 A Proper Question?
Five races – five cultures – have flourished here. We may truthfully say of our four predecessors that they left the earth alive, undamaged. Is it possibly a proper question for us to consider what the sixth shall say about us?
Aldo Leopold, “Some Fundamentals of Conservation in the Southwest,” 1923
Is it proper question to consider the human impact on the earth? Proper, perhaps; needed, definitely; but certainly not easy. In fact, Leopold wrote, “In our attempts to make conservation easy, we have made it trivial.” Thinking about, and in particular discussing, matters of such magnitude is uncomfortable; it requires us to reveal dark desires, deep fears, and our most personal values. It is much easier to listen when authorities like scientists, clergy, scholars, and officials tell us what we should care about rather than to think critically about why we care about a thing at all and to then discuss openly what should receive consideration and care.
Increasingly, those of us concerned about the environment or conservation are asked not only to be experts on the technical dimensions of science and conservation, but to catalyze others to uncover, absorb, share, and adjust their values; in short, to have uncomfortable conversations that tackle Leopold’s weighty question.
To do this requires new knowledge, new approaches, and new skills. And it requires us to examine the values which shape our own boundaries of consideration—that lead to caring, and to the motivation and ability to act positively on behalf of natural and human communities.
A hundred years ago, in 1909, Leopold graduated from what was then Yale Forest School and began a career with the US Forest Service in Arizona and later New Mexico. Communities in both regions will celebrate those centennials in 2009, marking how new landscapes and cultures in both the east and west contributed so importantly to Leopold’s own consciousness.
In our winter issue of Outlook, we focus not only on Leopold’s transcontinental and trans-cultural journey of a century ago, but on how it shaped his thinking. We hope to challenge you to question how our separate and shared past and present will shape what future generations will think about our values and our actions.
Gus Speth frames the conversations that must take place in his article “Toward a New Consciousness.” He points to transitions and triggers that can put us on the path to a new collective consciousness, aligning values and actions. This is a long-term endeavor, but it is already happening in small ways in many places. In “The Working Wilderness,” Courtney White shares stories of a new kind of ranching in the Southwest. He has discovered that the combination of ethics and knowledge hold power to heal both people and land.
Finally, we track Leopold’s own journey—tracing his life through his papers, now being so carefully digitized, and following his intellectual trajectory in thinking about ethics. We’ve selected an excerpt from “Some Fundamentals of Conservation,” Leopold’s initial attempt in 1923 to articulate conservation not just as an economic issue but rather as a moral issue. Dissuaded by his colleagues from publishing it, Leopold nevertheless was guided by his own ethical questions for the next twenty five years as he helped to establish the Gila Wilderness Area (the nation’s first such designation), became involved in the country’s first watershed project in Coon Valley, founded a new discipline of wildlife management, and restored a worn out farm, before ultimately refining and fully articulating his thoughts in “The Land Ethic” in A Sand County Almanac. It is that essay which has been Leopold’s most enduring legacy, provoking millions of readers to have uncomfortable, but eminently proper, conversations with themselves and others about what type of world we want to live in and leave for future generations.
Read, enjoy, think, and then share!
Buddy Huffaker
Executive Director |
