There is much confusion between land and country. Land is the place where corn, gullies, and mortgages grow. Country is the personality of the land, the collective harmony of its soil, life, and weather. Country knows no mortgages, no alphabet agencies, no tobacco road; it is calmly aloof to these petty exigencies of its alleged owners. That the previous occupant of my farm was a bootlegger mattered not one whit to its grouse; they sailed as proudly over the thickets as if they were guests of a king.

Poor land may be rich country, and vice versa. Only economists mistake physical opulence for riches. Country may be rich despite a conspicuous poverty of physical endowment, and its quality may not be apparent at first glance, nor at all times.

I know, for example, a certain lakeshore, a cool austerity of pines and wave-washed sands. All day you see it only as something for the surf to pound, a dark ribbon that stretches farther than you can paddle, a monotony to mark the miles by. But toward sunset some vagrant breeze may waft a gull across a headland, behind which a sudden roistering of loons reveals the presence of a hidden bay. You are seized with an impulse to land, to set foot on bearberry carpets, to pluck a balsam bed, to pilfer beach plums or blueberries, or perhaps to poach a partridge from out those bosky quietudes that lie behind the dunes. A bay? Why not a trout steam? Incisively the paddles clip little sougihng swirls athwart the gunwale, the bow swings sharp shoreward and cleaves the greening depths for camp.

Later, a supper-smoke hangs lazily upon the bay; a fire flickers under drooping boughs. It is a lean poor land, but rich country.

Aldo Leopold, from "The Land Ethic", in the Sand County Almanac, with essays on conservation from Round River, 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 online.