[mou] FW: Sand County Almanac quote

[Laura Coble]

  _____  

From: Laura Coble [mailto:shearwater45 at frontiernet.net] 
Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2007 1:18 PM
To: 'mnbird at lists.mnbird.net'
Subject: Sand County Almanac quote


I'm rereading the Sand County Almanac, from essays by Aldo Leopold, the
birder, writer, hunter, and early conservationist from Wisconsin. Leopold
was working on the book in 1948, and died before the book was finished, so
his son, Luna, published it in 1949 through Oxford University Press.
 
This quote is about the birds who benefited from Clandeboye Marsh on the
edge of Lake Manitoba in Canada. This marsh and others  were soon to be
altered by a dam. The Manitoba wildlife associations have since helped to
push through changes that has restored some of the area's marshland and
lakes, by destruction of the dam and wiser management (or none). 
 
I thought of what has happened recently to two wonderful wetland marshes in
MN, specifically on 140th St. and 180th St. in SE MN, which are on privately
owned land. For a number of reasons, including the agriculture and/or
industry surrounding them, they have declined drastically. This doesn't seem
like a cycle, but I've been in MN just 4 years, so some of you may know
better. 
 
Anyway, in his poetic prose, Leopold states perfectly the importance of
understanding how vital and changing our marshes are: 
 
"Education, I fear, is learning to see one thing by going blind to another."
 
"One thing most of us have gone blind to is the quality of marshes. I am
reminded of this when, as a special favor, I take a visitor to Clandeboye,
only to find that, to him, it is merely lonelier to look upon, and stickier
to navigate, than other boggy places."
 
"This is strange, for any pelican, duckhawk (Perigrine Falcon), godwit, or
western grebe is aware that Clandeboye is a marsh apart.  Why else do they
seek it out in preference to other marshes?  Why else do they resent my
intrusion within its precincts not as mere trespass, but as some kind of
cosmic impropriety?"
 
"I think the secret is this:  Clandeboye is a marsh apart, not only in
space, but in time. Only the uncritical consumers of hand-me-down history
suppose that 1941 arrived simultaneously in all marshes. Let a squadron of
southbound pelicans but feel a lift of prairie breeze over Clandeboye, and
they sense at once that here is a landing in the geological past, a refuge
from that most relentless of aggressors, the future. With queer antediluvian
grunts they set wing, descending in majestic spirals to the welcoming wastes
of a bygone age." 
 
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