Having To Squeeze The Last Drop Of

A Land Ethic...reflects The Existence Of An Ecological Conscience, And This In Turn Reflects A Conviction Of Individual Responsibility For The Health Of The Land. Health Is The Capacity Of The Land For Self-renewal. Conservation Is Our Effort To Understand And Preserve This Capacity.

Acts Of Creation Are Ordinarily Reserved For Gods And Poets, But Humbler Folk May Circumvent This Restriction If They Know How. To Plant A Pine, For Example, One Need Be Neither God Nor Poet; One Need Only Own A Shovel. By Virtue Of This Curious Loophole In The Rules, Any Clodhopper May Say: Let There Be A Tree - And There Will Be One.

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 New To Me In Those Eyes – 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.

What Conservation Education Must Build Is An Ethical Underpinning For Land Economics And A Universal Curiosity To Understand The Land Mechanism. Conservation May Then Follow.

Only The Most Uncritical Minds Are Free From Doubt.