DEEP TIME IN ALDO LEOPOLD’S, “A SAND COUNTY ALMANAC,” AS INTEGRAL TO MODERN ENVIRONMENTALISM

The posthumous publication of his book, “A Sand County Almanac,” in 1949 assured Aldo Leopold’s standing as a founder of modern environmentalism. For Leopold (1887-1948), environmentalism meant a community of diverse organisms in harmony with the land, a web of interdependencies that included humankind in a caring, ethical stewardship transcending consumerism.

Little discussed, however, is Aldo Leopold’s internalization of geology’s Big Idea, Deep Time, despite the fact that it is evident throughout the book. “A sense of history should be the most precious gift of science and the arts,” he wrote. So pervasive is the concept in his essays that it is clear that Deep Time was integral to his ethical concerns. One of his essays, “Thinking Like a Mountain,” is often quoted for asserting how elimination of predators (wolves) can cause increased erosion by prey (deer) whose population is no longer held in balance. Overlooked is the lesson from the title: it takes a person with the perspective of Deep Time embodied in a long-lived mountain to comprehend the long-term consequences of humankind’s disruption of communities. In fact, Leopold mentions Darwin and the evolution of communities throughout the book; the annual migration of cranes as “the ticking of the geologic clock;” the “geological accumulation of soil fertility;” the paleontological record as evidence for maintenance of wilderness over “immensely long periods;” "the outstanding scientific discovery of the 20^thcentury... the complexity of the land organism [community]"...built "in the course of eons." He implicitly invokes the concepts of the rock cycle and base level when he laments that the destiny of soil disturbed by indiscriminant tilling of the land is to be washed down to the sea and only “in the course of geologic time raised to form new lands and new pyramids.”

Deep Time is not a concept that students can easily internalize in one class, but rather by its repeated reinforcement and application in many classes. This advocates for teaching historical geology early in the curriculum. Especially in environmental geology courses, the risk of teaching stochastic models without reference to Deep Time is erosion of Leopold's environmental ethic. Clearly, Aldo Leopold’s “Sand County” is worth revisiting.