Over Christmas I read ‘A Sand County Almanac’  by Aldo Leopold. It was written in 1948 and is one of the most beautiful pieces of creative writing on an environmental theme that I have come across.

The book is an anecdotal diary kept through the early part of the twentieth century by a man who enjoyed the wilderness and grew to appreciate it at an extraordinarily deep level. In the process he anticipates most of the concerns that are now commonplace among environmentalists.

For example, he argues that effective tourism should be measured by the extent to which the tourist changes their perception of nature as a result.

He says:

that land should be viewed not as a ‘commodity’ but as a ‘community’

that the nature of the wilderness in a place shapes the culture of the humans who settle it.

This book is felt to be so important it rates as number one on the reading list of a Master’s course in ecological economics.

If you can get hold of a copy I would be glad to hear how you found it.

For me this book was beautifully written and its poetic nature helped me to think and feel about sustainability outside of the scientific resource focussed box.  I thoroughly recommend it.  In places it reads as it was written yesterday rather than nearly 100 years ago