Madison Reads Leopold, 2010

From the portion of A Sand County Almanac that I read aloud as part of Madison Reads Leopold 2010 at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum:

“We have erected a monument to commemorate the funeral of a species. It symbolizes our sorrow. We grieve because no living man will see again the onrushing phalanx of victorious birds, sweeping a path for spring across the March skies, chasing the defeated winter from all the woods and prairies of Wisconsin….Yearly, the feathered tempest roared up, down, and across the continent, sucking up the laden fruits of forest and prairie, burning them in a traveling blast of life….Today the oaks still flaunt their burden at the sky, but the feathered lightning is no more.”

~ Aldo Leopold, “On a Monument to the Pigeon” (Wyalusing State Park, 1947)