A Leopold Biography: Interview With Marybeth Lorbiecki (Part III)
Marybeth Lorbiecki lives, writes, and gardens in Hudson, Wisconsin. She is the author of Aldo Leopold: A Fierce Green Fire and John Burrough's award winning biography for children, Of 'Things Natural, Wild, and Free: A Story about Aldo Leopold. Her other environmental titles include Earthwise at Home, Earthwise at Play, and Earthwise at School.
This series of interviews with Ms. Lorbiecki will give you a much better picture of both Aldo Leopolds - the man and the movement. He has been credited with much of the force behind todays ecosystem management push. I think he is a heck of an interesting man and the best environmental wordsmith I've ever read.
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Q: Can you justify AL's disdain for "comfort at any cost" versus his approach of "comfort must be in step with the land". He seemed to be struggling to move from partial participation in nature to total integration for the healthy existence of a natural world...
Marybeth Lorbiecki: Another difficult but necessary question. Leopold seemed to view things in terms of practical realities and pursuable ideals. They were not in direct antithesis to each other, but rather something like the ying and yang of conservation. Leopold acknowledged many of the contradictions of his own life with his ideals:
"I realize that every time I turn on an electric light, or ride on a Pullman, or pocket the unearned increment on a stock, or a bond, or a piece of real estate, I am 'selling out' to the enemies of conservation. When I submit these thoughts to a printing press, I am helping cut down the woods. When I pour cream in my coffee, I am helping to drain a marsh for cows to graze, and to exterminate the birds of Brazil..."
His list continues. He concludes:
" What to do? I see only two courses open to the likes of us. One is to go live on locusts in the wilderness, if there is any wilderness left. The other is to surreptitiously to set up within the economic Juggernaut certain new cogs and wheels whereby the residual love of nature... may be to recreate at least a fraction of those values which their love of 'progress' is destroying. A briefer way to put it is: if we want Mr. Babbitt to rebuild America, we must let him use the same tools wherewith he destroyed it. He knows no others."
Leopold had an expression "breakfast comes before ethics", which meant that one could not be concerned with environmental ethics when breakfast is an iffy event. He believed that in every striving for better harmony with the land, we must remember the everyday needs of people, who are also members of the land community. Leopold would be very much against any kind of paradigm that would place environmentalists on one side of a table and everyone else on the other.
When Leopold was working with farmers for better land use practice, he was continually looking for ways in which providing better game habitat could result in larger income for struggling landowners. That is why he formed the Riley Game Cooperative, where hunters would pay farmers with labor and fees to help build up the habitat and thus, the game populations on the farmers' lands. It was a win-win situation. The hunters ended up with more game and better hunting; the landowners received a more beautiful, bounteous land, some dollars in the pocket, and a sense of satisfaction from their improved stewardship of their lands.
I'm sure if Leopold were alive, he would be supportive of all environmental efforts that remember that humans need to have a way to make a meaningful living within the land system. But he would have no time for efforts that place economic interests above the health of the land, or consider that all "desires" at a negotiating table are equal. That's where the differences between needs and wants, necessities and comfort for all member species need to be weighed. That's why he proposed an American Land Ethic, so that we could begin to have discussions that did not just revolve around economic values and convenience.
He made the personal leap of hope between practical realities and ideals by stating: "We shall never achieve harmony with the land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these aspirations, the important thing is not to achieve, but to strive."
Q: How did teaching at the University of Wisconsin's first graduate program in game management change AL's direction and philosophy....
Marybeth Lorbiecki: I wouldn't say that it did. I would say it intensified his course. He became "The Professor" -- a conduit of knowledge to others in a formal, educational way, and in a personal way, a mentor to those who were looking to make a difference in the world while still being rooted in a loving relationship and stable family. So many famous people in American history and culture have not able to value and be committed to both, a loving family and a profession of national or international standing. Leopold did.
It must be noted, of course, that the only reason he was able to sustain both a family and his many professional responsibilities and interests was because of his wife, Estella, and her devotion to supporting his work and interests. But she did not do it in a subservient, colorless way. She ran their home with humor, financial acuity, graciousness, creativity, music and warmth; she sought and gained expertise in every area of her interests, sometimes surpassing Aldo -- hunting, archery, prairie fauna, etc.
Leopold never "grew too big for his britches" in the sense of waylaying interpersonal relationships because of self-inflation. And his students noted that about him. He was thoughtful, caring, and a good listener.He refined the art of drawing the best of knowledge and curiosity out of people, and this quality came most to the fore during this period of Leopold's life. A friend, Ernie Swift said of him, "You would go out with him and he'd stretch your brains until they were tired." As you can imagine, Leopold's students had a similar, reciprocal effect on him as they brought in their research, their questions, their proposals, their outlooks, their challenges.
Q: I love your "born in a mansion and died in a shack" quote; his shack being his grandest possession. Explain this and express what he left us...
Marybeth Lorbiecki: I was just trying to emphasize how Leopold turned the American Dream of seeking riches upside down. Leopold was born in a family that possessed both material and spiritual wealth; yet as Leopold grew, he consistently sought after the latter, sometimes in direct opposition to the former.
During the 30s, Leopold found some land with an old chicken coop on it, and for the cost of the back taxes, the family purchased it. After cleaning out the manure, the Shack became Leopold's beloved vacation spot for relaxation, restoration, and fulfillment. But it never became anything physically more than a souped-up chicken coop. Leopold required that no one ever bring anything to the shack that was not absolutely necessary. So the luxuries of electricity, running water, store-bought furniture, radios, rugs, curtains, never made their way to the Shack. A outside hand pump, Dutch oven, fireplace, strawfilled mattresses, and a plank floor have been the beloved features of this place where Leopold and his family sought and found their "meat from God.'
The wealth of the Shack was the land itself and the relationships between the people on it. The site became the family's longest lived "project" -- one of the nation's first experiments in land restoration (only slightly proceeded by the restoration project at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum, of which Leopold and his family were a part). On its "corned-out," devastated acres, the Leopolds set to work planting tens of thousands of native trees, bushes, and prairie plants each spring and summer, in an attempt to bring those 40 acres into a state of harmony, with samples of their presettlement vegetation.
Thirty years later, a family friend, not knowing the land's history, saw the results: "It was Dorothy's first visit to the storied 'Shack.' As she looked across the prairie meadow and over the marshes to the vistas of hills and woods, she exclaimed at the happy fortune which had led the Leopolds to find 'such an UNMOLESTED corner of natural beauty!' It is hard not to feel that way now, even if one does know the facts .... Now the deer trails through the pines, the sweet fern on the sand-blows, the tamarack bogs, the meadows and openings are all blending together so naturally that it is hard to realize how much long-range forethought and what carefully integrated planning has been carried through here."
This is quite an example to leave us of what one person, one family can accomplish. I like ending at this point, looking at a family's contribution, because one of the things that I believe is that if we could truly begin to look at all members of the land community with respect and love, and start taking an active role in living this out, we will see our interpersonal relationships improve on the family level, the community level, the species level. As Leopold say, "To change ideas about what the land is for is to change ideas about what anything is for.'
Presently I'm president of a group called the Western Wisconsin Prairie Project (WWPP) and we are a citizen's group working to support a DNR proposal to permanently protect and restore 20,000 acres of native prairie, oak savanna and other grasslands within our two counties along the St. Croix River. Our motto, which I took from Leopold's philosophies, is "We can take the remnants and rebuild a community." Not everyone can own forty acres, but we can all have communal ownership of public lands. I would like to see Americans in the next millennium rethink what that means -- and redefine it in a way that means active responsibility -- actually taking part in the management work and scientific study. The WWPP is asking the DNR to build into the project a citizen's advisory council, and we want to use this council to encourage families, faith groups, youth groups, and civic groups to "Adopt-a-prairie" -- to help with the planting, brush cutting, nonnative weeding, burning, seed collecting, species censuses, scientific studies, etc. so that someday we can all come back and say to our grandchildren, "we helped build this prairie."
As Leopold noted, we shall not come to know, or love, or read the land unless we interact with it, and I believe that act of doing this as a family and as a community will draw us together, strengthening our biotic community on many levels. Leopold observed: "A society rooted in the soil is more stable than one rooted in pavements." And is, I think, happier. As Leopold told his students, "Once you learn to read the land, I have no fear what you will do to it, or with it, and I know many pleasant things it will do to you."
Great job, Marybeth, an it was fun; I've learned a lot and you have made for a very interesting interview. I would suggest that your book is tops for anybody who wants a quick but hard hitting look at Aldo Leopold. Thanks again!
You can pick up a copy of Aldo Leopold: A Fierce Green Fire in my book recommendations...
