A review by graywacke
A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There by Aldo Leopold

informative reflective slow-paced

4.5

A naturalist classic. It opens with a long, sustained time track through a year on the author's Wisconsin property. The next sections, Sketches, lacks the continuous wholeness of the Almanac section, but has some poetic moments. (Especially the last one - on the western grebe in Manitoba.) Then he follows up with a naturalist's manifesto, circa 1949. He's writing to naturalists and wildlife experts. He's pleading for a naturalist morality, for us not to leave everything up to the government, for a look broader than the money-first landowners. He's in tune with hunters, but not comfortable with the destruction wrought in the name of tourism - especially roads. And he takes time to think about purity vs the artificially created sporting environments where fish or other animals are supplied by stock. He foresees a lot that has actually happened, and actually I think things are worse than he presents. It wasn't, however, anything that was uniquely striking. Common sense, to a degree, if a common sense in tune with experience.