Madison, WI.—Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac should be considered the environmental primer of the 20th Century.
October 27, 2024 is the 75th anniversary of the publication of this literary classic.
The book, printed in 15 different languages, with more than two million copies sold,
involves a look at events in the natural world as the calendar turns each month.
Its following series of essays help to unlock secrets of the natural world.
In 1933 Leopold began work as the first professor of wildlife management at UW-Madison. He was the first such professor in the nation, and was a skilled writer.
He submitted his essays for publication in a book, at first being turned down by at least two publishers, but then receiving acceptance from Oxford University Press April 14, 1948.
Soon after receiving the good news, Leopold was up at his cabin on the Wisconsin River near Baraboo, where he often made field notes that were eventually turned into eloquent essays, when he was alerted to a wildfire consuming his neighbor’s property.
He rushed out and in the midst of fighting the fire succumbed to a heart attack on April 21, 1948.
When Leopold’s class in wildlife management met the following week, it was Joseph Hickey, assistant professor of wildlife management, who entered the classroom to inform the students that “The Professor” would not be there as he had passed away that weekend.
While Leopold had undoubtedly been pleased with the earlier news that his book (which he titled Great Possessions, and the publisher later titled A Sand County Almanac) would be published, there still were details to work out.
Curt Meine, Leopold biographer and senior fellow at the Aldo Leopold Foundation in Baraboo, writes that the job fell to one of Leopold’s sons, Luna, to pull together the details with the publisher along with other close colleagues.
One of those colleagues in Madison was Prof. Hickey, who according to a note from Nina Leopold Bradley, Leopold’s daughter, referred to Hickey as Leopold’s favorite student.
Hickey’s role in helping with publication of A Sand County Almanac is not as well known.
Hickey and his wife Peggy, were good friends of Estella and Aldo Leopold, and in fact when the Hickeys were married in Madison, Aldo and Estella were the only other observers and served as best man and matron of honor.
The Joseph J. Hickey archives at the Steenbach Library in Madison reveal Hickey’s admiration for Leopold, once observing that “Leopold was not only a thinker, an Olympian, but a great teacher.”
Hickey recalled telling Leopold: “Aldo, you should not waste your time on research, you should be writing these essays for us.”
Hickey was on the faculty in Madison at the UW Department of Wildlife Ecology and on April 22, 1948 Hickey received a letter from Oxford University Press expressing shock that Leopold had passed away.
“I don’t know now what happens to the book,” Oxford editor Phillip Vaudrin wrote. “He (Leopold) was going to spend the summer working it over and getting it into final shape – a job which he alone would have been able to manage, I should have thought. Perhaps you could let me have your thoughts about this?”
Hickey later received a letter from Luna Leopold on April 30, instructing Hickey to “take the responsibility for making some suggestions for an agreement” with the book illustrator, since Hickey had experience having published his own book A Guide to Bird Watching in 1943.
It perhaps was not a coincidence that Hickey’s earlier book was also published by Oxford University Press, so the Leopold family knew he could provide valuable advice and Oxford University Press knew they could rely on Hickey.
On April 27, Hickey wrote to Professor Chapman at the Yale School of Forestry (where Leopold had graduated from) that, “He (Leopold) had hoped to retire in 1950 and clean up this unfinished business, but that job is now left to other hands. We are negotiating with Oxford University Press for publication of a volume of new essays which they had verbally agreed to print in the fall of 1949. I have good hope that this deal will go through.”
The deal did go through, and in honor of the 75th anniversary people can purchase the book at a special price of $7.50, from the Aldo Leopold Foundation at:
Buddy Huffaker, executive director of the Aldo Leopold Foundation, summarizes the book by saying, “I believe A Sand County Almanac continues to inform and inspire conservation, and conservationists, because the book invites the reader on a journey to learn more about how ecological systems work, then diagnosis conservation challenges, and finally presents a systemic solution – and ethic of care that depends on all of us to be realized. And perhaps most importantly, it conveys all this in eloquent simplicity that stirs the heart and the mind.”
This is an important book, that should be in every library in the State.
Two Professors, Two Legacies
“THE” Professor. That was how the late Aldo Leopold was regarded by his students
Today he is known nationwide as the father of modern-day wildlife management.
His insights to natural events gained as professor of Game Management at UW-Madison, and while restoring land at his “shack” on the Wisconsin River, helped spark interest in the natural world through his book: A Sand County Almanac.
For me, “THE” professor was Leopold’s chief graduate student: Joseph J. Hickey, who opened doors to the natural world for hundreds of students just like me.
As a graduate student in Prof. Hickey’s Wildlife Ecology 318 class the Spring semester of 1969 at UW-Madison, A Sand County Almanac was required reading, and which I believe should be attached to every birth certificate in Wisconsin!
Walking in Hickey’s footsteps on our class field trip to the Leopold Shack that semester brought insight to Leopold’s efforts to heal “worn out” land and his final moments before he died there fighting a grass fire in 1948.
Hickey was a direct link to Leopold, as he was personally recruited to come to Wisconsin by Leopold to work as his graduate assistant in 1941.
A New York native, Hickey had met Leopold at a cocktail party in New York. After that chance meeting, he left his fiancée (Margaret “Peggy” Brooks) in New York and drove to Wisconsin in November, 1941.
Hickey wrote three letters a week to his beloved Peggy, describing his impressions of being in Wisconsin for the first time, his work as a graduate student (“bringing a fresh point of view to the solution of an old problem” studying severe erosion of farmland in the Driftless Region), and his mentor: Aldo Leopold.
In those early Madison days, he writes that rooms are $3.50 a week and meals are $1 a day.
Hickey’s office was in the attic of the building where Leopold had his office at 424 University Farm Place in Madison. That building, not far from the current Babcock Hall, has since been torn down.
Hickey’s letters describe an immense admiration for Leopold’s understanding of natural systems and how he encouraged students to question how things evolved.
Hickey insights
Hickey wrote that Leopold meets with each of his graduate and undergraduate students at least once each week.
Besides classes, students participated in regular “bull sessions,” where they exchanged ideas with the professor. Those sessions often stretched into the evening, and always present were apples.
“Leopold has the nice habit of treating one as an intellectual equal and not as a hireling. Students with ideas are listened to, not shut off,” Hickey writes.
Hickey surmises his two years in graduate school will be a symbiotic relationship, with Leopold extracting ornithological knowledge from Hickey, just as Hickey will draw knowledge from Leopold.
In December, 1941, Hickey accompanied Leopold and Mrs. Leopold, Estella, and 14-year-old daughter, Stella, up to his shack 50 miles northwest of Madison.
On the outing Hickey relates that, “Leopold is a revelation in the field. Plant and animal ecology just drip from him and I felt like a boy being taken into the woods for the first time.”
Leopold expounded on how prairie grew up here and woodland there, why some trees are short and others tall, why grouse can be found in the next patch of brush, and why there was only one deer in the area.
Another time up at “the shack,” Leopold attempts to live-trap and band chickadees, and while waiting to catch chickadees Hickey briefed Leopold on ornithological research out East.
Hickey, an accomplished ornithologist who in 1943 wrote the book A Guide to Bird Watching, writes to Peggy that on the ride back to Madison, Leopold said: “Joe, we’ll have to have these ornithological seminars again.”
Hickey’s master’s project involved researching a solution to erosion in western Wisconsin, caused by pasturing of cattle in woodlands and row cropping. This was part of the nation’s first project by the Soil Conservation Service at Coon Valley to solve erosion problems.
Leopold was brought into the problem, Hickey writes, because people in Madison theorized the resulting actions could provide good hunting.
In June, 1942 Hickey and Leopold drove up to LaCrosse County where Hickey is researching erosion problems on farms.
Hickey writes: “The trip up is really something. AL taught me flowers and grasses and I taught him bird songs. He showed me all kinds of plant relationships, and I showed him a few tricks in songbird censuses. My head is dizzy with new things.”
When Prof. Hickey and Peggy were married in Madison in 1942, Aldo and Estella Leopold were the only other participants at the wedding.
When Leopold died of a heart attack in 1948, while fighting a grass fire near his shack on the Wisconsin River, Hickey became chair of Leopold’s department.
Later Hickey, a renowned ornithologist, led the fight to ban the use of chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides known as DDT, when it was discovered they caused thinning of egg shells of peregrine falcons. Falcon populations plummeted and dead songbirds were found belly-up on front yards after DDT was sprayed.
His efforts were controversial, as the agricultural industry, and Ag faculty resisted. Fortunately, DDT was outlawed in Wisconsin in 1970, prior to its national ban in 1972.
Hickey passed away in 1993 and his ashes were interred on the Leopold property by the “shack.”
Two professors, two legacies that left big marks on Wisconsin.
Tim Eisele Outdoors 