This is the text of Leopold's essay "Great Possessions" paired with beautiful images. This presentation can be used as a backdrop to help illustrate public readings of the essay.
1. On this SlideShare page, you will find several Power Point presentations, one for each of the
most popular essays to read aloud from A Sand County Almanac at Aldo Leopold Weekend
events. Each presentation has the essay text right on the slides, paired with beautiful images that
help add a visual element to public readings. Dave Winefske (Aldo Leopold Weekend event
planner from Argyle, Wisconsin) gets credit for putting these together. Thanks Dave!
A note on images within the presentations: we have only received permission to use these
images within these presentations, as part of this event. You will see a photo credit slide as the
last image in every presentation. Please be sure to show that slide to your audience at least once,
and if you don't mind leaving it up to show at the end of each essay, that is best. Also please note
that we do not have permission to use these images outside of Aldo Leopold Weekend reading
event presentations. For example, the images that come from the Aldo Leopold Foundation
archive are not “public domain,” yet we see unauthorized uses of them all the time on the
internet. So, hopefully that’s enough said on this topic—if you have any questions, just let us
know. mail@aldoleopold.org
If you download these presentations to use in your event, feel free to delete this intro slide before
showing to your audience.
4. One hundred and twenty acres,
according to the County Clerk, is
the extent of my worldly domain.
5. But the County Clerk is a sleepy fellow, who never looks at his record
book before nine o'clock. What they would show at daybreak is the
question here at issue.
6. Books or no books, it is a fact, patent both to
my dog and myself, that at daybreak I am the
sole owner of all the acres I can walk over.
7. It is not only boundaries that disappear, but also the thought of being
bounded. Expanses unknown to deed or map are known to every dawn,
8. and solitude, supposed no longer to exist in my county,
extends on every hand as far as the dew can reach.
9. Like other great landowners, I have tenants. They are negligent about
rents, but very punctilious about tenures. Indeed at every daybreak
from April to July they proclaim their boundaries to each other, and so
acknowledge, at least by inference, their fiefdom to me.
10. This daily ceremony, contrary to what you might suppose, begins with the
utmost decorum. Who originally laid down its protocols I do not know. At
3:30 a.m., with such dignity as I can muster of a July morning,
11. I step from my cabin door, bearing in either hand my emblems of
sovereignty, a coffee pot and notebook. I seat myself on a bench, facing
the white wake of the morning star.
12. I set the pot beside me. I extract a cup from
my shirt front, hoping none will notice its
informal mode of transport. I get out my
watch, pour coffee, and lay notebook on knee.
13. This is the cue for the proclamations to begin. At 3:35 the nearest field
sparrow avows, in a clear tenor chant, that he holds the jack pine copse
north to the riverbank, and south to the old wagon track.
14. One by one all the other field sparrows within earshot recite their
respective holdings. There are no disputes, at least at this hour, so
I just listen, hoping inwardly that their womenfolk acquiesce in
this happy accord over the status quo ante.
15. Before the field sparrows have quite gone the rounds, the robin in
the big elm warbles loudly his claim to the crotch where the ice
storm tore off a limb,
16. and all appurtenances
pertaining thereto
(meaning, in his case, all
the angleworms in the
not-very-spacious
subjacent lawn). The
robin's insistent caroling
awakens the oriole,
17. who now tells the world of orioles that the
pendant branch of the elm belongs to him,
together with all fiber-bearing milkweed
stalks near by, all loose strings in the garden,
and the exclusive right to flash like a burst of
fire from one of these to another.
18. My watch says 3:50. The indigo bunting on the hill asserts title to the
dead oak limb left by the 1936 drought, and to divers near-by bugs &
bushes.
19. He does not claim, but I think he implies,
the right to out-blue all bluebirds,
24. My solemn list of performers,
in their order and time of first
song, hesitates, wavers,
ceases, for my ear can no
longer filter out priorities.
25. Besides, the pot is empty and the sun
is about to rise. I must inspect my
domain before my title runs out. We
sally forth, the dog and I, at random.
26. He has paid scant respect to all these vocal goings-
on, for to him the evidence of tenantry is not song, but
scent. Any illiterate bundle of feathers, he says, can
make a noise in a tree. Now he is going to translate for
me the olfactory poems that who-knows-what silent
creatures have written in the summer night.
27. At the end of each poem sits the author-
if we can find him. What we actually find
is beyond predicting: a rabbit, suddenly
yearning to be elsewhere;
28. a woodcock, fluttering his disclaimer; a cock
pheasant, indignant over wetting his feathers in
the grass.
29. Once in a while we turn up a coon or
mink, returning late from the night's
foray.
31. or surprise a mother wood duck with
her convoy of ducklings, headed full-
steam for the shelter of the
pickerelweeds
32. Sometimes we see deer sauntering back to the thickets, replete with
alfalfa blooms, veronica, and wild lettuce.
33. More often we see only the interweaving darkened lines that
lazy hoofs have traced on the silken fabric of the dew. I can
feel the sun now. The bird-chorus has run out of breath. The
far clank of cowbells bespeaks a herd ambling to pasture.
34. A tractor roars warning that my neighbor is astir. The world has shrunk to
those mean dimensions known to county clerks. We turn toward home,
and breakfast.
35. Photo Credits
•Historic photographs: Aldo Leopold Foundation archives
•A Sand County Almanac photographs by Michael Sewell
•David Wisnefske, Sugar River Valley Pheasants Forever, Wisconsin Environmental Education Board, Wisconsin
Environmental Education Foundation, Argyle Land Ethic Academy (ALEA)
•UW Stevens Point Freckmann Herbarium, R. Freckmann, V.Kline, E. Judziewicz, K. Kohout, D. Lee, K Sytma, R.
Kowal, P. Drobot, D. Woodland, A. Meeks, R. Bierman
•Curt Meine, (Aldo Leopold Biographer)
•Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Environmental Education for Kids (EEK)
•Hays Cummins, Miami of Ohio University
•Leopold Education Project, Ed Pembleton
•Bird Pictures by Bill Schmoker
•Pheasants Forever, Roger Hill
•Ruffed Grouse Society
•US Fish and Wildlife Service and US Forest Service
•Eric Engbretson
•James Kurz
•Owen Gromme Collection
•John White & Douglas Cooper
•National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
•Ohio State University Extension, Buckeye Yard and Garden Online
•New Jersey University, John Muir Society, Artchive.com, and Labor Law Talk
