Thinking Like a Mountain

In Aldo Leopold's book, Sand County Almanac, he talks about how a mountain is really the only thing that has lived long enough to see everything that happens and the hidden meanings in nature. Then Aldo talks about the time he saw a wolf die and how that was his realization that there is more to nature than the physical things. In those days, people always killed wolves if they saw them. Him and his friends (I assume), watch wolves playing on the mountain. They decide to start shooting, and end up hitting an old wold and a pup. The pups foot was injured so he limped away, but the old wolf was going to die. Aldo says that he watched a green fire dying in her eyes. It was at that moment that he realized that killing wolves didn't mean more deer and a hunters paradise and that it meant more to the wolf and mountain too. Now, he watches more and more states kill off wolves and the deer eating all of the food in the area and then die. Trees no longer have their leaves because of all of the deer eating them. A deer killed by wolves can be replaced in two to three years, but it takes a long time for deer to be replaced when they die from hunger or things other than predators. The mountain knows more than men.

I had to read this book for an environmental science class last year, so I already kind of knew what it was about. I think it is sad and really something to think about. I think that more people need to think more like a mountain and less about themselves. We need to take a step back and let nature take its course. I think that humans interfere too much with natural processes these days. Like this section said, it takes less time for deer to make up for loss when they are killed by wolves but it can take decades to make up for loss by starvation. I don't think people know that if they are making decisions to kill off the wolves. Before I read this, I probably would've said to kill off wolves too so that there are more deer to hunt and so they aren't getting killed. But now I think wolves are an important part of the ecosystem and an important part of deer lives. I don't think there should be a wolf hunt in the UP for those reasons. We really just need to let nature take its course. Nature knows more than we do. To think like a mountain, I think we need to think about how we are affecting the ecosystem and area that we live in. We need to observe on the processes and know that every living thing plays a part, whether it is good or bad to us. I really strongly believe that everyone should read this passage and reflect on it.

 This is a picture of a deer in my back yard at home.