A Sand County Almanac

“Have you ever wondered why a thick crust of corky bark covers the whole tree, even to the smallest twigs? This cork is armor. Bur oaks were the shock troops sent by the invading forest to storm the prairie; fire is what they had to fight. Each April, before the new grasses had covered the prairie with unburnable greenery, fires ran at will over the land, sparing only such old oaks as had grown bark too thick to scorch. Most of these groves of scattered veterans, known to the pioneers as ‘oak openings’, consisted of bur oaks. Engineers did not discover insulation; they copied it from these old soldiers of the prairie war”. (“A Sand County Almanac”, Aldo Leopold, pg 29)


I particularly enjoyed this quote because of Leopold’s use of personification. Botany to most people may seem like a dull subject, but Leopold makes it very interesting by comparing it to a war. I liked how exited I got at the simple idea of trees and prairie, but then again I attribute that to Leopold’s style of drawing in the reader. But what I enjoyed the most is that Leopold took it a step further than merely personifying the trees, he made it to where they were the ones teaching us, “Engineers did not discover insulation; they copied it from these old soldiers of the prairie war”. The magic of Aldo Leopold is that he can take something as still and serene as a prairie surrounded by woods, and turn into a something that jumps off the page and comes to life.