Aldo Leopold

“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot”.

“A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than by a mob of onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this fact”.

“We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes.  I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes – something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that  because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.”

All quotes From “A Sand County Almanac: With Essays on Conservation From Round River”.

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Michael Patrick McCarty

A Journal of Honest Food, Freedom, and The Natural World