Pre-Post week 4--Last look at Sand County Almanac

Pre-Post for week 4--

Respond to the readings in The Sand County Almanac "August" - "December," "The Marshland Elegy,” and "The Land Ethic."

First off, I'm sad to be finished with the book. It was a wonderful experience discovering so much about Sand County, Wisconsin. A significant amount of what I read was new information, but it was special to discover that we do have Sandhill Cranes in common: Neat! I'm with Paul in saying that the pictures added so much to the text. This essay book with photos has got to be the definitive edition of this book. I honestly can't imagine reading Aldo's lively descriptions without being able to see the extraordinary photos.

The focus of the "The Marshland Elegy" was, of course, the increasing disappearance of the sandhill crane.  And perhaps just as importantly, the disappearance of habitat for the crane and other wildlife that call the marsh home. Leopold deftly describes our society's problematic thinking when he writes, “To build a road is so much simpler than to think of what the country really needs.” And when he laments that “Solitude…is so far recognized as valuable only by ornithologists and cranes,” I’m about ready to cry.

If the “Marshland Elegy” was painful reading (and it was), then “The Land Ethic” was gut wrenching. He clearly identifies where we have come from—“Individual thinkers …have asserted that the despoliation of land is not only inexpedient but wrong. Society, however, has not yet affirmed their belief.”  In spite of his assertion that “…the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts,” he says we are too slow to get that “…the boundaries of the community include soils, waters, plants, and animals…the land.”  The part that breaks my heart most is that the people of God have missed that crucial connection. Our common cultural obsession with ease and self-indulgence blurred our vision and clogged our ears. We've all bought into progress--progress without counting the cost.

Leopold’s ending was too gentle and kind, and although I’m no fan of harshness (i.e., ought, should, and must), I ache that he did not ask more of us. He, of course, was living and writing in the late 1940’s, and there is no way Leopold could foresee how far we would miss the mark and how much worse we would do.  “Our problem,” he concluded, “is one of attitudes and implements…we are in need of gentler and more objective criteria for its (the shovel) successful use.”  Indeed, if only he had been listened to in significant and real ways back then.  Now, woe to us—mountain tops are gone.  Woe to us—marshes and glades are drained.  Woe to us--for not heeding truth written down in 1948 by a wise man in Sand County, Wisconsin.