In 1935, in the midst of relentless drought, Aldo Leopold purchased an abandoned farm along the Wisconsin River near Baraboo, Wisconsin. An old chicken coop, later to become famous as the Leopold "Shack," was the property's only intact structure. The Leopold family embraced this spent farm as a new kind of laboratory-a place to experiment on restoring health to an ailing piece of land. Here, Leopold found inspiration for writing A Sand County Almanac, his influential book of essays on conservation and ethics.
Living a Land Ethic chronicles the formation of the 1,600-acre...