Leopold

Aldo Leopold 

After going through Leopold's The Land Ethic, it had me thinking at the end whether or not I enjoyed his writing. With me not being a strong reader and not knowing certain words, his writing made me second guess myself on what I just read or made me go back and re read the sentence entirety. Even though he had a couple of words that through me off, I was intrigued from the start. "When God-like Odysseus returned from the wars in Troy, he hanged all on one rope a dozen slave-girls of his household whom he suspected of misbehavior during his absence (Leopold 58)." That sentence right there is a ballsy but eye catching statement that makes the reader want to continue on. He held my attention for the most part because of all the historically references he made, and to a history major that is all we need. It makes me wonder if he did a deep research of all the historically documented things he mentioned or if he too is a history major and just knew them. He ranges all the way from Odysseus, Ezekiel, and Isiah to parts of the revolutionary war. Land ethic changes the role of humans from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. Leopold gives an example, "the settlement of the Mississippi valley (Leopold 61)." What if American settlers never concord the land? What if the English and Indians won that? Would there have been a civil war? These are the questions Leopold was asking and they are all so good. If America settlers never tried to or even succeed at conquering the Mississippi valley, what would have happened. 

After hearing about all of this, Leopold finishes out with something that made me a little upset, but he may be right. He states, "He has no vital reaction to it: to him it is space between cities on which crop grows (Leopold 74)."  Here he is talking about my generation and how the education systems are headed away from teaching us how to respect the land. All in all, the reading was okay, he made some really good points, and then some that made me give him a nasty face. I kinda compared him to a really well known speaker in the Christian world, John Piper. He uses really big words, and leads me in all different directions, but gives amazing examples.