Incomplete Draft

Leopold vs. Owens

The works of Aldo Leopold and Louis Owens have influenced our culture for years, and will certainly do the same for years to come. Owens’ The American Indian Wilderness and Leopold’s Thinking Like a Mountain are two pieces that show the writers deep love and respect for the environment they were devoted to protect. In both pieces the men write about a life-changing experience that transformed their views and understanding of the world around them. Leopold’s senseless killing, and Owens’s destruction result in each of the writer’s epiphany of the “true” meaning of wilderness.

Leopold, considered “the father of wildlife ecology” (naturenet), devoted his life to the conservation of the environment. He saw the land as a living thing, and strived to show this to others. In his essay Thinking Like a Mountain, Leopold tells about the day he saw a wolf die. Leopold and some friends were out eating lunch when a pack of wolves appeared just below where they were sitting. Without hesitation the group began “pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy” (89). The end result being the oldest, motherly wolf dying as the men watch. Leopold writes about “watching a fierce green fire dying in her eyes” (89), and how he realized then that wolf was more than just a wolf. It was at that moment that Leopold came to the realization of his, and everyone’s misguided view of the wild. Before watching that helpless wolf die in front of his eyes Leopold was a trigger-happy hunter like most of his comrades. Out killing for pleasure and the thrill of the hunt. “fewer wolves meant more deer” (89), Leopold writes. Not taking into consideration the importance of those wolves to the environment. Leopold talked about watching the senseless eradication of wolves all over the country, and detrimental affect of the predator-ridden deer on their environment.

The dramatic death of the wolf opened Leopold’s eyes to how interconnected the living world really is. Early in the piece Leopold writes “Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf” (88). This statement has a huge underlying message. Leopold is starting to explain his point that nature is one entity, and changing one thing can affect the entire ecosystem. He explains this when he writes about the damage deer will do to an environment if their natural predator, the wolf is eradicated. Leopold talks about seeing a mountain look as if “someone had given God a new pair of pruning sheers” (89), because of deer populations getting out of control. Leopold explains, “just as deer live in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer” (89). A mountain run ramped with deer cannot survive. The wolf is needed to keep the system balanced.

Owens wrote of a similar experience in his piece The American Indian Wilderness. Owens’s experience did not involve the killing wildlife, but the simple destruction of an old rickety shelter. While working as ranger in Washington, Owens was given the task of tearing down an old shack in an area known as “White Pass” (69). He trekked the eleven miles to the shelter, where he began the task of dismantling and burning it to the ground. Owens writes about feeling “smug” that he had returned the area to its “original state” (69). His smug attitude quickly changes on his journey back down the mountain. Shortly after beginning his journey back, Owens crosses paths with two elderly women. The two, rather happy women tell him how they have been venturing up to White Pass every year to remember their father, who had built that now nonexistent shack a century ago. The two women are from Indian dissent, and talk about how the land used to be “all our land” (70). Leopold, having Indian blood as well, of course feels terrible and confesses his actions. He expects the two women to be heartbroken and angered by the news, but the smiles never left their faces. “They forgave me without saying it-my ignorance and my part in the long pattern of loss which they knew so well” (70).

Both Leopold and Owens share a similar experience. In both cases it takes the destruction of something for both men to realize the errors of their ways. For Leopold his realization comes from witnessing the death of a wolf. Watching the life leave her eyes made him realize how connected everything in the world truly is. He writes about the affect of the over populated deer on the mountain, and how important the wolf is to controlling this. He says that if the wolf isn’t there to control the deer they will ravage the mountain and ruin it’s natural beauty. Owens experience is very similar. After destroying the shack that was thought to be worthless, the two elderly women teach him the true connection that everyone has with nature. Finding out that the shack their father had built with his bear hands had been destroyed should have infuriated the two women. The fact that they were oddly unaffected by it is probably what hurt Owens the most. Through talking to the two women he realizes his view of nature was all wrong. He realizes that the wilderness he had come to know was wrong. Owens writes “Before the European invasion, there was no wilderness in North America; there was only the fertile continent where people lived in a hard-learned balance with the natural world.”

Work Cited

Leopold, Aldo. "Thinking Like a Mountain." Saving Place. Ed. Sidney Dorbin. New York: McGraw Hill, 2005. 89-89. Print.

Owens, Louis. "The American Indian Wilderness." Saving Place. Ed. Sidney Dorbin. New York: McGraw Hill, 2005. 68-71. Print.