Tag Archives: Aldo Leopold

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument

It’s National Parks Week!

My visit to the Gila Wilderness and its cliff dwellings happened early on in the Original Beetle Roadtrip. In many ways it was in the Gila, that a 24 year old Aldo Leopold found his footing. As someone who really enjoyed Leopold’s writing, it was only a matter of time for me to visit the wilderness he proposed and the very first Federally recognized wilderness in the United States.

I found a nice place to camp in the national forest, driving the Beetle across a stream to limit my neighbors, and from that campsite, I explored the Gila.

The Catwalk

Theodore Roosevelt designated the cliff dwellings a national monument in 1907. The monument is 533 acres, and had just over 41,000 visitors in 2016. To me, there seemed to be almost that many people there when I visited. It became a challenge to get a picture taken without a person in the frame, but I worked at it.

The dwellings are located in an absolutely beautiful part of New Mexico. It was easy for me to see why the Mogollon people settled here, and I wondered why they abandoned it years later.

Hiking the trail early in the morning, I was lucky enough to come across a black bear on its morning excursion. Later in the day, I met up with a couple who had seen a mountain lion. I was not at all surprised by either in this beautiful, rugged terrain.


Cranes

—Aldo Leopold


Sandhills & Leopold

One of my favorite summer neighbors is the sandhill crane, and that often surprises people. Like the sight of the aurora on a cold, winter night, the sound of a sandhill crane bugling will stop me in my tracks and I immediately scan the sky.

There are still a few sandhills hanging on around Fairbanks, but many have started their flight south to winter in warmer climates. I’ll miss their calls, but I’ll try to make do with the many nights of northern lights dancing across the sky.


Virtual Cranes

“When we hear his call we hear no mere bird. We hear the trumpet in the orchestra of evolution. He is the symbol of our untamable past, of that incredible sweep of millennia which underlies and conditions the daily affairs of birds and men.” –Aldo Leopold – Marshland Elegy, A Sand County Almanac.

The sandhill cranes of Wisconsin

I’m slow to embracing the virtual world, but now that winter has arrived in the North, and plenty of time on my hands, but without the inclination to travel anywhere, I’ve done some virtual exploring.

In the spring, the Platte River in Nebraska is the place to be, to see the siege of sandhill cranes flying through to eat and rest before heading further north. In the autumn, however, the Wisconsin River near Baraboo, WI is a major stopover for this ancient breed of birds.

The Aldo Leopold Foundation usually offers tours and blinds for crane viewing and photography in the fall, but 2020 is not the year for those types of activities. Instead, they offered a virtual visit to the Wisconsin River and the over 10,000 cranes that are camping out along its banks. I joined one of these visits this week, and found it incredibly informative, and well produced. Still, no virtual visit compares to seeing the sandhill crane in person, or hearing and feeling that prehistoric bugle as it flows through you from across the terrain and the eons.

Luckily, next spring, I won’t have to go beyond my deck to experience them again.

The above video is one done previously by the International Crane Foundation and the Aldo Leopold Foundation.


Cogs & Wheels

” If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.”

— Aldo Leopold


Queued up

The Rover on the Haul Road

One thing I do like about loading up posts in the queue, is that I can be gone all week and nobody has any idea.

Get out and enjoy autumn!

“Like the River, we were free to wander.”

— Aldo Leopold


January Observation:

Special thanks to the Aldo Leopold Foundation


South Bound

The past few weeks, we have had an influx of visitors, as the sandhill crane population increased exponentially. A few stragglers still remain, but most have headed further south on their annual autumn migration. I will miss their prehistoric trumpet from the marsh as they winter Outside.


Aldo Leopold "Farm" quote


“The crane is wilderness incarnate”

The Wisconsin River near Baraboo has become a late season congregation point for the sandhill crane. As many as 10,000 cranes converge here to rest and stock up before heading to their wintering grounds. It’s an impressive wildlife resurgence.

The sandhill crane had all but disappeared from the upper Midwest by the early 1930’s. The last of the breeding populations were gone from Illinois in 1890, Iowa in 1905, South Dakota in 1910, Ohio in 1926, and Indiana in 1929. By the 1930’s, there were only a few dozen cranes left in the state of Wisconsin.

I have a thing for cranes. Their lonely bugle call from the swamps always stops me in my tracks. Their migration in and out of Alaska is a bi-annual highlight of living in Alaska. Luckily, the population has been growing since the 1980’s, and this section of the Wisconsin River has been vital for that to happen.

The Aldo Leopold Foundation offers viewing tours along the Wisconsin River, behind Leopold’s Shack in November and December.

“When we hear his call we hear no mere bird. We hear the trumpet in the orchestra of evolution. He is the symbol of our untamable past, of that incredible sweep of millennia which underlies and conditions the daily affairs of birds and men.”
— Aldo Leopold

The Aldo Leopold Foundation offers viewing tours along the Wisconsin River, behind Leopold’s Shack in November and December.

The video and statistics come courtesy of The Aldo Leopold Foundation. The title quote is from Aldo Leopold’s “Marshland Elegy”