With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River 
 
Aldo Leopold.  Ills. Charles Schwartz.
 
Oxford University Press: 1966. Enlarged edition. Hardcover in a jacket. Octavo. Small tears along the edges of the price-clipped jacket. One tear along the spine under the word 'County.' Tanning along jacket's edges outside and in. A couple of impressions on the boards (one on the spine and the other on the top of the back board). A little tanning along its edges too. One stain on the top-edge but the text is clean. 269 pages. Very good. 
 
The startling lucidity of Leopold's observations and the conclusions he draws from how he's lived make every moment you spend reading him feel precious. He looked long and hard at the mountains, rivers, lands and creatures of the places he lived. The illustrations are bursts of clarity from that same long, patient looking. 
 
"There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot. Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inlienable as free speech."