Thinking Like A Mountain.

Monday: The big event for me today was having a haircut for the first time in ages. I’m not sure I like it after all that, but it is done now. This afternoon I just sat in my yard and enjoyed the sunshine as Emmylou Harris, Linda Rondstadt & Dolly Parton sang quietly in the background. I managed to finish one of my books that I have been dipping into off and on for about three months. It is called A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. I am glad I finally finished reading it. It was published in 1949 and is regarded as a landmark book in the conservation movement. I enjoyed the monthly sketches of the wildlife on his Wisconsin farm. As I am British, sometimes I didn’t understand what the birds and creatures were that he was referring to because we don’t have them here. I can see the importance of this book and I think it is a shame that despite it being a best-selling book it failed to have any impact on those in power, and now we are reaping the harvest of how nature has been abused. I did have some reservations about the book. Aldo Leopold didn’t seem to be totally against hunting for instance. He reminded me a bit of the Duke Of Edinburgh who was president of the World Wildlife Fund, but still hunted tigers in India. Some people seem to believe that we should ensure that wildlife survives so that we can shoot them. I should not be too harsh on the book though because it was published seventy years ago, and the world has changed a lot since then. The issues that Aldo Leopold warned us about have now become critical and unless we sort it out in the next few years then we face extinction. That is how serious the situation is. I will just leave you with a quote from one of my favourite sections of the book which I found very moving. It is called Thinking Like A Mountain and concerns the folly of thinking that shooting wolves ensures lots of deer to hunt. What happens is that the whole balance of nature is destroyed.

“We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes-something only known to her and the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves meant a hunter's paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view".