Epilogue: Family and Familiarity

“As many as possible should share in the ownership of the land and thus be bound to it by economic interest, by the investment of love and work, by family loyalty, by memory and by tradition.” This statement by Wendell Berry in his Art of the Commonplace says it all, in my view. Each of those elements can be so important in attending to one’s land. The fact that the Shack land purchase during the Depression came at a reasonable price was indeed a fortunate happenstance, as it gave us a new opportunity. These eighty acres of failed Wisconsin farmland at the Leopold Shack that became Dad’s experiment carried us all, a family of seven, into a communal work project. Wendell Berry’s comment that “ancient wisdom . . . tells us that good work is our salvation and our joy” was indeed our experience. Aldo Leopold was an astute observer of nature and did not miss much. He traditionally carried a sharp pencil and a tiny notebook in his vest pocket where he noted pertinent developments and events that he wanted to register in the Shack journal or think about—things he was seeing that might be part of a new idea about the land. Some of what he saw would rub off on us, when he would turn to us and ask probing questions to explain it. One instance I particularly remember. We were standing by the river, when he pointed and said, “Baby, look at that island. Why do you suppose that the big cottonwoods are on the upstream end of that island and the little ones are growing at the bottom end?” I struggled with the issue until I remembered that the river was moving sand all the time to the downstream end of the island. That meant that the upstream end was older and the lower end was younger. Ha! That’s the answer. In fact, theoretically one could date the upper and lower ends of the island using cottonwoods. A nice thought. Dad was a great storyteller. That made him a good teacher.