A Sand County Almanac - Aldo Leopold - May 2023

May's book, chosen by guest curators Miscellaneous Adventures, is a quietly revolutionary title that sowed the seeds of today’s rewilding movement.

First published in 1949, A Sand County Almanac combines some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau with an outspoken and highly ethical regard for our relationship with the land.

Since publication, it has emerged as a kind of secular bible: a book that will have shaped the way you think about the world and your place in it, even if you’ve never heard of Aldo Leopold, and you’ve no idea what a sand county is.

Written with an unparalleled understanding of nature, the book diarises his observations of monthly changes in the Wisconsin countryside; includes essays written over a forty-year period as Leopold travelled through the woodlands of Wisconsin, Iowa, Arizona, Sonora, Oregon, Manitoba, and elsewhere; and in the book’s final part, he marks out what he calls The Land Ethic.

It’s an idea which will guide the thought and work of generations to come, reaching into the heart of conservationism and recently flowered into the rewilding movement we know today.