June 18, 2009 - Sister Lakes Michigan

‘Tis not my intention to persuade
That’s what advertising is for
I plan my attach on the walls
Of your metaphors
I start by circumvaliation
Your reality

Circumvaliation – the initial process of surrounding a besieged fortification with trenches from which trenches are extended towards the points of attack

Our bigger-and-better society is now like a hypochondriac, so obsessed with its own economic health as to have lost the capacity to remain healthy – Aldo Leopold

Aldo Leopold is the father of wildlife management in the US and promoter of the establishment of wilderness areas – the first being the Gila Wilderness area in New Mexico. An adjoining wilderness area to the east of the Gila was established in 1980 and named for him. He earned a degree in forestry from Yale and served 18 years in the forest service mainly in New Mexico and Arizona. He taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison until his death in 1948

What was big was not the trout, but the chance. What was full was not my creel, but my memory – Aldo Leopold

A collection of Aldo Leopold’s nature writings was published as “A Sand County Almanac” in 1949. It is considered a landmark publication of the American conservation movement.

The most ugly of Americans

Flies his colors the highest

Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things of lesser worth? The goose who trades his is soon a pile of feathers – Aldo Leopold

And along comes man
Tackle box and fishing pole
    In hand
Intent upon his gain
The birds scatter
Waiting for the remains


Patience is a poor substitute
    For necessity
And lacks any pretence
Of festivity

Out ability to perceive qualities in nature begins as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language – Aldo Leopold

The question should not be

How to make the world safe

For more people, but

How to make the world safe

From more people


There is something inherently
Insane about this notion that
Infinite density will provide
Infinite benefit


This concept of infinite growth
Is fundamental to civilization
The problem is that there is
Not enough growth


And the application of reason
To insane ideas
Is a how we display intelligence


This is the mystery
That has become our
Religion

I know nothing whatever about true underling reality, having never met any. They are many people who say they have. I know, but they’ve been luckier than I… for on my own part I am pleased enough with surfaces – Edward Abbey

As Aldo Leopold was the founding father, Edward Abbey was the bad-boy of American conservation having little faith in modernism and the efficacy of accommodation regarding wilderness protection – going so far as advocating sabotage of development project – coining the term “to Monkywrench” (see his novel “The Monkey Wrench Gang” and its later sequel “Hayduke Lives” ) Although proclaimed a ‘nature writer’ he did not like such categorization – perhaps ‘desert anarchist’ would be more apt but then again it is just another label. Larry McMurty called him the “Thoreau of the American West”. The quotes here come from his collection of essays “Desert Solitaire: a season in the wilderness”

[Objects and monuments of the vanquished had become] safe to play with in recombinations emptied of previous vital meanings, as in tourist souvenirs, antiquarian reconstructions, or archaizing revivals – William Weber

Stupidity is not remedial

It flourishes on barren soils
It has no wants
Its lack of success
Is its only encouragement

I am glad I hall never by young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms with a blank spot on the map? – Aldo Leopold

If you would only listen you just might hear the sounds of the rhythms that have cycles beyond the ear – the day, the year, the centuries and perhaps even the millennium. There are such sounds in the universe.

Parks are made to bring the music to the many, but by the time many are attuned to hear it there is little left but noise – Aldo Leopold

The truth is that there is no surplus
Reliance on it, other than temporarily
Is foolhardiness and all civilizations
     Do it
And their success is directly related
To the rapidity of their decline


A surplus is the same as a loan
Try as we might it must be repaid
To comprehend this is to have
     No vision


What you take you must
Give back
That and a little more

All are restrained by an ironclad taboo which decrees that the construction of instruments is the domain of science, while the detection of harmony is the domain of poets.- Aldo Leopold

Nature is that which lies out there
Just beyond the picture window
It’s imperative that they be mobile
For our unlimited viewing pleasure


Surveys rank this second highest
Outdoor recreational activity

I cannot explain why a red rivulet is not a brook. Neither can I, by logical deduction, prove that a thicket without the potential of a quail covey in only a thorny place – Aldo Leopold

They don’t recycle paper here!
They should have a solar shower here
    Yeah, I know
Constant but ecofirendly
Consumers ever seeking
     Improvement
Eco-conscious modernism
Still believing in the
Enlighment project
Wanting to see it
Carried to its fruition
The progressives
   On the greens

We need more predators. The sheep man complains, it is true, that the coyotes eat some of their lambs. This is true but do they eat enough? I mean enough lambs to keep the coyotes sleek, healthy and well fed. That is my concern… The lambs, accustomed by tradition to their roles, do not complain; and the sheep men, who run their hooved locusts on the public land and are heavily subsidized, most of them as hog-rich as they are pig-headed, can easily afford these trifling losses – Edward Abbey

To life off the fat
Of the land
As if one is living


On the fat of the lamb


To build up storehouses
Of fat
Off someone’s else
Land is both


Our ewe and their cry

We strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness… but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run – Aldo Leopold

Poor land may be rich country, and vice versa. Only economists mistake physical opulence for riches – Aldo Leopold

A sportsman is one who gives his quarry a chance to escape with its life. This is know as fair play, or sportsmanship. Animals have no sense of sportsmanship. Some like the mountain lion are vicious – if attacked they defend themselves. Others like the rabbit, run away, which is cowardly – Edward Abbey

One in twelve vehicle owers also own a recreational vehicle - 8 million households have an RV. The recreational vehicle industry has sales of $15 billion a year. The averave vehicle is driven 4,500 miles and is used a total of 28-35 days a year.

Recreational development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building recreation into the still unlovely human mind – Aldo Leopold

There are 13,000 private RV parks in the US and 1.600 state and national government campgrounds. But how many developed  sites are available for camping  and what porportion of the have utillities is not clear. Tent sites without utilities at state and other govenment sites range from six dollars to sixteen dollars a day. Utility access is an additional four to ten dollars. Day usage fees frequently apply which add an additional four to six dollars a day. Average cost of tent camping in developed campgrounds is $6-$20/day.

Most devloped campgrounds have utilities. If a site has utilities you pay for it wheter you use it or not. Increasingly 'primitive' sites (those without utilities) are being developed (utilities included). The number of availabe of tent sites is drastically shrinking - many parks have no undeveloped sites.

Education, I fear, is learning to see one thing by going blind to another – Aldo Leopold