A Cabin the Woods

I could have happily spent all afternoon at the International Crane Foundation, circling back and forth among the cranes... except that there was one other thing I wanted to see in Baraboo that day before continuing on my journey.  Tucked away on a rural road in Sauk County, just northeast of the town, a little trail snaked through the woods on the side of the road.  I would never have found it if not for the directions of the folks at the nearby museum and visitor center, about half a mile away.  Down the end of the trail was a clearing, and at the far side of the clearing was a shack.  

I'd waited for a long time to see that shack.

The man who built it, back in the 1930's, was Aldo Leopold, perhaps one of, if not the, greatest conservationist/writers in our country, sort of the forerunner to Rachel Carson.  Leopold taught at the University of Wisconsin, down in Madison, but whenever he could retreated to the little farm he maintained here.  Farming wasn't his main business, though.  He mostly came here to sit, to watch, to wander the woods, and to better familiarize himself with the natural world.  It was this matrix of woodland, wetland, and field that inspired Leopold to write his magnum opus, A Sand County Almanac.  (It's not where he physically wrote it, however - that was at his office in Madison.  Leopold doubtlessly would have had a hard time distracting himself from the woods and wildlife to write here).

Leopold was one of the first practitioners of the new science of ecology, the study of how environments and their living and non-living components fit together.  He was also one of  America's first scientific conservationists, and wrote the book of wildlife management (no, literally - he wrote the first textbook on the subject).  Part of it was a matter of practicality and economics and sustainable use.  Leopold went beyond that, however, advocating for the conservation of species that many people of his era would have considered useless, or merely ornamental - perhaps even harmful to human interests.  Without Leopold and his disciples, it's likely that we would be living in a poorer, drabber, blander country, retaining even less of its wild heritage.

The clearing and the surrounding woods were cool, quiet, and peaceful.  I wished I had more time to sit and listen, to see what birds or small mammals might reveal themselves to me, as they would have to Leopold sitting on his cabin porch, coffee cup in hand and dog by this side.  As I pulled back onto the road, however, a small flock of sandhill cranes flew across the road - I came close to veering into the other lane, so distracted was I by the spectacle.  

I feel like Aldo would have understood.