A classic that will never go out of date

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, ecology, naturalists, advocacy

(For the record, I read most of a book on investing, and it was so poor I decided not to review it. Thus the delay for this book, which is shorter than most.)

I just finished reading A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. In case anyone doesn't know, the volume includes Sketches Here and There plus The Upshot. I suppose it is a bit odd that I had not read it before, as I have read Thoreau's Walden and a couple of writings by John Muir. This book outclasses Walden by a large margin.

I suppose Sand County has been reviewed hundreds of times in the 66 years since it was published, so I feel little need to plow worn-out ground. But a few things struck me with sufficient force that they require comment.

In the essay "Prairie Birthday" he writes of the annual blooming of Silphium, seen here, in mid-July. In the

1940s he could find it only in one small abandoned graveyard, and at the end of the essay he notes that the graveyard has been "developed" and the plant is now probably extinct in Wisconsin. This image shows a low-growing planting; this perennial can reach two meters. From the comments at Rob's Plants, it is apparently still found in Vermont and environs. I was particularly struck by the plainness with which Leopold reported the demise of the plant and the yard in which it grew. His is not to castigate, but to unflinchingly report.

Later in the same essay he writes, "…it comes to pass that farms are good in proportion to the poverty of their floras." Having kept a record of the species he has seen blooming in two areas—one his farm and the other the campus where he taught—he noted that the former hosted 226 flowering species, the latter, but 120.

In the essay "Marshland Elegy" his penultimate paragraph reads, "Thus always does history, whether of marsh or market place, end in paradox. The ultimate value of 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 fondls, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish." This may be the truest and saddest ecological statement in print.

In the essay "Green Lagoons", one of the Sketches, he writes in a similar vein, more tersely, "Man always kills the things he loves, and so we 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?"

I find it strange that land is being developed at a clip greater than the increase in population. Here are before-and-after satellite images (clipped from Google Earth), one just about 20 years ago, the other earlier this year:

The two neighborhoods thus constructed, not more than a few miles from where I live, quite overloaded the school seen at upper right in both images, so a couple of miles away a new one was built. I know, continued construction is good for the jobs market, but the number of unused homes in the US has reached more than 14 million (11% of the total), quite an incredible number! Having lived most of my life in rural areas, I consider it tantamount to a capital crime to put houses on land that can grow crops, or even worse, shelter wild things. It is even more criminal to do so when there are a few million acres of land under millions of homes that nobody lives in. Hey out there! Remodeling is construction work also.

A final note. I am so poor at both fishing and hunting that I never enjoyed either activity. Leopold excelled at both, and writes of them with lyrical fervor. It touched my heart. He deeply understood all the motives that a person could have toward the land and its denizens. I wonder if any of today's "environmentalists" either hunt or fish. Yet I am distrustful of most "sport" hunters and fishermen. I favor both activities only if you eat everything you kill. But I think it is not true "sport" unless you do all your sport hunting naked with only a knife in hand, and all your sport fishing with your bare hands. I suspect Leopold would be at least mildly supportive of such a view.

Seeing a very different side

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, hunting, advocacy

When I was twelve, old enough to legally go hunting in Utah, my father took me on a hunting trip. It was with a half dozen business associates of his. I didn't carry a rifle, but he did. He and I walked together through the woods in our orange parkas, sometimes silent, sometimes talking quietly. After a few hours we heard a couple of shots. We went back to camp, where one of the men reported killing a bear that had charged him. The men field-dressed it and we packed out as much meat as we could carry, and the skin. The skin was used in a hunting calendar painting that I still have a copy of. The bear made the papers; at 7'-7" it was the largest black bear killed in Utah, up to that date anyway.

While I am at it, I have shot a gun on three occasions. The following summer at YMCA camp there was an afternoon of target shooting 22 rifles. I don't recall doing very well. But three years later my father took me to the Skeet range, and I hit every trap they pulled for me, with a straight 12-gauge. Then forty years later, at a company "team making exercise", I shot half a round of Skeet and hit about 30%. That's it.

I think it safe to say I don't understand hunting culture. So I read Hunting Booger Bottom: Life Lessons From the Field, by Michael Waddell with Mike Schoby, with plenty of interest, to see what I could learn about the allure of "sport" hunting. Michael is the host of the Realtree Road Trips and Bone Collector video series, and as he writes, "Hunting has been part of my life for as long as I can recall." That's understandable enough; you tend to enjoy what you've always enjoyed.

Then he writes, several times, that he loved killing. He makes no bones about it. While the camaraderie, the beauty of the outdoors, and the joy of honing survival skills all draw him, he hunts to kill, and possibly would not if he could not. So while he has become a skilled videographer, he just itches for a chance to put the camera down and go out with a gun or bow.

The first six chapters of the book outline his early life through becoming an established staff member with Realtree. The latter nine chapters range through his experiences all over North America and a few trips to Africa. With his co-author's help, he has produced a very readable book of advocacy. He tells of his time in a school for video production, his first exposure to anti-hunting "liberals", including vegans. Since that time he has had fire in his eye to present his side of the story.

In this country, with few exceptions, I agree that certain species need culling so it makes sense to license (and make a bit of money) from "sport hunting" for them. At the other end of the spectrum, on one hunt in Africa, he went with a partner who had a license to kill an elephant. There may be a few places in Africa where elephants have become weed species and need culling, but I think his report that they were destroying the landscape is just special pleading. Elephant-managed countryside has a certain look because of the way they feed, just as cattle-and-antelope-managed landscapes in the American West have their own special look.

But I take issue with the notion that hunting with gun or bow is any kind of sport. The animal has no long-range weapons. You want to be a sport hunter? Go out there with a knife and a backpack of rations, and kill your deer, turkey or antelope "up close and personal." That's sporting. For elk, moose, or even buffalo, a thrown spear is OK with me, but no Assagai or other muscle amplifying technology. Where there is a genuine need to kill for food (and I consider this very rare in America), I have a different attitude: Use any technology you can afford, but kill only what you actually need.

So to the author I say, I am no liberal. I vote almost straight-ticket Republican. I don't go for the NRA bull crap that the Second Amendment has anything to do with hunting; it is about a Militia, and a well-regulated one at that. But I support the right of anyone to kill for food, as long as they do it legally. I deplore trophy hunting. I don't count as friend any bloodthirsty brute with a wall full of antlers. The thought genuinely makes me ill. You made your case, and I think I got a better understanding of how you think. I view the culling of weed species like white-tailed deer as an awful job, and I am glad someone out there likes doing it.