Reading 'A Sand County Almanac'

 I was copying some of Aldo Leopold’s sentences into my notebook and thinking about his most famous book, A Sand County Almanac.

Let me just give you a couple of examples of those sentences.

On the upland plover:

Whoever invented the word “grace” must have seen the wing-folding of the plover.”

On the indigo bunting:

He does not claim, but I think he implies, the right to out-blue all bluebirds, and all spiderworts that have turned their faces to the sun.

I do not think that everyone should be a naturalist, any more than I think that everyone should be a baseball fan or a jazz fan. But if you write about nature, you ought to get your sentences on top of the things that make natural history interesting and exciting.

Leopold does. At least his sentences get to my excitement in being outdoors. The spiderworts are blooming in the Georgia Piedmont now, and they are blue. But not as blue as the indigo buntings I used to see on Zarzamora Creek in Texas.

Years ago, I read an essay about knitting, that gave me a clue as to what it was about, although I’m not, and will never be, a knitter. The writer told of the repetitive motion, and of how it helped her to let mind wander and then gradually empty of thoughts. Being a knitter was a bit like being a Zen master drifting off into meditation.

I finally had a clue why people who knit and crochet are serious about it.

I also admire the form of A Sand County Almanac.

My copy is in an edition of 295 pages. But edition collects many of Leopold’s essays.

The Almanac is 98 pages. I’m guessing it’s less than 30,000 words, on the border of being a one-night read.

The short book is divided into 22 essays, grouped under the 12 months. Some months have a single essay. One month has four.

This book strikes me as a model for the kind of book I like to read.

• Source: Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac; New York: Ballentine Books, 1982, pp. 37 and 45.