Seeing it for yourself

 Here’s a question from Jane Eisner’s essay marking the 75^th anniversary of Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac:

To appreciate Leopold’s legacy, do we have to witness wilderness ourselves?

 

Eisner’s answer is “perhaps.”

I’d say “yes.”

Eisner’s essay, which appeared in The Washington Post, is lovely. Given the state of the news, I’d recommend it to bolster your faith in humanity, the country and newspapers. (It’s part of a newspaper’s role to raise topics about which people can disagree.)

When I was a boy, I watched television ads pushing President Kennedy’s idea that being physically fit was a patriotic responsibility, something you owed your country. A better you, in some small way, made for a better country.

I think we citizens of the world have a responsibility to inspect the natural world and slowly get to know it. Reading Leopold’s book is a wonderful thing to do. But at some point, I think we have to put the book down and lace up our boots.

• Sources and notes: Jane Eisner, “‘A Sand County Almanac’ remains an environmental classic at 75”; The Washington Post, Dec. 7, 2024. It’s here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/12/07/sand-county-almanac-remains-an-environmental-classic-75/

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac; New York: Ballentine Books, 1982.

I’ve mentioned the book several times, including “Reading ‘A Sand County Almanac,’” June 21, 2023.