests of the natural world.

Here are some quotes from the book:

“There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.“

“Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things of lesser worth? The goose who trades his is soon a pile of feathers.”

“ I sit in happy meditation on my rock, pondering, while my line dries again, upon the ways of trout and men. How like fish we are: ready, nay eager, to seize upon whatever new thing some wind of circumstance shakes down upon the river of time!”

“ Like other great landowners, I have tenants. They are negligent about rents, but very punctilious about tenures. Indeed at every daybreak from April to July they proclaim their boundaries to each other, and so acknowledge, at least by inference, their fiefdom to me.”

“ Getting up too early is a vice habitual in horned owls, stars, geese, and freight trains.”

“ I have read many definitions of what is a conservationist, and written not a few myself, but I suspect that the best one is written not with a pen, but with an axe. It is a matter of what a man thinks about while chopping, or while deciding what to chop. A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke he is writing his signature on the face of his land.”

“ In October I like to walk among these blue plumes, rising straight and stalwart from the red carpet of dewberry leaves. I wonder whether they are aware of their state of well-being. I know only that I am.”

I can see why many people I know reread this book often.