Selection from Aldo Leopold's "A Sand County Almanac"

January Thaw

A meadow mouse, startled by my approach, darts damply across the skunk track. Why is he abroad in daylight? Probably because he feels grieved about the thaw. Today his maze of secret tunnels, laboriously chewed through the matted grass under the snow, are tunnels no more, but only paths exposed to public view and ridicule. Indeed the thawing sun has mocked the basic premises of the microtine economic system!

The mouse is a sober citizen who knows that grass grows in order that mice may store it as underground haystacks, and that snow falls in order that mice may build subways from stack to stack: supply, demand, and transport all neatly organized. To the mouse, snow means freedom from want and fear.

Excerpts are from “A Sand County Almanac, with essays on conservation from Round River”, by Aldo Leopold and published by Oxford University Press (1966). For more information about Aldo Leopold, see www.aldoleopold.org. An inexpensive paperback version of Sand County Almanac published by Ballantine Books is widely available at book stores or on-line.