Living in a world of wounds: Commentary by Nina Leopold Bradley
Excerpted from a lecture by Nina Leopold Bradley, one of five children of Aldo and Estella Leopold. It was presented at the Iowa Conservation Education Council’s 2003 Winter Solstice conference, “The Leopold Legacy: Conservation Wisdom Past and Present.” A retired plant ecologist, she lives on the Leopold Memorial Preserve in Wisconsin where she continues her research and family tradition of living close to the land.
It has been more than 50 years since my father’s A Sand County Almanac was published. Each time I read these essays, I am changed anew by his words as I discover new depths of feeling and understanding. I am touched by his written words about “living in a world of wounds.”
 |
Nina Leopold Bradley |
As you know, my father said, “A thing is right when it preserves the integrity, stability, and beauty of the community.” In his philosophy, it is right when an act “strengthens and re-knits the web of relationships, and so tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the community.”
My father was warm, affectionate and awesome, and his very presence demanded a kind of respect, yes, an atmosphere of “love, respect and admiration.” He wrote of his intense love of the land. Surely these feelings made him vulnerable and personally damaged as the land was being abused on all sides.
Love of the land, for my father, was deep and complicated. Through his ecological understanding of the interrelationships of the natural systems, grew his joy and his grief and his passion. His grief is evident as he writes, “one of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.”
In today’s society I cannot help but ponder my father’s “world of wounds.” What would he see had he lived another 60 years? How many landscapes – how many deep and mindless ecological catastrophes have our land and our people endured? Where would be his grief today and where would be his joy?
David Orr writes, “Imagine a world in which our leaders would be knowledgeable people who would speak not just about economic growth (and a war to sustain it), but about ecological and human health; about love and respect for the land.”
Imagine a world in which our leaders read widely, and thought deeply about the directions of technology, ethics and political philosophy as they relate to the human future.
Imagine a world in which those who lead us would have to understand fundamentals such as how the earth works as a physical system, the integrity of the planet, the biological system, ecology and economics suitable for a small planet.
Bill Vogt in 1948 suggested that “if man will find a harmonious adjustment … as he surely can, this adjustment should make possible a greater flowering of human happiness and well-being than the human race has ever known.”
Our problem now is to find a way to live in an ecologically sound manner, even as we are buffered by earth-damaging policies of our contemporary world of wounds.
Is it possible to reconcile Leopold’s call to connect with the land with the need to connect with each other? Especially at this time of uncertainty, we need to connect with one another for a deeper appreciation and understanding of the complex choices we make. With effective leadership skills we could develop perceptive attitudes and a sense of stewardship toward the rest of the world and the land that sustains us.
A land ethic that was learned by example in the Leopold family
What is the land ethic? How do you teach it to others?
No one could answer those questions better than Aldo Leopold’s five children. Two were teenagers, and two were in their early 20s when Leopold returned to academia at the University of Wisconsin in 1933. Within two years, Leopold had found his weekend respite and family project – a worn-out, abandoned farm along the Wisconsin River north of Madison.
For the next dozen or so years, Leopold brought his family to “the land,” working side-by-side with them to plant trees, fix up “The Shack,” and enjoy the seasons and its inhabitants.
Nina Leopold Bradley discussed her role, and how she learned about the land ethic.
What could be more of a challenge for a bunch of teenagers than repairing the chicken coop. Weekend after weekend, our family worked to make the chicken coop more habitable –cleaning out manure [it was waist deep], constructing a fireplace, attaching a bunk house, a new roof, drilling a small sand-point well, and many other items contributing to comfort.
 |
|
Leoold family at the Shack |
From April to October scarcely a weekend went by that someone did not plant or transplant something – butterfly weed, tamarack, wahoo and oak, penstemon and puccoon. Spring vacation became the principal planting season. Each year we planted some 3,000 native pines on the land. We planted them with shovels so sharp they sang and hummed in our wrists as they sliced the earth. We planted a mosaic of conifers, hardwoods and prairie to restore health and beauty to the community.
In winter we banded resident birds. We recorded daily, weekend, seasonal events on the land – tracks of animals in the snow, arrival of migratory geese, courtship of woodcock. Here in reality Father’s statement rang true – “keeping records enhances the pleasure of the search, and the chance of finding order and meaning in these events.”
Here in the sand counties, my father initiated a different relationship with the land, at once more personal and more universal. From his own direct participation he was to come to a deeper appreciation of the ecological, ethical and aesthetic understanding of land. He gained a new sense of belonging to something greater than himself, continuity with all life through time.
What happened involved the senses, the memory, the history of family. It came from working on the land in all weather, suffering from catastrophes, enjoying its mornings or evenings or hot noons, valuing it for the very investment of labor and feelings.
Family weekends at our Sand County Farm turned out to be a place where my father put these two concepts into practice – the relationship of our family members to each other and their relationship to this piece of land. These two interests became more of a way of life than simply interests. New values were developing somewhere within us.
As we transformed the land, it transformed us … As the land was restored, it was grounded in caring relationships among our family members – of living in webs of relationships.
My father’s writing and the very way he led his life makes me realize that today we need a new ethic of connection, built not only on caring for people or caring for places, but on both, and the intricate and beautiful ways that love for places and love for humans nurture each other and sustain us all.”
- Aldo Leopold’s other children also have pursued careers in the natural sciences. Carl is a plant physiologist, Starker became a wildlife ecologist, Luna studied geomorphology (study of geology and hydrology), and Estella worked as a palynologist (the study of living or fossil spores and pollen).
- The Aldo Leopold Foundation