ALDO LEOPOLD LIVING HISTORY
To awaken and nurture our respect understanding and passion for the land, meaning the soils, waters, plants and animals, through Leopold Chautauqua Performances, naturalist writings, and the words and thoughts of Aldo Leopold.
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A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.
~ Aldo Leopold
Why Nature is Rather Important
We enjoy breathing fresh air. We enjoy eating good, nourishing food. We enjoy the sight and sounds of a waterfall, a vast vista, a waving field of amber grasses, a handsome, well-antlered buck with his beautiful does all watching you watching them, a gallery of speleotherms deep underground, all glistening in the revealing beam of the explorers headlamp and a myriad of other fascinating stories and sights. Aldo Leopold spoke of the importance of looking at the natural world as a community to which we, Homo sapiens, are merely a member of. With that viewpoint, one tends to respect and love the other members of the community. That community includes all parts of the natural world, meaning the soils, waters, plants and animals or collectively the land.
When one reads the news of today, we are often overwhelmed by human activities and their impact on the natural world. One of my favorite quotes from Aldo Leopold is in reference to all that we surround ourselves with. In the early 1940’s he wrote, “Be that as it may, our bigger and better society is much like a hypochondriac, so obsessed with it’s own economic health as to have lost the capacity to remain healthy. Nothing could be more salutary at this point than a little healthy contempt for the plethora of material blessings in our society.” Now over 75 years later, that observation is more pertinent than ever before. The population he saw in 1945 numbered 140 million. He was seeing such great impact on our nation’s remaining wild lands back in 1910 when there were only 92 million people here. Now, in 2024, our population has exploded to over 340 million and the wild lands are endangered more than ever. It is only with awareness of our impacts on the natural world that will allow us to respect life in all forms and work to keep it intact and healthy.
If we do not cherish and nurture our forests while at the same time, we keep pouring pollutants into the skies, breathing will become something we have to think about. If we allow our soils to further degrade, erode away down the creeks and rivers, we will not have the means to grow our food. We have a mandate to leave the world a better place than we started with. Just like leaving your campsite cleaner than when you arrived, we should be showing by good example, how to treat this incredible world of ours. The one that we do share with many other creatures who are awesome and amazing in ways that we can only attempt to imitate. The world is not a commodity to exploit and as many believe is their Man-given right to pursue to the fullest.
This website and the messages we write about are shaped to help awaken the passions for life, love and respect for all. It is our youth particularly that should be allowed and encouraged to experience our natural world. It is that experience plus education (knowledge) that will grow wise adults. Future adults savvy enough to realize that a community way of life thrives where as a path of commodity belief, leads to a wasteland. Ever watch the animated film Wall-E? Leopold said, “The last word in ignorance is that of a man who says of a plant or animal, what good is it?” He also said, “Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one is watching even when doing the wrong thing is legal.” So ask questions, pause and observe, lead by example, and most of all, respect the life around you and enjoy this journey.
Who was Aldo Leopold?
We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.
~ Aldo Leopold
Steve Morgan ~ Living History Performer
Performances of Aldo Leopold - some details
I am a naturalist, performer-educator, and a retired Landscape Architect who focused on creating, restoring, and retaining natural habitat. The southwest has been my home for 50 years and I currently reside in Kingston, New Mexico with my wife Nichole and our dogs. It has always surprised me when someone said that they had never heard of Aldo Leopold or of his work of wisdom The Sand County Almanac. My father, Jim Morgan, gave me my first copy of the Sand County Almanac when I was eight or nine years old. I grew up thinking that everyone knew who Aldo Leopold was. I realize now, after more than a decade of performing as Mr. Leopold, that it would be generous to say that one in a hundred people know anything about the man. It is that relative obscurity that drives me to perform and spread his words of wisdom and respect for all life to as wide an audience as I can reach. It has also become obvious to me that most of the problems Aldo identified a century ago are problems we are still facing today. Our grasslands are still being overgrazed and the soils heavily eroded, our predator population is still being targeted for extinction without remorse or cause, our own population has more than doubled and we still see ourselves as an entity separate from the natural world. My goal is to continue teaching Leopold’s wisdom to encourage careful observation, inspire wonder, and to promote positive environmental action and change.