Human Interaction with Nature in the Works of Aldo Leopold and Elizabet

Human Interaction with Nature in the Works of Aldo Leopold and Elizabeth BishopThe poet Elizabeth Bishop and the naturalist Aldo Leopold share a keen power ofobservation, a beautifully detailed manner of writing, a love for the beauty of temperament, and an interest in how people interact with the natural world. Like Leopold, Bishop examines human interactions with nature on both the personal and the ecological level. On the individual level, a hunters contact with the animal he or she is hunting changes his or her attitude toward nature in both Bishops rime The Fish and Leopolds essay Thinking Like a Mountain. On the larger level, both Bishop in her poem The Mountain and Leopold doneout the Sand County Almanac envision the role of human beings in relation to the rest of the natural world as one of exploration and interpretation through science and art.In both Bishops The Fish and Leopolds Thinking Like a Mountain, thepersons contact with a wild animal comes about through hunting. In theory, hunting is asport, a challenge of fang against bullet (Leopold 129), in which the animal has a fair misadventure of escaping. In reality, however, there is no real challenge for the hunter in eithercase. Leopold and his companions, pumping lead into the pack (130), kill the wolf notby acquirement but by the sheer number of bullets, while Bishops speaker testifies, He didntfight. / He hadnt fought at all (5-6). Thus, both shout into question whether their huntingis actually a sport.Both Leopold and Bishops speaker are initially unaware of the true value of thecreatures they hunt. Leopold writes, I thought that because few wolves meant moredeer, that no wolves would mean hunters paradise (130). Bish... ... of human beings in nature is to research, perceive, understand, and give avoice to the world around them through science and art. They suggest this both throughwhat they say in their writing and by the very act of writing, which is an act of perceptionand interpreta tion of nature. However, their interpretations of the mountains messagebeg the question of whether they are interpreting it correctly, or whether they are simplyattributing their own views to landforms. Perhaps their works are best seen as aninvitation to their readers to explore the natural world for themselves and create their owninterpretations. Contact with wild creatures might change our attitudes tooBibliographyBishop, Elizabeth. The Complete Poems, 1927-1979. New York Farrar, Straus andGiroux.Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac. New York Oxford University Press, 1949.