Background Image

...

Conservationists Have, I Fear, Adopted The Pedagogical Method Of The Prophets: We Mutter Darkly About Impending Doom If People Don't Mend Their Ways. The Doom Is Impending, All Right; No One Can Be An Ecologist, Even An Amateur One, Without Seeing It. But Do People Mend Their Ways For Fear Of Calamity? I Doubt It. They Are More Likely To Do It Out Of Pure Curiosity And Interest.

-Aldo Leopold

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Conservationists Have, I Fear,

Aldo Leopold

...

Conservationists Have, I Fear, Adopted The Pedagogical Method Of The Prophets: We Mutter Darkly About Impending Doom If People Don't Mend Their Ways. The Doom Is Impending, All Right; No One Can Be An Ecologist, Even An Amateur One, Without Seeing It. But Do People Mend Their Ways For Fear Of Calamity? I Doubt It. They Are More Likely To Do It Out Of Pure Curiosity And Interest.

Views: 7

Topic

More From Aldo Leopold

Hemispheric Solidarity Is New Among Statesmen, But Not Among The Feathered Navies Of The Sky.

I Confess My Own Leisure To Be Spent Entirely In Search Of Adventure, Without Regard To Prudence, Profit, Self Improvement, Learning, Or Any Other Serious Thing.

The Worthiness Of Any Cause Is Not Measured By Its Clean Record, But By Its Readiness To See The Blots When They Are Pointed Out, And To Change Its Mind.

We Americans, In Most States At Least, Have Not Yet Experienced A Bear-less, Eagle-less, Cat- Less, Wolf-less Woods. Germany Strove For Maximum Yields Of Both Timber And Game And Got Neither.

Like Winds And Sunsets, Wild Things Were Taken For Granted Until Progress Began To Do Away With Them

If We Lose Our Wilderness, We Have Nothing Left Worth Fighting For.

Too Much Safety Seems To Yield Only Danger In The Long Run.

Acts Of Creation Are Ordinarily Reserved For Gods And Poets, But Humbler Folk May Circumvent This Restriction If They Know How. To Plant A Pine, For Example, One Need Be Neither God Nor Poet; One Need Only Own A Shovel. By Virtue Of This Curious Loophole In The Rules, Any Clodhopper May Say: Let There Be A Tree - And There Will Be One.

No Farmer-sportsman Group Is Stronger Than The Ties Of Mutual Confidence And Enthusiasm Which Bind Its Members.

Harmony With Land Is Like Harmony With A Friend; You Cannot Cherish His Right Hand And Chop Off His Left.

Conservation Is Getting Nowhere Because It Is Incompatible With Our Abrahamic Concept Of Land. We Abuse Land Because We Regard It As A Commodity Belonging To Us. When We See Land As A Community To Which We Belong, We May Begin To Use It With Love And Respect. There Is No Other Way For Land To Survive The Impact Of Mechanized Man, Nor For Us To Reap From It The Aesthetic Harvest It Is Capable, Under Science, Of Contributing To Culture

I Know A Painting So Evanescent That It Is Seldom Viewed At All Except By Some Wandering Deer. It Is A River Who Wields The Brush And It Is The Same River Who Before I Can Bring My Friends To View His Work Erases It Forever From Human View. After That It Exists Only In My Mind's Eye.

Conservation Is A Positive Exercise Of Skill And Insight, Not Merely A Negative Exercise Of Abstinence And Caution.

I Now Suspect That Just As A Deer Herd Lives In Mortal Fear Of Its Wolves, So Does A Mountain Live In Mortal Fear Of Its Deer. And Perhaps With Better Cause, For While A Buck Pulled Down By Wolves Can Be Replaced In Two Or Three Years, A Range Pulled Down By Too Many Deer May Fail Of Replacement In As Many Decades.

Wildlife Administration, In This Respect, Is Not Yet A Profession.

When Some Remote Ancestor Of Ours Invented The Shovel, He Became A Giver: He Could Plant A Tree. And When The Axe Was Invented, He Became A Taker: He Could Chop It Down. Whoever Owns Land Has Thus Assumed, Whether He Knows It Or Not, The Divine Functions Of Creating And Destroying Plants.

Wilderness Is A Continuous Stretch Of Country Preserved In Its Natural State, Open To Lawful Hunting And Fishing, Big Enough To Absorb A Two Weeks' Pack Trip, And Kept Devoid Of Roads, Artificial Trails, Cottages, Or Other Works Of Man.

The Landscape Of Any Farm Is The Owner's Portrait Of Himself.

We All Strive For Safety, Prosperity, Comfort, Long Life, And Dullness.

A Profession Is A Body Of Men Who Voluntarily Measure Their Work By A Higher Standard Than Their Clients Demand. To Be Professionally Acceptable, A Policy Must Be Sound As Well As Salable. Wildlife Administration, In This Respect, Is Not Yet A Profession.

Only Economists Mistake Physical Opulence For Riches.

The Drama Of The Sky Dance Is Enacted Nightly On Hundreds Of Farms, The Owners Of Which Sigh For Entertainment, But Harbor The Illusion That It Is To Be Sought In Theaters. They Live On The Land, But Not By The Land.

No One Would Rather Hunt Woodcock In October Than I, But Since Learning Of The Sky Dance I Find Myself Calling One Or Two Birds Enough. I Must Be Sure That, Come April, There Be No Dearth Of Dancers In The Sunset Sky.

A Conservationist Is One Who Is Humbly Aware That With Each Stroke [of The Axe] He Is Writing His Signature On The Face Of His Land.

Wilderness Is The Very Stuff America Is Made Of.

A Peculiar Virtue In Wildlife Ethics Is That The Hunter Ordinarily Has No Gallery To Applaud Or Disapprove Of His Conduct

We Stand Guard Over Works Of Art, But Species Representing The Work Of Aeons Are Stolen From Under Our Noses

Once You Learn To Read The Land, I Have No Fear Of What You Will Do To It, Or With It. And I Know Many Pleasant Things It Will Do To You.

The Wind That Makes Music In November Corn Is In A Hurry. The Stalks Hum, The Loose Husks Whisk Skyward In Half-playing Swirls, And The Wind Hurries On.... A Tree Tries To Argue, Bare Limbs Waving, But There Is No Detaining The Wind.

Like All Real Treasures Of The Mind, Perception Can Be Split Into Infinitely Small Fractions Without Losing Its Quality. The Weeds In A City Lot Convey The Same Lesson As The Redwoods; The Farmer May See In His Cow-pasture What May Not Be Vouchsafed To The Scientist Adventuring In The South Seas.

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! And How We Rue Our Haste, Finding The Gilded Morsel To Contain A Hook!

All Ethics So Far Evolved Rest Upon A Single Premise: That The Individual Is A Member Of A Community Of Interdependent Parts.

All Ethics So Far Evolved Rest Upon A Single Premise: That The Individual Is A Member Of A Community Of Interdependent Parts. . . The Land Ethic Simply Enlarges The Boundaries Of The Community To Include Soils, Waters, Plants, And Animals, Or Collectively: The Land.

It Must Be Poor Life That Achieves Freedom From Fear.

No Important Change In Ethics Was Ever Accomplished Without An Internal Chage In Our Intellectual Emphasis, Loyalties, Affections, And Convictions.

It Is Inconceivable To Me That An Ethical Relation To Land Can Exist Without Love, Respect, And Admiration For Land, And A High Regard For Its Value. By Value, I Of Course Mean Something Far Broader Than Mere Economic Value; I Mean Value In The Philosophical Sense.

Every Region Should Retain Representative Samples Of Its Original Or Wilderness Condition, To Serve Science As A Sample Of Normality. Just As Doctors Must Study Healthy People To Understand Disease, So Must The Land Sciences Study The Wilderness To Understand Disorders Of The Land-mechanism.

Agricultural Science Is Largely A Race Between The Emergence Of New Pests And The Emergence Of New Techniques For Their Control.

A Thing Is Right When It Tends To Preserve The Integrity, Stability And Beauty Of The Biotic Community. It Is Wrong When It Tends Otherwise.

Wilderness Is A Resource Which Can Shrink But Not Grow. Invasions Can Be Arrested Or Modified In A Manner To Keep An Area Usable Either For Recreation, Science Or For Wildlife, But The Creation Of New Wilderness In The Full Sense Of The Word Is Impossible. It Follows, Then, That Any Wilderness Program Is A Rearguard Action, Through Which Retreats Are Reduced To A Minimum.

Whoever Invented The Word 'grace' Must Have Seen The Wing-folding Of The Plover.

What Conservation Education Must Build Is An Ethical Underpinning For Land Economics And A Universal Curiosity To Understand The Land Mechanism. Conservation May Then Follow.

Conservation Viewed In Its Entirety, Is The Slow And Laborious Unfolding Of A New Relationship Between People And Land.

New Relationship

He Who Searches For Spring With His Knees In The Mud Finds It, In Abundance.

Man Brings All Things To The Test Of Himself, And This Is Notably True Of Lightning.

There Are Two Things That Interest Me: The Relation Of People To Each Other, And The Relation Of People To Land.

To Those Devoid Of Imagination A Blank Place On The Map Is A Useless Waste; To Others, The Most Valuable Part.

The Problem, Then, Is How To Bring About A Striving For Harmony With Land Among A People Many Of Whom Have Forgotten There Is Any Such Thing As Land, Among Whom Education And Culture Have Become Almost Synonymous With Landlessness. This Is The Problem Of Conservation Education.

Bread And Beauty Grow Best Together. Their Harmonious Integration Can Make Farming Not Only A Business But An Art; The Land Not Only A Food-factory But An Instrument For Self-expression, On Which Each Can Play Music To His Own Choosing.

There Is, As Yet, No Sense Of Pride In The Husbandry Of Wild Plants And Animals, No Sense Of Shame In The Proprietorship Of A Sick Landscape. We Tilt Windmills In Behalf Of Conservation In Convention Halls And Editorial Offices, But On The Back Forty We Disclaim Even Owning A Lance.

The Modern Dogma Is Comfort At Any Cost.

Every Farm Woodland, In Addition To Yielding Lumber, Fuel And Posts, Should Provide Its Owner A Liberal Education. This Crop Of Wisdom Never Fails, But It Is Not Always Harvested.

The Most Important Characteristic Of An Organism Is That Capacity For Internal Self-renewal Known As Health. There Are Two Organisms Whose Processes Of Self-renewal Have Been Subjected To Human Interference And Control. One Of These Is Man Himself (medicine And Public Health). The Other Is Land (agriculture And Coservation). The Effort To Control The Health Of Land Has Not Been Very Successful.

But Wherever The Truth May Lie, This Much Is Crystal-clear: Our Bigger-and-better Society Is Now Like A Hypochondriac, So Obsessed With Its Own Economic Health As To Have Lost The Capacity To Remain Healthy. . . . Nothing Could Be More Salutary At This Stage Than A Little Healthy Contempt For A Plethora Of Material Blessings.

The Art Of Land Doctoring Is Being Practiced With Vigor, But The Science Of Land Health Is Yet To Be Born.

Civilization Has So Cluttered This Elemental Man-earth Relationship With Gadgets And Middlemen That Awareness Of It Is Growing Dim. We Fancy That Industry Supports Us, Forgetting What Supports Industry.

We Console Ourselves With The Comfortable Fallacy That A Single Museum Piece Will Do, Ignoring The Clear Dictum Of History That A Species Must Be Saved In Many Places If It Is To Be Saved At All.

There Are Degrees And Kinds Of Solitude. I Know Of No Solitude So Secure As One Guarded By A Spring Flood; Nor Do The Geese, Who Have Seen More Kinds And Degrees Of Aloneness Than I Have.

We Can Be Ethical Only In Relation To Something We Can See, Feel, Understand, Love, Or Otherwise Have Faith In.

Our Remnants Of Wilderness Will Yield Bigger Values To The Nation's Character And Health Than They Will To Its Pocketbook, And To Destroy Them Will Be To Admit That The Latter Are The Only Values That Interest Us.

It Is In Midwinter That I Sometimes Glean From My Pines... A Curious Transfusion Of Courage.

The Outstanding Scientific Discovery Of The Twentieth Century Is Not Television, Or Radio, But Rather The Complexity Of The Land Organism.

I Do Not Imply That This Philosophy Of Land Was Always Clear To Me. It Is Rather The End Result Of A Life Journey.

We Realize The Indivisibility Of The Earth - Its Soil, Mountains, Rivers, Forests, Climate, Plants, And Animals - And Respect It Collectively Not Only As A Useful Servant But As A Living Being, Vastly Less Alive Than Ourselves In Degree, But Vastly Greater Than Ourselves In Time And Space - A Being That Was Old When The Morning Stars Sang Together, And When The Last Of Us Has Been Gathered Unto His Fathers, Will Still Be Young.

There Are Some Who Can Live Without Wild Things, And Some Who Cannot. For Us Of The Minority, The Opportunity To See Geese Is More Important Than Television, And The Chance To Find A Pasque-flower Is A Right As Inalienable As Free Speech.

Our Tools Are Better Than We Are, And Grow Better Faster Than We Do. They Suffice To Crack The Atom, To Command The Tides, But They Do Not Suffice For The Oldest Task In Human History, To Live On A Piece Of Land Without Spoiling It.

One Of The Penalties Of An Ecological Education Is That One Lives Alone In A World Of Wounds. Much Of The Damage Inflicted On Land Is Quite Invisible To Laymen. An Ecologist Must Either Harden His Shell And Make Believe That The Consequences Of Science Are None Of His Business, Or He Must Be The Doctor Who Sees The Marks Of Death In A Community That Believes Itself Well And Does Not Want To Be Told Otherwise.

Barring Love And War, Few Enterprises Are Undertaken With Such Abandon, Or By Such Diverse Individuals, Or With So Paradoxical A Mixture Of Appetite And Altruism, As That Group Of Avocations Known As Outdoor Recreation. It Is, By Common Consent, A Good Thing For People To Get Back To Nature. But Wherein Lies The Goodness, And What Can Be Done To Encourage Its Pursuit?

This Song Of The Waters Is Audible To Every Ear, But There Is Other Music In These Hills, By No Means Audible To All. On A Still Night, When The Campfire Is Low And The Pleiades Have Climbed Over Rimrocks, Sit Quietly And Listen, And Think Hard Of Everything You Have Seen And Tried To Understand. Then You May Hear It - A Vast Pulsing Harmony - Its Score Inscribed On A Thousand Hills, Its Notes The Lives And Deaths Of Plants And Animals, Its Rhythms Spanning The Seconds And The Centuries.

Recreational Development Is A Job Not Of Building Roads Into Lovely Country, But Of Building Receptivity Into The Still Unlovely Human Mind.

In Our Attempt To Make Conservation Easy, We Have Made It Trivial.

There Are Men Charged With The Duty Of Examining The Construction Of The Plants, Animals, And Soils Which Are The Instruments Of The Great Orchestra. These Men Are Called Professors. Each Selects One Instrument And Spends His Life Taking It Apart And Describing Its Strings And Sounding Boards. This Process Of Dismemberment Is Called Research. The Place For Dismemberment Is Called A University.

I Shall Now Confess To You That None Of Those Three Trout Had To Be Beheaded, Or Folded Double, To Fit Their Casket. What Was Big Was Not The Trout, But The Chance. What Was Full Was Not My Creel, But My Memory.

If We Lose Our Wilderness, We Have Nothing Left, In My Opinion, Worth Fighting For; Or To Be More Exact, A Completely Industrialized United States Is Of No Consequence To Me.

No Matter How Intently One Studies The Hundred Little Dramas Of The Woods And Meadows, One Can Never Learn All The Salient Facts About Any One Of Them.

What Avail Are Forty Freedoms Without A Blank Spot On The Map?

What More Delightful Avocation Than To Take A Piece Of Land And By Cautious Experimentation To Prove How It Works. What More Substantial Service To Conservation Than To Practice It On One's Own Land?

The Road To Conservation Is Paved With Good Intentions That Often Prove Futile, Or Even Dangerous, Due To A Lack Of Understanding Of Either Land Or Economic Land Use.

All History Consists Of Successive Excursions From A Single Starting-point, To Which Man Returns Again And Again To Organize Yet Another Search For A Durable Scale Of Values.

The First Law Of Intelligent Tinkering Is To Save All The Parts

High Horns, Low Horns, Silence, And Finally A Pandemonium Of Trumpets, Rattles, Croaks, And Cries That Almost Shakes The Bog With Its Nearness ... A New Day Has Begun On The Crane Marsh. A Sense Of Time Lies Thick And Heavy On Such A Place ... Our Ability To Perceive Quality In Nature Begins, As In Art, With The Pretty. It Expands Through Successive Stages Of The Beautiful To Values As Yet Uncaptured By Language.

Only The Mountain Has Lived Long Enough To Listen Objectively To The Howl Of The Wolf.

There Is Yet No Ethic Dealing With Man's Relation To Land And To The Animals And Plants Which Grow Upon It. Land, Like Odysseus' Slave-girls, Is Still Property. The Land-relation Is Still Strictly Economic, Entailing Privileges But Not Obligations.

Wildflower Corners Are Easy To Maintain, But Once Gone, They Are Hard To Rebuild.

Wilderness Is The Raw Material Out Of Which Man Has Hammered The Artifact Called Civilization.

An Oak Is No Respecter Of Persons.

That The Situation Appears Hopeless Should Not Prevent Us From Doing Our Best.

One Of The Penalties Of An Ecological Education Is That One Lives Alone In A World Of Wounds.

There Can Be No Doubt That A Society Rooted In The Soil Is More Stable Than One Rooted In Pavements.

We Shall Never Achieve Harmony With Land, Any More Than We Shall Achieve Absolute Justice Or Liberty For People. In These Higher Aspirations, The Important Thing Is Not To Achieve But To Strive.

Harmony With Land Is Like Harmony With A Friend; You Cannot Cherish His Right Hand And Chop Off His Left. That Is To Say, You Cannot Love Game And Hate Predators; You Cannot Conserve The Waters And Waste The Ranges; You Cannot Build The Forest And Mine The Farm. The Land Is One Organism.

Six Days Shalt Thou Paddle And Pack, But On The Seventh Thou Shall Wash Thy Socks.

Nonconformity Is The Highest Evolutionary Attainment Of Social Animals.

In Country, As In People, A Plain Exterior Often Conceals Hidden Riches, To Perceive Which Requires Much Living In And With.

When I Call To Mind My Earliest Impressions, I Wonder Whether The Process Ordinarily Referred To As Growing Up Is Not Actually A Process Of Growing Down; Whether Experience, So Much Touted Among Adults As The Thing Children Lack, Is Not Actually A Progressive Dilution Of The Essentials By The Trivialities Of Living.

Wilderness Is A Resource Which Can Shrink But Not Grow... The Creation Of New Wilderness In The Full Sense Of The Word Is Impossible.

For One Species To Mourn The Death Of Another Is A New Thing Under The Sun.

I Have Purposely Presented The Land Ethic As A Product Of Social Evolution Because Nothing So Important As An Ethic Is Ever 'written'… It Evolves In The Minds Of A Thinking Community.

To Look Into The Eyes Of A Wolf Is To See Your Own Soul - Hope You Like What You See.

When We See Land As A Community To Which We Belong, We May See It With Love And Respect. - Perhaps Such A Shift Of Values Can Be Achieved By Reappraising Things Unnatural, Tame, And Confined In Terms Of Things Natural, Wild, And Free.

Teach The Student To See The Land, Understand What He Sees, And Enjoy What He Understands.

Keeping Records Enhances The Pleasure Of The Search And The Chance Of Finding Order And Meaning In These Events.

Conservationists Have, I Fear, Adopted The Pedagogical Method Of The Prophets: We Mutter Darkly About Impending Doom If People Don't Mend Their Ways. The Doom Is Impending, All Right; No One Can Be An Ecologist, Even An Amateur One, Without Seeing It. But Do People Mend Their Ways For Fear Of Calamity? I Doubt It. They Are More Likely To Do It Out Of Pure Curiosity And Interest.

The Richest Values Of Wilderness Lie Not In The Days Of Daniel Boone, Nor Even In The Present, But Rather In The Future.

A River Or Stream Is A Cycle Of Energy From Sun To Plants To Insects To Fish. It Is A Continuum Broken Only By Humans.

Then Came The Gadgeteer, Otherwise Known As The Sporting-goods Dealer. He Has Draped The American Outdoorsman With An Infinity Of Contraptions, All Offered As Aids To Self-reliance, Hardihood, Woodcraft, Or Marksmanship, But Too Often Functioning As Substitutes For Them. Gadgets Fill The Pockets, They Dangle From Neck And Belt. The Overflow Fills The Auto-trunk And Also The Trailer. Each Item Of Outdoor Equipment Grows Lighter And Often Better, But The Aggregate Poundage Becomes Tonnage.

Science Contributes Moral As Well As Material Blessings To The World. Its Great Moral Contribution Is Objectivity, Or The Scientific Point Of View. This Means Doubting Everything Except Facts; It Means Hewing To The Facts, Let The Chips Fall Where They May.

Prudence Never Kindled A Fire In The Human Mind; I Have No Hope For Conservation Born Of Fear.

Wilderness, Then, Assumes Unexpected Importance As A Laboratory For The Study Of Land - Health.

Land Is Not Merely Soil, It Is A Fountain Of Energy Flowing Through A Circuit Of Soils, Plants And Animals.

The Real Jewel Of My Disease-ridden Woodlot Is The Prothonotary Warbler. ... The Flash Of His Gold-and-blue Plumage Amid The Dank Decay Of The June Woods Is In Itself Proof That Dead Trees Are Transmuted Into Living Animals, And Vice Versa.

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.

How Would You Like To Have A Thousand Brilliantly Colored Cliff Swallows Keeping House In The Eaves Of Your Barn, And Gobbling Up Insects Over Your Farm At The Rate Of 100,000 Per Day? There Are Many Wisconsin Farmsteads Where Such A Swallow-show Is A Distinct Possibility.

The Rich Diversity Of The World's Cultures Reflects A Corresponding Diversity In The Wilds That Gave Them Birth.

My Dog Does Not Care Where Heat Comes From, But He Cares That It Comes, And Soon. Indeed He Considers My Ability To Make It Come As Something Magical, For When I Rise In The Coal Black Pre-dawn And Kneel By The Hearth To Make A Fire, He Pushes Himself Blandly Between Me And The Kindling Splits I Have Laid In The Ashes, And I Must Touch A Match To Them By Poking It Between His Legs. Such Faith , I Suppose, Is The Kind That Moves Mountains.

Hydrologists Have Demonstrated That The Meanderings Of A Creek Are A Necessary Part Of The Hydrologic Functioning. The Flood Plain Belongs To The River. The Ecologist Sees Clearly That For Similar Reasons We Can Get Along With Less Channel Improvement On Round River.

The Sweetest Hunts Are Stolen. To Steal A Hunt, Either Go Far Into The Wilderness Where No One Has Been, Or Else Find Some Undiscovered Place Under Everybody's Nose

On Motionless Wing They Emerge From The Lifting Mists, Sweep A Final Arc Of Sky, And Settle In Clangorous Descending Spirals To Their Feeding Grounds. A New Day Has Begun On The Crane Marsh.

Wilderness Areas Are First Of All A Series Of Sanctuaries For The Primitive Arts Of Wilderness Travel, Especially Canoeing And Packing.

At First Blush I Am Tempted To Conclude That A Satisfactory Hobby Must Be In Large Degree Useless, Inefficient, Laborious, Or Irrelevant.

Conservation Will Ultimately Boil Down To Rewarding The Private Landowner Who Conserves The Public Interest.

Public Interest

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 Wildness Is The Salvation Of The World.

To Those Who Know The Speech Of Hills And Rivers Straightening A Stream Is Like Shipping Vagrants—a Very Successful Method Of Passing Trouble From One Place To The Next. It Solves Nothing In Any Collective Sense.

I Am Asserting That Those Who Love The Wilderness Should Not Be Wholly Deprived Of It, That While The Reduction Of The Wilderness Has Been A Good Thing, Its Extermination Would Be A Very Bad One, And That The Conservation Of Wilderness Is The Most Urgent And Difficult Of All The Tasks That Confront Us, Because There Are No Economic Laws To Help And Many To Hinder Its Accomplishment.

The Elemental Simplicities Of Wilderness Travel Were Thrills. They Represented Complete Freedom To Make Mistakes. The Wilderness Gave Those Rewards And Penalties, For Wise And Foolish Acts Against Which Civilization Has Built A Thousand Buffers.

Having To Squeeze The Last Drop Of Utility Out Of The Land Has The Same Desperate Finality As Having To Chop Up The Furniture To Keep Warm.

Health Is The Capacity Of The Land For Self-renewal.

Is It Possible To Preserve The Element Of Unknown Places In Our National Life? Is It Practicable To Do So, Without Undue Loss In Economic Values? I Say 'yes' To Both Questions. But We Must Act Vigorously And Quickly, Before The Remaining Bits Of Wilderness Have Disappeared.

Our Grandfathers Were Less Well-housed, Well-fed, Well-clothed Than We Are. The Strivings By Which They Bettered Their Lot Are Also Those Which Deprived Us Of [passenger] Pigeons. Perhaps We Now Grieve Because We Are Not Sure, In Our Hearts, That We Have Gained By The Exchange. The Gadgets Of Industry Bring Us More Comforts Than The Pigeons Did, But Do They Add As Much To The Glory Of The Spring?

There Is Value In Any Experience That Exercises Those Ethical Restraints Collectively Called Sportsmanship.

Examine Each Question In Terms Of What Is Ethically And Aesthetically Right, As Well As What Is Economically Expedient.

To Build A Road Is So Much Simpler Than To Think Of What The Country Really Needs.

Man Always Kills The Thing He Loves, And So We The Pioneers Have Killed Our Wilderness. Some Say We Had To. Be That As It May, I Am Glad I Shall Never Be Young Without Wild Country To Be Young In. Of What Avail Are Forty Freedoms Without A Blank Spot On The Map?

If In A City We Had Six Vacant Lots Available To The Youngsters Of A Certain Neighborhood For Playing Ball, It Might Be "development" To Build Houses On The First, And The Second, And The Third, And The Fourth, And Even The Fifth, But When We Build Houses On The Last One, We Forget What Houses Are For.

The Land-relation Is Still Strictly Economic, Entailing Privileges But Not Obligations

A Land Ethic...reflects The Existence Of An Ecological Conscience, And This In Turn Reflects A Conviction Of Individual Responsibility For The Health Of The Land. Health Is The Capacity Of The Land For Self-renewal. Conservation Is Our Effort To Understand And Preserve This Capacity.

We Abuse Land Because We Regard It As A Commodity Belonging To Us. When We See Land As A Community To Which We Belong, We May Begin To Use It With Love And Respect.

Ethical Behavior Is Doing The Right Thing When No One Else Is Watching- Even When Doing The Wrong Thing Is Legal.

Tell Me Of What Plant-birthday A Man Takes Notice, And I Shall Tell You A Good Deal About His Vocation, His Hobbies, His Hay Fever, And The General Level Of His Ecological Education.

Is Education Possibly A Process Of Trading Awareness For Things Of Lesser Worth? The Goose Who Trades His Is Soon A Pile Of Feathers.

Our Children Are Our Signature To The Roster Of History; Our Land Is Merely The Place Our Money Was Made. There Is As Yet No Social Stigma In The Possession Of A Gullied Farm, A Wrecked Forest, Or A Polluted Stream, Provided The Dividends Suffice To Send The Youngsters To College. Whatever Ails The Land, The Government Will Fix It.

Land Health Is The Capacity For Self-renewal In The Soils, Waters, Plants, And Animals That Collectively Comprise The Land.

Wilderness Is A Resource Which Can Shrink But Not Grow.

Never Did We Plan The Morrow, For We Had Learned That In The Wilderness Some New And Irresistible Distraction Is Sure To Turn Up Each Day Before Breakfast. Like The River, We Were Free To Wander.

Only The Most Uncritical Minds Are Free From Doubt.

The Oldest Task In Human History: To Live On A Piece Of Land Without Spoiling It.

Relegating Grizzlies To Alaska Is About Like Relegating Happiness Heaven; One May Never Get There.

Time Was When Education Moved Toward Soil, Not Away From It.

...to Any One For Whom Wild Things Are Something More Than A Pleasant Diversion, (conservation) Constitutes One Of The Milestones In Moral Evolution.

Your Woodlot Is, In Fact, An Historical Document Which Faithfully Records Your Personal Philosophy.

This Whole Effort To Rebuild And Stabilize A Countryside Is Not Without Its Disappointments And Mistakes... What Matter Though These Temporary Growing Pains When One Can Cast His Eye Upon The Hills And See Hard-boiled Farmers Who Have Spent Their Lives Destroying Land Now Carrying Water By Hand To Their New Plantations

Twenty Centuries Of 'progress' Have Brought The Average Citizen A Vote, A National Anthem, A Ford, A Bank Account, And A High Opinion Of Himself, But Not The Capacity To Live In High Density Without Befouling And Denuding His Environment, Nor A Conviction That Such Capacity, Rather Than Such Density, Is The True Test Of Whether He Is Civilized.

. . . Perhaps Our Grandsons, Having Never Seen A Wild River, Will Never Miss The Chance To Set A Canoe In Singing Waters . . . Glad I Shall Never Be Young Without Wild Country To Be Young In.

It Is Part Of Wisdom Never To Revisit A Wilderness, For The More Golden The Lily, The More Certain That Someone Has Gilded It

I Love All Trees, But I Am In Love With Pines.

Ability To See The Cultural Value Of Wilderness Boils Down, In The Last Analysis, To A Question Of Intellectual Humility. The Shallow-minded Modern Who Has Lost His Rootage In The Land Assumes That He Has Already Discovered What Is Important.

In June As Many As A Dozen Species May Burst Their Buds On A Single Day. No Man Can Heed All Of These Anniversaries; No Man Can Ignore All Of Them.

The Hope Of The Future Lies Not In Curbing The Influence Of Human Occupancy - It Is Already Too Late For That - But In Creating A Better Understanding Of The Extent Of That Influence And A New Ethic For Its Governance.

The Last Word In Ignorance Is The Man Who Says Of An Animal Or Plant: 'what Good Is It?

To Keep Every Cog And Wheel Is The First Precaution Of Intelligent Tinkering.

He Who Hopes For Spring With Upturned Eye Never Sees So Small A Thing As Draba. He Who Despairs Of Spring With Downcast Eye Steps On It, Unknowing. He Who Searches For Spring With His Knees In The Mud Finds It, In Abundance.

If The Land Mechanism As A Whole Is Good Then Every Part Is Good, Whether We Understand It Or Not.

The Whole Conflict Thus Boils Down To A Question Of Degree. We Of The Minority See A Law Of Diminishing Returns In Progress; Our Opponents Do Not.

For Us In The Minority, The Opportunity To See Geese Is More Important Than Television.

What A Dull World If We Knew All About Geese!

Education, I Fear, Is Learning To See One Thing By Going Blind To Another.

The Life Of Every River Sings Its Own Song, But In Most The Song Is Long Marred By The Discords Of Misuse.

Relegating Conservation To Government Is Like Relegating Virtue To The Sabbath. Turns Over To Professionals What Should Be Daily Work Of Amateurs .

Our Ability To Perceive Quality In Nature Begins, As In Art, With The Pretty.

O, God Assist Our Side: At Least, Avoid Assisting The Enemy And Leave The Rest To Me

That Land Is A Community Is The Basic Concept Of Ecology, But That Land Is To Be Loved And Respected Is An Extension Of Ethics.

We Reached The Old Wolf In Time To Watch A Fierce Green Fire Dying In Her Eyes. I Realized Then, And Have Known Ever Since, That There Was Something New To Me In Those Eyes – Something Known Only To Her And To The Mountain. I Was Young Then, And Full Of Trigger-itch; I Thought That Because Fewer Wolves Meant More Deer, That No Wolves Would Mean Hunters’ Paradise. But After Seeing The Green Fire Die, I Sensed That Neither The Wolf Nor The Mountain Agreed With Such A View.

Patriotism Requires Less And Less Of Making The Eagle Scream, But More And More Of Making Him Think.

In That Year [1865] John Muir Offered To Buy From His Brother ... A Sanctuary For The Wildflowers That Had Gladdened His Youth. His Brother Declined To Part With The Land, But He Could Not Suppress The Idea: 1865 Still Stands In Wisconsin History As The Birth-year Of Mercy For Things Natural, Wild, And Free.

The Practice Of Conservation Must Spring From A Conviction Of What Is Ethically And Aesthetically Right, As Well As What Is Economically Expedient. A Thing Is Right Only When It Tends To Preserve The Integrity, Stability, And Beauty Of The Community, And The Community Includes The Soil, Waters, Fauna, And Flora, As Well As People.

For Unnumbered Centuries Of Human History The Wilderness Has Given Way. The Priority Of Industry Has Become Dogma. Are We As Yet Sufficiently Enlightened To Realize That We Must Now Challenge That Dogma, Or Do Without Our Wilderness? Do We Realize That Industry, Which Has Been Our Good Servant, Might Make A Poor Master?

The Last Word In Ignorance Is The Man Who Says Of An Animal Or Plant, "what Good Is It?" If The Land Mechanism As A Whole Is Good, Then Every Part Is Good, Whether We Understand It Or Not. If The Biota, In The Course Of Aeons, Has Built Something We Like But Do Not Understand, Then Who But A Fool Would Discard Seemingly Useless Parts? To Keep Every Cog And Wheel Is The First Precaution Of Intelligent Tinkering.

Cease Being Intimidated By The Argument That A Right Action Is Impossible Because It Does Not Yield Maximum Profits, Or That A Wrong Action Is To Be Condoned Because It Pays.

We All Strive For Safety, Prosperity, Comfort, Long Life, And Dullness. The Deer Strives With His Supple Legs, The Cowman With Trap And Poison, The Statesman With Pen, The Most Of Us With Machines, Votes, And Dollars. A Measure Of Success In This Is All Well Enough, And Perhaps Is A Requisite To Objective Thinking, But Too Much Safety Seems To Yield Only Danger In The Long Run. Perhaps This Is Behind Thoreau's Dictum: In Wilderness Is The Salvation Of The World. Perhaps This Is The Hidden Meaning In The Howl Of The Wolf, Long Known Among Mountains, But Seldom Perceived Among Men.

There Are Idle Spots On Every Farm, And Every Highway Is Bordered By An Idle Strip As Long As It Is; Keep Cow, Plow, And Mower Out Of These Idle Spots, And The Full Native Flora, Plus Dozens Of Interesting Stowaways From Foreign Parts, Could Be Part Of The Normal Environment Of Every Citizen.

We Abuse Land Because We Regard It As A Commodity Belonging To Us.

Community Living

Sometimes In June, When I See Unearned Dividends Of Dew Hung On Every Lupine, I Have Doubts About The Real Poverty Of The Sands. On Solvent Farmlands Lupines Do Not Even Grow, Much Less Collect A Daily Rainbow Of Jewels.

Acts Of Creation Are Ordinarily Reserved For Gods And Poets, But Humbler Folk May Circumvent This Restriction If They Know How. To Plant A Pine, For Example, One Need Be Neither God Nor Poet; One Need Only Own A Shovel.

Thus Far We Have Considered The Problem Of Conservation Of Land Purely As An Economic Issue. A False Front Of Exclusively Economic Determinism Is So Habitual To Americans In Discussing Public Questions That One Must Speak In The Language Of Compound Interest To Get A Hearing.

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.

Do We Realize That Industry, Which Has Been Our Good Servant, Might Make A Poor Master?

It Is, By Common Consent, A Good Thing For People To Get Back To Nature.

My Favorite Quote: The Land Ethic Simply Enlarges The Boundaries Of The Community To Include Soils, Waters, Plants, And Animals, Or Collectively: The Land. In Short, A Land Ethic Changes The Role Of Homo Sapiens From Conqueror Of The Land-community To Plain Member And Citizen Of It. It Implies Respect For His Fellow-members, And Also Respect For The Community As Such.

We Face The Question Whether A Still Higher "standard Of Living" Is Worth Its Cost In Things Natural, Wild, And Free.

Our Ability To Perceive Quality In Nature Begins, As In Art, With The Pretty. It Expands Through Successive Stages Of The Beautiful To Values As Yet Uncaptured By Language.

Ideas, Like Men, Can Become Dictators. We Americans Have So Far Escaped Regimentation By Our Rulers, But Have We Escaped Regimentation By Our Own Ideas? I Doubt If There Exists Today A More Complete Regimentation Of The Human Mind Than That Accomplished By Our Self-imposed Doctrine Of Ruthless Utilitarianism.

One Of The Anomalies Of Modern Ecology Is The Creation Of Two Groups, Each Of Which Seems Barely Aware Of The Existence Of The Other. The One Studies The Human Community, Almost As If It Were A Separate Entity, And Calls Its Findings Sociology, Economics And History. The Other Studies The Plant And Animal Community And Comfortably Relegates The Hodge-podge Of Politics To The Liberal Arts. The Inevitable Fusion Of These Two Lines Of Thought Will, Perhaps, Constitute The Outstanding Advance Of This Century.

Like Winds And Sunsets, Wild Things Were Taken For Granted Until Progress Began To Do Away With Them. Now We Face The Question Whether A Still Higher 'standard Of Living' Is Worth Its Cost In Things Natural, Wild And Free. For Us Of The Minority, The Opportunity To See Geese Is More Important Than Television.

One Swallow Does Not Make A Summer, But One Skein Of Geese, Cleaving The Murk Of March Thaw, Is The Spring.

An Ecologist Lives In A World Of Wounds.

Mechanized Recreation Already Has Seized Nine-tenths Of The Woods And Mountains; A Decent Respect For Minorities Should Dedicate The Other Tenth To Wilderness.

The Government Tells Us We Need Flood Control And Comes To Straighten The Creek In Our Pasture. The Engineer On The Job Tells Us The Creek Is Now Able To Carry Off More Flood Water, But In The Process We Have Lost Our Old Willows Where The Owl Hooted On A Winter Night And Under Which The Cows Switched Flies In The Noon Shade. We Lost The Little Marshy Spot Where Our Fringed Gentians Bloomed.

Third, There Is Value In Any Experience That Exercises Those Ethical Restraints Collectively Called 'sportsmanship'. Our Tools For The Pursuit Of Wildlife Improve Faster Than We Do, And Sportsmanship Is The Voluntary Limitation In The Use Of These Armaments. It Is Aimed To Augment The Role Of Skill And Shrink The Role Of Gadgets In The Pursuit Of Wild Things.

There Are Some Who Can Live Without Wild Things And Some Who Cannot.

Hunting And Fishing

Trending Author

Laurie Halse Anderson

Category