It is hard to question nature’s beauty when a skilled artist expresses it in his book, song, or painting. It is even harder to question it when exposed to the serenity of the countryside. Reading Aldo’s book without any additional preemptive research of its informational background brings precisely that feeling – serenity. With the appropriate inclusion of readers’ perceptional senses, Aldo manages to underline the natural beauty of the surroundings pictured in “A Sand County Almanac.”
If considered out of context, the “May” chapter can be perceived as a documentary about Spring features of the region. Through the lenses of its temporal habitants – plovers – Aldo describes Wisconsin in the late Spring, occasionally mentioning the federal migratory bird laws at the end (34). However, the mention is not occasional; it informs readers that plovers were actually endangered and consequently saved by federal laws. In the meantime, the “June” chapter already introduces a human being amidst the natural landscape (Aldo, 35). The comparison of people to trouts and then to the world as a whole invokes a warm feeling of harmony, a feeling the author, in my opinion, might have planned to share in his writing.
The book’s background information analysis shows a substantial amount of environmental activists and researchers’ attention to Aldo’s work. Qi Feng, in his article, proved my hypothesis of Aldo’s affiliation to the ecological field and his deep understanding of sustainability importance (1). Further researchers conducted a deeper study on Aldo’s environmental philosophy of human-nature relationships, land ethics, and the wilderness’s value (Zhang and Wang, 928-930). Nevertheless, the clarity of inserted thoughts and sincerity with which Aldo wrote “A Sand County Almanac” well manage to solely show the author’s love and care for the environment.
Works Cited
Aldo, Leopold. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. Oxford University Press, 1949.
Qi Feng, Lin. “A Sand County Almanac at 70: The Significance of Leopold’s Life–Work for Socio-Ecological Practice and Research.” Socio-Ecological Practice Research, vol. 2, no. 1, 2020, pp. 1-2.
Zhang, Minglan, and Fade Wang. “An Ecological Study on A Sand County Almanac.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies, vol. 7, no. 10, 2017, pp. 927-932.