Never an “It” but Rather a “He”

Only fifty pages into A Sand County Almanac, and I am persuaded that all issues of conservation could be solved if life mandated that every soul read the revelations of Aldo Leopold.

The talented writing in A Sand County allows the reader to progress smoothly, but even more effectual is Leopold’s fondness to personify nature. 

Leopold turns nature into a neighbor—one with motives and cognition—to which people can relate to on a human level.

Never is an animal an “it” but rather a “he” (I’ve yet to witness a “she” but given the decades in which Leopold lived, I’m willing to let this one slide).
The choice of a human pronoun, paired occasionally with a human occupation or behavior, goes a long way to invest the reader into the affairs of Leopold’s “tenants.”

One of my favorite examples of this is “the mouse-engineer” who is afraid of “public view and ridicule.” Embarrassment is a traditionally human trait, and applying it to mice in this situation makes them endearing.  

 Leopold’s personification does not end at animals; the author has the distinct habit of choosing dynamic verbs to describe the action of plants.

You may be thinking, “What action? Plants just grow.”

Despite lacking the pronoun “he,” Leopold’s plants are just as human as his animals: they fight rabbits, romp over prairies, and tickle the bellies of buffalo.

“Bur oaks were the shock troops sent by the invading forest to storm the prairie; fire is what they had to fight.” –Aldo Leopold

The point of my ramblings is that Aldo Leopold uses relatable, charismatic nature writing to emphasize his principal idea: “When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” Leopold does not oppose human use of the land; rather, he proposes that by revisiting our connection with the land, we can learn to use it wisely.

The woodcock “sky dance” described by Leopold is one of the clearest examples in A Sand County Almanac that prove how the discovery of nature can impact your consumption of it. In his writings, Leopold confesses, “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.”

To establish (or reestablish) a connection with the land, Leopold praises two activities: growing a garden and chopping firewood. These “simple” tasks offer insight into the effort it takes to create food and heat—necessities that many people take for granted.

In the decided, honest words of Aldo Leopold:

“If one has cut, split, hauled, and piled his own good oak, and let his mind work the while, he will remember much about where the heat comes from, and with a wealth of detail denied to those who spend the weekend in town astride a radiator.”