Introducing Will Stolzenburg

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Connecting Our Works and Words by Curt Meine

Thank you, friends, for all your interest in the Wild Read project, and for inviting me to participate. It's a fine spring evening now in Wisconsin, with big batches of warblers moving through on migration amid the late-leafing woods.

These days my colleagues and I are traveling a lot with the Green Fire film. I hope that our trails may cross when it comes to be shown near you.

One of the things we've talked about a lot as the film rolls out is how important it is to reach the next generation with the story of our conservation legacy and the message that they too can and must continue to create the land ethic in their own lives. The film really seeks to connect those who already know Leopold, his writing, and his philosophy, with young people who might never have heard of Leopold. More broadly, I'd say, it seeks to provide connection between the past, present, and future of our conservation community. I've always believed that the more deeply we understand the history of our conservation ethic, the better prepared we will be to meet the challenges of the future. And that holds especially for the next generation of citizens and leaders.

We've been surveying those who have viewed the film. When we ask what steps they might take to further the land ethic in their own lives, the most common response we have had is that they intend to go home and read (or re-read) Leopold's A Sand County Almanac. For a writer, there can be no more rewarding words than that! All of us who love books, and the vital ideas and vibrant worlds they reveal to us, belong to what Wallace Stegner called "the great community of recorded human experience," what Leopold called "the thinking community." That community now has a great responsibility: to connect the words and the works, so that our human and natural communities may endure the many gathering crises before us, create a new vision of renewal, and thrive together. Let's keep reading, and let's get to work!

Meanwhile, I'll be checking in as a Wild Reader, and am really looking forward to seeing what Will Stoltzenburg has to share with us.

Beginning May 8th, our discussions on Thinking Like A Mountain and Once and Future Land Ethic will be moderated by author Will Stolzenburg who writes about the science and spirit of saving wild creatures. As a former staff writer for Nature Conservancy magazine, Will has ventured to the far corners of the world to capture stories of the rarest, oddest, most spectacular creations of nature and the people who would save them. Having written hundreds of magazine articles, Will is most recently the author of the book Rat Island: Predators in Paradise and the World’s Greatest Wildlife Rescue, which will be released later this month. His previous book, Where the Wild Things Were, was selected for Barnes and Noble’s Discover Great New Writers series. He is also the screenwriter for the nationally acclaimed documentary Lords of Nature: Living in a Land of Great Predators.

Thinking About Thinking Like A Mountain by Curt Meine

I’m in my office today at the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center, just a mile or so from Aldo Leopold’s iconic “shack” in Wisconsin. We have just concluded our staff meeting, a good portion of which was spent swapping stories about screening our new documentary film Green Fire. Various representatives of the Leopold Foundation have been fanning out to participate in screenings that are occurring across the country (and even overseas). Every place, and every audience, is different. But it is also fascinating to discover the common threads in our conversations.

The title of the film, of course, comes from “Thinking Like A Mountain” and Leopold’s youthful experience in seeing “a fierce green fire” in the eyes of the dying mother wolf that he had shot. In examining Leopold’s life and the continuing evolution of the land ethic, the film explores the history of that particular experience, and of the multiple potential meanings of the phrase. Along the way, we interviewed two special colleagues who remarked upon the phrase “green fire.” Peter Forbes (whom I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this blog) comments in the film: “In that one essay, that one moment when he saw the green fire, that was a transformational moment in his individual life. And it also suggests the transformational moment in our movement if we are willing to change ourselves.” And N. Scott Momaday, the eminent Kiowa writer and poet, remarks: “We all have the essence of the fierce green fire, that’s again our hope.”

My colleague Dr. Stan Temple mentioned in our meeting that, at a recent screening of the film in Idaho, staunch opponents and proponents of wolves were both present in the audience (as, no doubt, were many who are somewhere in the middle). In at least some of the conversations Stan had, the film seemed to provide a bit of a buffer zone in the pitched debate over wolf conservation and management. By illustrating Leopold’s experience with the green fire, we hoped that we could show that these are not simple or purely partisan political issues, but complicated matters of evolving conservation science, ethics, policies, and practice. So my questions for the day: What is the “transformation” and “change” we need to make in the conservation movement? What is the “essence of the green fire”? What meaning do you find in Leopold’s phrase? Is it possible in today's harsh political landscape to find common ground? What will it take?

[Editor's Note: See also the Forest Service's podcasts about the film Green Fire. Steve Dunsky speaks about how Leopold’s vision ties in with the evolving perspective of the Forest Service]