Earth Care Book Club Discussion: A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold
11:30 a.m. on Sunday, April 5, 2026
Little Sanctuary
You know a book is an important classic when it’s still quoted regularly almost 80 years after it was originally published! Sometimes it seems like A Sand County Almanac only gets MORE relevant with each passing year.
Note: Because this book was originally published in 1949, there are MANY different covers and editions, with many different introductions. Any of these editions should have the same original text within them.
Aldo Leopold started out as a trained forester, one of the early graduates from the new Yale School of Forestry in the early 1900s. After graduation, he went to work for the U.S. Forest Service in Arizona and New Mexico, developing the first management plan for the Grand Canyon, writing the Forest Service’s first game and fish handbook, and advocating for the development of wildlife protection associations among sportsmen. He eventually became a professor of game management at the University of Wisconsin.
After moving to Wisconsin, Leopold purchased 80 acres of overused and abused sand hills, which he set about restoring to ecological health based on the lessons he had learned throughout his career. He and his family considered this their refuge from modernity and called it “The Shack.” The essays in the first section of A Sand County Almanac are based on his observations of nature during the changing seasons on that plot of land.
Leopold was one of the first people to recognize and share the important role that predators play in maintaining ecological health. In his forward to this book, written shortly before his death, he summarizes his philosophy this way, “Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man…..”
Aldo Leopold is widely considered to be one of the fathers of modern conservation. His writings still speak clearly to us about how we need to modify our actions to come into right relationship with “the land,” his term for the ecosystems and environment that support us.
Come join us in the Little Sanctuary as we discuss A Sand County Almanac after the service, at 11:30 a.m. on Sunday, April 5th, 2026. We hope to see you there!