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From a lyrical Wisconsin sage of yesteryears: "We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, t
by sn41 5y ago
From a lyrical Wisconsin sage of yesteryears:
"We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time. A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but
too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau's dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known
among mountains, but seldom perceived among men."
- Aldo Leopold, "Thinking like a mountain"
- afc 5y agoThanks for sharing the quote. Funny that this was written by a professor of the University of Wisconsin and dealt pretty directly with the killing of wolves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_like_a_mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_like_a_mountain is an interesting read. "Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain [...]. The cowman who cleans his range of wolves does not realize that he is taking over the wolf’s job of trimming the herd to fit the change. He has not learned to think like a mountain. Hence we have dustbowls, and rivers washing the future into the sea." This was written in 1949. So many decades have passed and yet here we are, struggling with what should be such a straightforward problem.