The Land Pyramid as Philosophy and Structure in Aldo Leopold's "Sand County Almanac"

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Department of English and Linguistics), course: Nature Writing, language: English, abstract: The essays which compose Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There have been written in a time span of over thirty years, some dating back to the 1910’s. Therefore, the work could rather be seen as a collection of essays than a monographic book. Additionally, Leopold writes about such a diversity of places and species, that the work as a whole seems to be very fragmented. However, this style of composition is not as randomized as it seems at first glance. Instead, as a whole, the essays of A Sand County Almanac form the structure of an ecosystem with interdependent parts supporting and challenging each other. In this paper, I will first explore Leopold’s own definition of an ecosystem as he describes it in the subchapter “The Land Pyramid”. Then, I will demonstrate that A Sand County Almanac mirrors the complex structures of such a system.