Stories from the Leopold Shack

Sand County Revisited

Estella B. Leopold

Provides readers with an understanding of how Aldo Leopold developed his "land ethic" theory
A unique piece of Americana and a direct line to a treasured book - which has sold over two million copies worldwide and influenced conservationists of the 20th century.
Intimate, funny, and warm, Estella Leopold's account of the Sand County years gives insight into a touchstone text of the American conservation movement

Stories from the Leopold Shack

Sand County Revisited

Estella B. Leopold

Description

In 1934, conservationist Aldo Leopold and his wife Estella bought a barn - the remnant of a farm - and surrounding lands in south-central Wisconsin. The entire Leopold clan - five children in all - worked together to put into practice Aldo's "land ethic," which involved ecological restoration and sustainability. In the process, they built more than a pleasant weekend getaway; they established a new way of relating to nature. In 1948, A Sand County Almanac was published, and it has become a beloved and foundational text of the conservation movement.

Decades later, Estella B. Leopold, the youngest of the Leopold children - she was eight when they bought the land - now reflects on the "Shack," as they called the repurposed barn, and its inhabitants, and recalls with clear-eyed fondness the part it played in her and her siblings' burgeoning awareness of nature's miracles, season by season. In Stories from the Leopold Shack: Sand County Revisited, she unforgettably recalls the intensity of those days: the taste of fresh honey on sourdough pancakes; the trumpeting arrival of migrating Canada geese; the awesome power of river ice driven by currents - and each description is accompanied by stunning photographs by her brother, A. Carl Leopold. As the Leopolds worked to restore degraded farmland back to its original prairie and woods, they noted and celebrated all of the flora and fauna that came to share the Shack lands.

As first evoked in A Sand County Almanac, and now revisited in Stories from the Leopold Shack, the Leopold family's efforts of ecological restoration were among the earliest in the United States, and their work, collectively and individually, continues to have a profound impact on land management and conservationism. All of Aldo and Estella Leopold's children went on to become distinguished scientists and to devote themselves to a life of conservation; their work continues through the Aldo Leopold Foundation. Estella B. Leopold book offers a voyage back to the place where it all began.

Stories from the Leopold Shack

Sand County Revisited

Estella B. Leopold

Preface
Chapter 1
1. Rebuilding
2. We meet the Neighbors
3. The Shack and the Parthenon
4. Planting Pines
5. The Music of our Days and Nights
6. Our Second Fireplace, a remodel (1936)
7. The Flying Visitor
8. Woopsie!

Chapter 2 WINTER
9. Cutting Wood, Banding Birds
10.. Our Shack is Vandalized
11. The Slough and the River
12. Games in winter
13. Cutting the Good Oak

Chapter 3 SPRING
14. Planting Again
15. Poco & Pedro
16. Sky Dance
17. Warbler Watching
18. Meat Rock and calling to the Owls
19. Goose music
20. What species do the deer prefer?
21. Road kill for Supper

Chapter 4 SUMMER
22. Summer Rhythms at The Shack
23. Tree House
24. Benches at the Shack
25. Our Beach
26. On the Shores of Lake Chapman
27. What we found in the Sand Blow
28. Later Years: Building Trails
Chapter 5 FALL
29. Bounty from our shack garden and orchard
30. Carl's Hawks
31. Hunting Traditions
32. Fall Hunting at the Shack and Beyond
33. Dad and Gus, the German Short haired Pointer
Chapter 6. THE EVOLVING ARCHERY ENTERPRISE
34. Artisan and Archery
35. Roving and Archery Practice
36. Mother's Tournament Successes 4. Lady Diana on the Hunt and in the Classroom
37. Hunting at the Shack and Beyond
Chapter 7 The Shack Landscape and its Restoration: A Natural History
1. The Lay of the Land
a. Glacial carvings: The Johnstown Moraine and Green Bay Lobe
b. Early Forests
c. Vegetation Phases
d. Early Historical Records
2. What we did to the Land: Restoration Efforts to 1948.
a. The Shack Yard- and the plants we love
b. The old corn Field and Finding the Natives
c. Woodland Species
d. Maples, Soft and Hard
e. Our Garden and the Original Orchard.
f. Moist prairie south of the River Road
g. The Sand Blow
h. Tamaracks
i. Pines Planted, Do Not Molest
j. The Neighbor's Fire
4. We Plant an Oak

Chapter 8. The Continuing Process of Restoration, 1948- present
a. The Aldo Leopold Memorial Reserve
b. the Bradley Study Ctr and a prairie experiment-
c. The Leopold Fellows Program
d. Significance of Ninas Prairie Building
e. Aldo Leopold Shack Foundation
f. Charlie Bradleys Woods and Prairie
g. Restored prairie areas ( and map)
h. Oak forests and Resilient Prairie Plants
i. Of Sandhill Cranes and Ducks
j. Nina's phenology
k. Other restoration projects
Ch. 9. The Shack Idea
Preface
Starker's Shack at Sage Hen, California
Luna's place on the New Fork, Wyoming.
Nina's and Charlie's home near the Wisconsin Shack.
Carl's shack in Costa Rica
My Shack West in Colorado
Chapter 10 Epilogue: "Family and Familiarity"

Appendices
Three Pet Stories
Notes and sources

Stories from the Leopold Shack

Sand County Revisited

Estella B. Leopold

Author Information

Estella Bergere Leopold was born in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1927, and after undergraduate work at the University of Wisconsin and a PhD from Yale University became a paleobotanist and conservationist. From 1955 to 1976 she worked for the United States Geological Survey and subsequently moved to the University of Washington, where, until her retirement, she was a professor of botany and forest sciences and directed the Quaternary Research Center. Elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the recipient of many awards and citations, she lives in Seattle, Washington.

Stories from the Leopold Shack

Sand County Revisited

Estella B. Leopold

Reviews and Awards

"I was fourteen when I first read Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac for a school assignment. The book affected me so deeply then, and since, that the worn copy still has a prominent place on my bookshelf. Now Leopold's youngest daughter, Estella Jr., offers us all a chance to return to the Shack. Through her memories we witness her father, mother, and siblings, working as a family to restore worn-out farmland along the Wisconsin River. We also learn how the deep regard for the health of the land became a foundation for each of Leopold's children. This book offers moments of their lives in the land that touch the heart." --Lauret Edith Savoy, author of Trace: Memory, Race, and the American Landscape

"Stories from the Leopold Shack will be a treasure for the many readers inspired by A Sand County Almanac. In an engagingly anecdotal way it relates Aldo Leopold's famous shack to the social and ecological history of its region and conveys its lifelong importance to Leopold's remarkably accomplished and high-spirited offspring. As Estella B. Leopold describes current efforts to perpetuate 'the shack idea' both in Wisconsin and elsewhere, she also offers a hopeful perspective on where environmental research, writing, and activism might go from here." --John Elder, author of Reading the Mountains of Home and co-editor of The Norton Book of Nature Writing

"The great environmental writer Kenneth Brower once wrote that Leopold's shack 'sits just above a sandy flood channel of the Wisconsin River, at a fork in the evolution of our regard for the land.' This is the beautiful story of how it all happened. Estella Leopold has written the perfect companion to Aldo Leopold's beloved A Sand County Almanac. It's a deeply affecting portrait of a place, a family, and one of the most remarkable people of the 20th century." --James Gustave Speth, author of America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy, former Dean, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies

"We are welcomed, generously, into a family drama unfolding across generations that involves rocks, soils, waters, atmosphere, plants, and all kinds of other animals-that is, a special piece of land. With wit, modesty, and tenderness that never turns saccharine, Estella Leopold helps us feel the truth of her father's never-more-needed words: 'Once you learn to read the land, I have no fear of what you will do to it, or with it. And I know many pleasant things it will do to you.' This book will lure you into the clan of land-readers." --Julianne Lutz Warren, author of Aldo Leopold's Odyssey

"In A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold invited us into a 'thinking community,' inspiring us to develop a land ethic capable of meeting the social and ecological challenges we face. In Stories from the Leopold Shack: Sand County Revisited, Estella Leopold invites us into the life of her remarkable family, letting us laugh, cry-and work-alongside them. Her stories are a gift for those of us long inspired by the Leopold clan, as well as those just getting to know it." --Brooke Hecht, President, Center for Humans and Nature

"[Stories from the Leopold Shack] is a book of rare value, as likeable as it is informative. I love it for the sense it gives of the lived life of Aldo Leopold's familiy, which is probably as fine as accomplishment as his work." --Wendell Berry