Remodeling

One of my favorite quotes from Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac is: “We are remodeling the Alhambra with a steam shovel, and we are proud of our yardage.” The confluence of images is just plain startling: delicate, exquisite Moorish architecture, huffing, puffing, noisy earth monster, huffing, puffing football linemen going for goal. The allusion to Christians, with their industrial imperatives, taking over and remodeling the lives of Muslims is a little subtler. His prescience for our own time is remarkable.

I think of this quote almost every time I see a piece of machinery digging out a foundation, cutting down a tree, building a store. No matter the rights of private property, I wish that, after all the EPA regs are satisfied, the zoning boards passed, the plans approved, there was a time-out button to push that asked if we really needed this house or timber or Home Depot. Delicate, exquisite Nature is Maine's Alhambra; the very fact that around every corner and out every window there's a view of something precious, the very fact that we have so much unmechanized space, makes it that much more important to keep. The world around us is already a model of perfection. It doesn't need "re."

Writing and working in the 30s and 40s, Leopold's obsession was the land and the effects of mechanization. He was a forester and a hunter and knew the pleasure of machines, what benefits they bring. He also clearly saw our dependence, and the business imperative, and our football mentality. Having achieved potential freedom from want, he wanted us to move to the new plane of wish.