Fire on the Mountain
Ecology Gets its Narrative Totem
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v5i4.437Keywords:
green fire, ecological worldview, wolves, narrative myth, biosphere, Henry David Thoreau, Ernest Thompson SetonAbstract
Aldo Leopold’s essay ‘Thinking Like a Mountain’ was more than a parable about a redemptive personal moment; it was the fruition of a larger effort on Leopold’s part to effectively communicate the fundamentals of a ‘land ethic’. I explore striking narrative antecedents to Leopold’s ‘green ?re’ moment, including writings by Henry David Thoreau and Ernest Thompson Seton, and articulate why wolves provided the quintessential totem animal for communicating a larger ecological ‘drama’. Both these literary antecedents and the essay’s ongoing—sometimes surprising—impacts are worth exploring, not just because of the high regard in which the essay itself is held but because Leopold succeeded in navigating a problem that persists in our own time: the gap between scienti?cally informed understandings of the world and effectively communicating those understandings to the public.
References
Aldo Leopold Archives. 1905. Biographical Materials: Family Correspondence, 1905–1907. Online: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/AldoLeopold.ALBMCorr0507.
Babbitt, Bruce. 1995. ‘Foreword’, in McIntyre 1995: 9-10.
Callicott, J. Baird (ed.). 1987. Companion to A Sand County Almanac: Interpretative and Critical Essays (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press).
Capra, Stephen. 2007. ‘Keeping the Wild Spirit of the Gila: Demanding Justice for the Wolf’, New Mexico Wild! 9.1: 8-9.
Clark, Jamie Rappaport. 2002. ‘Leopold’s Land Ethic: A Vision for Today’, in Knight and Riedel 2002: 140-49.
Donnelly, Strachan. 2001. ‘Leopold’s Wildness: Can Humans and Wolves Be at Home in the Adirondacks?’, in Sharpe, Norton, and Donnelley 2001: 191-97.
Dunlap, Thomas. 1988. Saving America’s Wildlife: Ecology and the American Mind, 1850–1990 (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
Elton, Charles. 2001 [1927]. Animal Ecology (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press).
Flader, Susan L. 1994 [1974]. Thinking Like a Mountain: Aldo Leopold and the Evolution of an Ecological Attitude toward Deer, Wolves and Forests (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press).
Ghilarov, Alexej M. 1995. ‘Vernadsky’s Biosphere Concept: An Historical Perspective’, The Quarterly Review of Biology 70.2: 193-203. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/418982.
Harrington, Fred H., and Cheryl S. Asa. 2003. ‘Wolf Communication’, in Mech and Boitani 2003: 66-103.
Isenberg, Andrew C. 2002. ‘The Moral Ecology of Wildlife’, in Nigel Rothfels (ed.), Representing Animals (Bloomington: Indiana University Press): 48-64.
Knight, Richard L., and Suzanne Riedel (eds.). 2002. Aldo Leopold and the Ecological Conscience (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Kreeger, Terry J. 2003. ‘The Internal Wolf: Physiology, Pathology, and Pharmacology’, in Mech and Boitani 2003: 192-217.
Leopold, Aldo. n.d. ‘Personal Notebook’, in Diaries and Journals: United States Forest Service Diaries and Miscellaneous, 1899–1927. Aldo Leopold Archives. Online: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-lib-leopoldpapers.
———. 1947. Phenology Manuscript (published), Working Papers. Aldo Leopold Archives. Online: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/AldoLeopold. ALPhenoMan.
———. 1987 [1947]. ‘Foreword’, in Callicott 1987: 281-88.
———. 1989 [1949]. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press).
———. 1991 [1923]. ‘Some Fundamentals of Conservation in the Southwest’, in Leopold 1991: 86-97.
———. 1991 [1924]. ‘Grass, Brush, Timber, and Fire’, in Leopold 1991: 114-22.
———. 1991 [1939a]. ‘A Biotic View of Land’, in Leopold 1991: 266-73.
———. 1991 [1939b]. ‘Farmer as Conservationist’, in Leopold 1991: 255-65.
———. 1991 [1947]. ‘Wherefore Wildlife Ecology?’, in Leopold 1991: 336-37.
———. 1991. The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold (ed. Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott; Madison: University of Wisconsin Press).
Lutts, Ralph H. 1990. The Nature Fakers: Wildlife, Science and Sentiment (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia).
Lutts, Ralph H. (ed.). 1998. The Wild Animal Story (Philadelphia: Temple University Press).
Margulis, Lynn et al. 1998. ‘Foreword to the English-Language Edition’, in Vladimir I. Vernadsky, The Biosphere (New York: Copernicus): 14-19.
Margulis, Lynn, and Dorion Sagan. 1995. What Is Life? (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press).
Martinez, Ignacio, and Juan Luis Arsuaga. 2004. Green Fire: The Life Force, from the Atom to the Mind (trans. Michael B. Miller; New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press).
McDonald, Ronald H. 1998. ‘The Revolt against Instinct: The Animal Stories of Seton and Roberts’, in Lutts 1998: 225-36.
McIntyre, Rick (ed.). 1995. War against the Wolf: America's Campaign to Exterminate the Wolf (Stillwater, MN: Voyageur Press).
Mech, L. David, and Luigi Boitani (eds.). 2003. Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press).
Meine, Curt. 1988. Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work (Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press).
———. 2002. ‘Moving Mountains: Aldo Leopold and A Sand County Almanac’, in Knight and Riedel 2002: 14-33.
Moody, Joan. 2005 [1998]. ‘El Lobo’s Homecoming’, in Tom Lynch (ed.), El Lobo: Readings on the Mexican Gray Wolf (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press): 164-68.
Newton, Julianne Lutz. 2006. Aldo Leopold’s Odyssey (Washington, DC: Island Press).
Piqueras, Merce. 1998. ‘Meeting the Biospheres: On the Translations of Vernadsky’s Work’, International Microbiology 1: 165-70.
Ribbens, Dennis. 1987. ‘The Making of A Sand County Almanac’, in Callicott 1987: 91-109.
Ripple, William J., and Robert L. Beschta. 2007. ‘Restoring Yellowstone’s Aspen with Wolves’, Biological Conservation 138: 514-19. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2007.05.006.
Ripple, William J., and Eric Larsen. 2004. ‘Wolves and the Ecology of Fear: Can Predation Risk Structure Ecosystems?’, BioScience 54: 755-66. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1641/0006-3568(2004)054[0755:WATEOF]2.0.CO;2.
Robinson, Michael J. 2005. Predatory Bureaucracy: The Extermination of Wolves and the Transformation of the West (Boulder: University of Colorado Press).
Sagan, Dorion. 1987. ‘Biosphere II: Meeting Ground for Ecology and Technology’, The Environmentalist 7.4: 271-81. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02240216.
Sanders, Scott Russell. 2009. A Conservationist Manifesto (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press).
Schlickeisen, Rodger. 2001. ‘Overcoming Cultural Barriers to Wolf Reintroduction’, in Sharpe, Norton, and Donnelley 2001: 61-73.
Schneider, S.H. 2004. Scientists Debate Gaia: The Next Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Seed, John, Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming, and Arne Naess. 1988. Thinking Like a Mountain: Toward a Council of All Beings (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers).
Seton, Ernest Thompson. 1998 [1898]. ‘Lobo: The King of the Currumpaw’, in Lutts 1998: 48-58.
Sharpe, Virginia A., Bryan G. Norton, and Strachan Donnelley (eds.). 2001. Wolves and Human Communities: Biology, Politics, and Ethics (Washington, DC and Covelo, CA: Island Press).
Skinner, Milton P. 1995 [1924]. ‘The Predatory and Fur-Bearing Animals of Yellowstone National Park’, in McIntyre 1995: 292-96.
Soule, Michael E., James A. Estes, Brian Miller, and Douglas L. Honnold. 2005. ‘Strongly Interacting Species: Conservation Policy, Management, and Ethics’, BioScience 55.2: 168-76. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1641/0006-3568(2005)055[0168:SISCPM]2.0.CO;2.
Stephens, Scott L., and Lawrence W. Ruth. 2005. ‘Federal Forest-Fire Policy in the United States’, Ecological Applications 15.2: 532-42. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/04-0545.
Tallmadge, John. 1987. ‘Anatomy of a Classic’, in Callicott 1987: 110-27.
Tansley, A.G. 1935. ‘The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts and Terms’, Ecology 16.3: 284-307. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1930070.
Taylor, Bron. 2002. ‘Diggers, Wolves, Ents, Elves and Expanding Universes: Bricolage, Religion, and Violence from Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Front to the Antiglobalization Resistance’, in Jeffrey Kaplan and Helene Loow (eds.), The Cultic Milieu: Oppositional Subcultures in an Age of Globalization (Lanham, MD: Altamira/Rowman & Littlefield): 26-74.
———. 2010. Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Thoreau, Henry David. 2001. ‘Walking’, in Henry David Thoreau: Collected Essays and Poems (ed. Elizabeth Hall Witherell; New York: Library of America): 225-55.
———. 2004. Walden (ed. Jeffrey S. Cramer; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, annotated edn).
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 1998. ‘Gray Wolf (Canis lupus)’. Fact Sheet, July. Department of the Interior.
Vernadsky, Vladimir I. 1998. The Biosphere (New York: Copernicus). Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-1750-3.
Zahniser, Howard. 1947. Leopold, Aldo/Biographical Materials: Obituaries and Tributes, 1948f, Mrs. Aldo Leopold correspondence—memorials and tributes. Aldo Leopold Archives. Online: http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/AldoLeopold/AldoLeopold-idx?type=turn&id=AldoLeopold.ALBMObit1948&entity=AldoLeopold.ALBMObit1948.p0257&q1=in%20wildness%20is%20the%20preservation.
Babbitt, Bruce. 1995. ‘Foreword’, in McIntyre 1995: 9-10.
Callicott, J. Baird (ed.). 1987. Companion to A Sand County Almanac: Interpretative and Critical Essays (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press).
Capra, Stephen. 2007. ‘Keeping the Wild Spirit of the Gila: Demanding Justice for the Wolf’, New Mexico Wild! 9.1: 8-9.
Clark, Jamie Rappaport. 2002. ‘Leopold’s Land Ethic: A Vision for Today’, in Knight and Riedel 2002: 140-49.
Donnelly, Strachan. 2001. ‘Leopold’s Wildness: Can Humans and Wolves Be at Home in the Adirondacks?’, in Sharpe, Norton, and Donnelley 2001: 191-97.
Dunlap, Thomas. 1988. Saving America’s Wildlife: Ecology and the American Mind, 1850–1990 (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
Elton, Charles. 2001 [1927]. Animal Ecology (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press).
Flader, Susan L. 1994 [1974]. Thinking Like a Mountain: Aldo Leopold and the Evolution of an Ecological Attitude toward Deer, Wolves and Forests (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press).
Ghilarov, Alexej M. 1995. ‘Vernadsky’s Biosphere Concept: An Historical Perspective’, The Quarterly Review of Biology 70.2: 193-203. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/418982.
Harrington, Fred H., and Cheryl S. Asa. 2003. ‘Wolf Communication’, in Mech and Boitani 2003: 66-103.
Isenberg, Andrew C. 2002. ‘The Moral Ecology of Wildlife’, in Nigel Rothfels (ed.), Representing Animals (Bloomington: Indiana University Press): 48-64.
Knight, Richard L., and Suzanne Riedel (eds.). 2002. Aldo Leopold and the Ecological Conscience (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Kreeger, Terry J. 2003. ‘The Internal Wolf: Physiology, Pathology, and Pharmacology’, in Mech and Boitani 2003: 192-217.
Leopold, Aldo. n.d. ‘Personal Notebook’, in Diaries and Journals: United States Forest Service Diaries and Miscellaneous, 1899–1927. Aldo Leopold Archives. Online: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-lib-leopoldpapers.
———. 1947. Phenology Manuscript (published), Working Papers. Aldo Leopold Archives. Online: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/AldoLeopold. ALPhenoMan.
———. 1987 [1947]. ‘Foreword’, in Callicott 1987: 281-88.
———. 1989 [1949]. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press).
———. 1991 [1923]. ‘Some Fundamentals of Conservation in the Southwest’, in Leopold 1991: 86-97.
———. 1991 [1924]. ‘Grass, Brush, Timber, and Fire’, in Leopold 1991: 114-22.
———. 1991 [1939a]. ‘A Biotic View of Land’, in Leopold 1991: 266-73.
———. 1991 [1939b]. ‘Farmer as Conservationist’, in Leopold 1991: 255-65.
———. 1991 [1947]. ‘Wherefore Wildlife Ecology?’, in Leopold 1991: 336-37.
———. 1991. The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold (ed. Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott; Madison: University of Wisconsin Press).
Lutts, Ralph H. 1990. The Nature Fakers: Wildlife, Science and Sentiment (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia).
Lutts, Ralph H. (ed.). 1998. The Wild Animal Story (Philadelphia: Temple University Press).
Margulis, Lynn et al. 1998. ‘Foreword to the English-Language Edition’, in Vladimir I. Vernadsky, The Biosphere (New York: Copernicus): 14-19.
Margulis, Lynn, and Dorion Sagan. 1995. What Is Life? (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press).
Martinez, Ignacio, and Juan Luis Arsuaga. 2004. Green Fire: The Life Force, from the Atom to the Mind (trans. Michael B. Miller; New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press).
McDonald, Ronald H. 1998. ‘The Revolt against Instinct: The Animal Stories of Seton and Roberts’, in Lutts 1998: 225-36.
McIntyre, Rick (ed.). 1995. War against the Wolf: America's Campaign to Exterminate the Wolf (Stillwater, MN: Voyageur Press).
Mech, L. David, and Luigi Boitani (eds.). 2003. Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press).
Meine, Curt. 1988. Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work (Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press).
———. 2002. ‘Moving Mountains: Aldo Leopold and A Sand County Almanac’, in Knight and Riedel 2002: 14-33.
Moody, Joan. 2005 [1998]. ‘El Lobo’s Homecoming’, in Tom Lynch (ed.), El Lobo: Readings on the Mexican Gray Wolf (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press): 164-68.
Newton, Julianne Lutz. 2006. Aldo Leopold’s Odyssey (Washington, DC: Island Press).
Piqueras, Merce. 1998. ‘Meeting the Biospheres: On the Translations of Vernadsky’s Work’, International Microbiology 1: 165-70.
Ribbens, Dennis. 1987. ‘The Making of A Sand County Almanac’, in Callicott 1987: 91-109.
Ripple, William J., and Robert L. Beschta. 2007. ‘Restoring Yellowstone’s Aspen with Wolves’, Biological Conservation 138: 514-19. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2007.05.006.
Ripple, William J., and Eric Larsen. 2004. ‘Wolves and the Ecology of Fear: Can Predation Risk Structure Ecosystems?’, BioScience 54: 755-66. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1641/0006-3568(2004)054[0755:WATEOF]2.0.CO;2.
Robinson, Michael J. 2005. Predatory Bureaucracy: The Extermination of Wolves and the Transformation of the West (Boulder: University of Colorado Press).
Sagan, Dorion. 1987. ‘Biosphere II: Meeting Ground for Ecology and Technology’, The Environmentalist 7.4: 271-81. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02240216.
Sanders, Scott Russell. 2009. A Conservationist Manifesto (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press).
Schlickeisen, Rodger. 2001. ‘Overcoming Cultural Barriers to Wolf Reintroduction’, in Sharpe, Norton, and Donnelley 2001: 61-73.
Schneider, S.H. 2004. Scientists Debate Gaia: The Next Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Seed, John, Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming, and Arne Naess. 1988. Thinking Like a Mountain: Toward a Council of All Beings (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers).
Seton, Ernest Thompson. 1998 [1898]. ‘Lobo: The King of the Currumpaw’, in Lutts 1998: 48-58.
Sharpe, Virginia A., Bryan G. Norton, and Strachan Donnelley (eds.). 2001. Wolves and Human Communities: Biology, Politics, and Ethics (Washington, DC and Covelo, CA: Island Press).
Skinner, Milton P. 1995 [1924]. ‘The Predatory and Fur-Bearing Animals of Yellowstone National Park’, in McIntyre 1995: 292-96.
Soule, Michael E., James A. Estes, Brian Miller, and Douglas L. Honnold. 2005. ‘Strongly Interacting Species: Conservation Policy, Management, and Ethics’, BioScience 55.2: 168-76. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1641/0006-3568(2005)055[0168:SISCPM]2.0.CO;2.
Stephens, Scott L., and Lawrence W. Ruth. 2005. ‘Federal Forest-Fire Policy in the United States’, Ecological Applications 15.2: 532-42. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/04-0545.
Tallmadge, John. 1987. ‘Anatomy of a Classic’, in Callicott 1987: 110-27.
Tansley, A.G. 1935. ‘The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts and Terms’, Ecology 16.3: 284-307. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1930070.
Taylor, Bron. 2002. ‘Diggers, Wolves, Ents, Elves and Expanding Universes: Bricolage, Religion, and Violence from Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Front to the Antiglobalization Resistance’, in Jeffrey Kaplan and Helene Loow (eds.), The Cultic Milieu: Oppositional Subcultures in an Age of Globalization (Lanham, MD: Altamira/Rowman & Littlefield): 26-74.
———. 2010. Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Thoreau, Henry David. 2001. ‘Walking’, in Henry David Thoreau: Collected Essays and Poems (ed. Elizabeth Hall Witherell; New York: Library of America): 225-55.
———. 2004. Walden (ed. Jeffrey S. Cramer; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, annotated edn).
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 1998. ‘Gray Wolf (Canis lupus)’. Fact Sheet, July. Department of the Interior.
Vernadsky, Vladimir I. 1998. The Biosphere (New York: Copernicus). Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-1750-3.
Zahniser, Howard. 1947. Leopold, Aldo/Biographical Materials: Obituaries and Tributes, 1948f, Mrs. Aldo Leopold correspondence—memorials and tributes. Aldo Leopold Archives. Online: http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/AldoLeopold/AldoLeopold-idx?type=turn&id=AldoLeopold.ALBMObit1948&entity=AldoLeopold.ALBMObit1948.p0257&q1=in%20wildness%20is%20the%20preservation.
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Published
2011-12-28
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How to Cite
Van Horn, G. (2011). Fire on the Mountain: Ecology Gets its Narrative Totem. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 5(4), 437-464. https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v5i4.437
