Leopold's childhood experiences were significant to evolving the Land Ethic. Family cultural education in the humanities and discoveries in the local wild landscapes gave Aldo a head start on conservation. We take a look at the Leopold Compound and some of his favorite places to learn more about the reflections he used in later writings. These early years stimulated his imagination and he continued searching for personal connections to nature as he dealt with conservation challenges along the way.
Leopold's childhood could become a model for how we help today's children balance our increasingly technological culture with nature. Leopold realized that his reactions to nature, his discoveries while ranging through wild places built character, created values, and provided relief from fast paced society--all in ways that serve the individual, and thus the community. Wild places close to home and school serve humans in unexpected ways. We visit the Aldo Leopold Middle School Prairie Classroom to see how and why.
Leopold's extraordinary family was the source of a home ground education that linked portrayals by writers, artists and musicians to a real nature around home. The Starker grandparents brought a European longing for a more balanced society with wild spaces that had been lost in the homeland. In America was a chance to get the relationship between humans and nature right, but it was a matter of balancing the practical and poetic.
Follow Leopold to some of the places he worked and helped save for us today in New Mexico and Arizona. Add to the impressions he created in essays and letters, by looking at more details. In Wisconsin we tour the Shack area and some of the rivers and marshes that played an important role to bring back the sandhill cranes.