Leopold spent his working life in government service and academia. But his influence is based mostly on a series of articles he wrote for magazines such as American Forests, Journal of Forestry, and Journal of Wildlife Management. These, published after his death as parts of A Sand County Almanac, are Leopold's enduring legacy. With the precision of a scientist and the sensitivity of a poet, he catalogues the emotional strands that join us to the natural world.

Killing the Wolf We saw what we thought was a doe fording the torrent, her breast awash in white water. When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her tail, we realized our error: it was a wolf. A half-dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang from the willows and all joined in a welcoming melee of wagging tails and playful maulings. What was literally a pile of wolves writhed and tumbled in the center of an open flat at the foot of our rimrock. In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy; how to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing. When our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into impassable side-rocks. 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 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. "Thinking Like a Mountain" in A Sand County Almanac The Land Ethic "The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land. "The Land Ethic" from A Sand County Almanac Passenger Pigeon, extinct We have erected a monument to comemorate the funeral of a specias. It symbolizes our sorrow. We grieve because no living man will see again the onrushing phalanx of victorious birds, sweeping a path for spring across the March skies, chasing the defeated winter from the woods and praries of Wisconsin. Men still live who, in their youth, remember pigeons. Trees still live who, in their youth, were shaken by a living wind. But a decade hence only the oldest oaks will remember, and at long last only the hills will know. ... The pigeon was a biological storm. He was the lightening that played between two opposing potentials of intolerable intensity: the fat of the land and the oxygen of the air. "Wisconsin" in A Sand County Almanac Food and Fuel There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace. To avoid the first danger, one should plant a garden, preferably where there is no grocer to confuse the issue. To avoid the second, he should lay a split of good oak on the andirons, preferably where there is no furnace, and let it warm his shins while a February blizzard tosses the trees outside. "February" in A Sand County Almanac Hunting Ethics Voluntary adherance to an ethical code elevates the self-respect of the sportsman, but it should not be forgotten that voluntary disregard of the code degenerates and depraves him. For example, a common denominator of all sporting codes is not to waste good meat. Yet it is now a demonstrable fact that Wisconsin deer-hunters, in their pursuit of a legal buck, kill and abandon in the woods at least one doe, fawn, or spike buck for every two legal bucks taken out. In other words, approximately half the hunters shoot any deer until a legal deer is killed. The illegal carcasses are left where they fall. Such deer-hunting is not only without social value, but constitutes actual training for ethical depravity elsewhere. "Wildlife in American Culture" from A Sand County Almanac