Donovan Kelly

“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.”

The opening sentences in the Foreword of Aldo Leopold’s “A Sand County Almanac” are a philosophical touchstone that I return to often. You didn’t ask, but if you did, “Sand County” is one book I would recommend for every weekend cabin. Delightful, challenging and a perfect gift for our guests.

Although Leopold wrote of his weekend county “shack” in Wisconsin, his Almanac fits comfortably into my weekend corner of West Virginia. “Soon after I bought the woods a decade ago, I realized that I had bought almost as many tree diseases as I had trees,” Leopold said. “My woodlot is riddled by all the ailments wood is heir to. I began to wish that Noah, when he loaded up the Ark, had left the tree diseases behind. But it soon became clear that these same diseases made my woodlot a mighty fortress.”

The fortress that Leopold describes is the web of shelter and food provided by dead and dying trees to a variety of wildlife. Even as I write this, three pileated woodpeckers are checking the trees and logs around our cabin. They are welcomed Sunday morning visitors that we don’t see as much anymore.

In part we see less of their flashing wing and hear less of the laughing call because their nursery tree fell in a winter storm. A large hollow oak, a 100 yards from the cabin, had been home to at least two generations of young pileated woodpeckers and provided an adult hangout for more years than that. We were spoiled by daily visits of the big red-headed birds.

In part we see less of them because I have been knocking down the fortress. I tell myself that I am cutting down the dead trees around the cabin for protection: to reduce the hazard from falling limbs and wildfire. But the greater truth is that I’m lazy. I cut the firewood that is closest and easiest to bring to the fireplace. Even worse, I don’t begin to cut seriously until I feel a cold breath in the wind. By then, only standing dead wood is dry enough to burn. It’s too late to cull and season green wood to burn for the winter that is already pushing frost under the door. With each dead tree I cut, the pileated woodpeckers are driven further away and my woodlot fortress weakened.

Dr. Leopold died in 1948, while helping a neighbor fight a grass fire. I have often wondered what it was like growing up as one of his children. Many of us would pay good money as adults to sit around his campfire, but I imagine he was a demanding taskmaster. I had the honor of working a few hours with two of his children, both driven, strong-minded world-class scientists with a deep conservation ethics. My image of their father came through strongly in their own characters.

I can picture him now, looking at my woodlot, not quite the fortress it should be, and gently, sternly, saying, “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. Where do you stand?”

A few Fridays ago, my five-year-old granddaughter delighted and surprised me by joining me, just grouchy old me, in a sleepover at our cabin. Izzy and I watched the snow fall, shared dreams in the fire, played with stuffed animals and talked about real animals. On short walks, we debated cracking puddle ice (yes) and whether to take a cookie to the cave where we think the bear lives (no). Maybe I can’t ever reach the Leopold standards for wilderness fortresses, but I can hope to pass on my own version of the wilderness loving gene.