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Round River: From the Journals of Aldo Leopold

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If your only other exposure to Aldo Leopold is through his Sand County Almanac, this book will likely be a departure from your perception of him.

Aldo Leopold was a practicing conservationist; he sustainably extracted valuable things from the land, and gave back to the land in other ways to repay his debt. With the possible exception of wilderness protection, he didn't subscribe to the "hands-off" approach of environmentalism that is often advocated today. He used to say any experience that reminded us of our "dependency on the soil-plant-animal-man food chain" was a valuable one.

Through his journal entries, the reader will follow Aldo on hunting and fishing trips. His entries here are more direct and less philosophical than his Almanac entries. They are the sharp and admiring field observations of a man taking part in all that the land has to offer. It is campfire talk with the most influential conservationist of our time.

Leopold's essay, "Goose Music" is a classic must read. Too bad this chapter was left out of the anniversary edition of Leopold's Sand County Almanac.

I tend to throw all the naturalists/conservationists/environmentalists into one big group and think of them in similar terms. I temporarily forgot that Aldo Leopold came to the field with a hunting background. And even though he writes about being forever affected by the regretable dying fire in a she-wolf's eyes in _Sand County Almanac_, none of that feeling is conveyed here. There's a lot of hunting in this book. A lot. Part II is one camping trip after another, with a fair amount of innocent animals providing food along the way. If you're like me and would rather not witness the carnage, read just four or five of the selections: "A Man's Leisure Time," "Country," "Natural History," and all of Part III. You probably won't miss anything crucial by doing so, and you'll get the gist of Aldo Leopold's ideas about conservation and the land ethic. His philosophic musings make for worthwhile reading. It's too bad more of them don't appear here.