Nurturing the New Oak

In the spring of 1998, the Leopold Center honored the 50th anniversary of Aldo Leopold's death by planting a native Iowa oak, a chinkapin, on the Iowa State University central campus. Located on a line between our offices in Curtiss Hall and the ISU Campanile, the tree is passed by hundreds of students each day. It is close to the sidewalk I walked as a youth attending 4-H Congress, as an undergraduate and later a graduate student, and for the past 11 years while serving as director of the Leopold Center.

Our new oak honors the "good oak," which Aldo Leopold described in his Sand County Almanac essays on the passing of the seasons at his shack on the Wisconsin River. Leopold's good oak was killed by a lightning stroke 80 years into its life, and was felled the following winter. Leopold, reflecting on the history encompassed by the growth of the good oak, writes in the chapter entitled, "February": "These things I ponder as the kettle sings, and the good oak burns to red coals on white ashes. Those ashes, come spring, I will return to the orchard at the foot of the sandhill. They will come back to me again, perhaps as red apples, or perhaps as a spirit of enterprise in some fat October squirrel who, for reasons unknown to himself, is bent on planting acorns."

The new oak on the ISU campus has many parallels to the Center at this time. This little oak will have many challenges as it grows. Already it stands in the shadow of the well-rooted older trees of the campus, those with power and seniority. They can shelter the new oak as it grows, but also compete with it for nutrients and light. It will have to survive the extremes of Iowa weather and diseases. It will grow slowly and carefully, not spreading branches beyond its strength, to be stripped in a summer windstorm or a winter ice storm. It will be a harbor for wildlife, a source of food for our fat October squirrel, and shade for young and old during hot summer days. It will be a place for beauty at all times, and a symbol of integrity and stability in a world of chaos.

All these noble things characterize the Leopold Center as well. It started with the seed of an idea in the Iowa legislature, was nurtured by those who love the land, and has grown slowly and with care. It will have to find its niche in the ecology of the university and Iowa agriculture. As in all evolutionary processes, the environment will change and adaptation to new forces may require new branches. The new oak and the Leopold Center will endure, and hopefully some day there will be the great oak and the great Leopold Center at Iowa State. My wife Betty and I will stroll by during alumni days and recall the prophetic words of noted Leopold historian Curt Meine at the site on April 22, 1998:

A hundred years from now, we may look back and see this (referring to Leopold Center programs) as the Leopold Center's most significant contribution: helping us to learn to live well on the land that produces not only our food and fiber, but our sense of place, and our sense of belonging; helping us to find ways "to live not as conquerors of the land, but as citizens with, and within, the land." If this be the legacy of the Leopold Center, then it has truly lived up to the visions of Aldo Leopold.

It has been my great privilege to help plant and nurture the Center. I wish it well.