Physicians Literature and Medicine Discussion Group

Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac is one of the classics of the conservation movement. Leopold wrote it just before his death in 1948, and it was first published in 1949. He had a remarkable career, which included working as a National Forest ranger in Arizona and New Mexico from 1909 to 1924. He went on to become the first professor of Wildlife Management at the University of Wisconsin in 1933. Leopold's experience
in Western National Forests led him to a new concept of the kind of preservation he believed necessary in our region. His term for this was "wilderness." In 1935 he helped found the Wilderness Society, which he described as "one of the focal points of a new attitude"¿an "intelligent humility" with respect to the place of human beings in the natural order. He suggested that human society should no longer believe it holds sovereignty over the land with a right to exploit the earth for self-interested ends. Instead human beings need to recognize and achieve a deeper understanding of our relationships in the community of life and the ecosystems we inhabit. Leopold's prose is remarkably fresh and direct, and his writing is informed by his exceptional powers of observation and his profound understanding of natural systems. I look forward to seeing you and discussing this quiet but monumental work, which sets forth a conservation ethic and vision still profoundly at odds with the ruling interests and ideologies of the American West.

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