Customer comments on this Youngstown Ohio Book
 A sublime experience, but not for everyone
I keep this book on my nightstand and read an essay or two after my pj's are on and before going to bed. My bookmark is a pencil for making notes in the margin when particularly wonderful passages are encountered. The margins are very full.
Aldo opens our eyes to worlds in our own backyards which have always existed but which have remained undiscovered due to our own dull-sightedness. I considered myself an avid nature-watcher, but the extent to which Mr. Leopold carries this hobby is humbling. He inspires any true fan to learn the names and habits of every tree, shrub, weed, thistle, bird, insect, and critter native to one's home county, and to hone one's journaling skills and master the talent of imagery and metaphor.
But, this book is not for everyone. I've read favorite passages to friends only to watch their eyes glaze with disinterest. If you're the outgoing, life-of-the-party, must-always-be the-center-of-attention type, then perhaps The DaVinci Code would be of interest. But if you enjoy solitary walks in the woods, canoe paddles on distant foggy lakes, or reading prose with your pj's on, then this is required reading.
The first of its kind, and still the best
"Thus always does history, whether of marsh or market place, end in paradox. The ultimate value in these marshes is wildness, and the crane is wildness incarnate. But all conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish." (from "Marshland Elegy")
"It must be poor life that achieves freedom from fear." This, from reflections on being caught on horseback during a lightning storm, is a comment on the "civilized" mindset that wanted all to be safe, and so feared and destroyed wildness.
These essays were written mostly in the 1940's, although some of them are about earlier times in the author's life. In a way, reading Aldo Leopold is like watching Humphrey Bogart in those old movies, with his smoking and tough-guy sexism. We understand these as disreputable today, but can put them in context. Likewise, Aldo Leopold was in many ways a typical countryman of his time and place. He loved to hunt and fish, and even reflexively shot wolves, like everyone else. He came to regret that, and in fact to realize that in the new era, where hunting and fishing have become mass recreations, that the old ways just don't work anymore. But they did in his day, and he does not retrospectively apologize for having been, in a sense, just another predator.
But he was also a college professor, and an expert naturalist and ecologist. In this book he is a poetic writer about nature and a loving reporter of all things wild. No matter where I lived I would love this book, but having lived not too far from his sand counties and walked his restored prairies makes it the sweeter.
Wonderful
Read Walden, then read Sand County Almanac. They might just change the way you think about the world.
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