It was a cold and wet January morning and the weather prohibited my friend and I from doing our routine Sunday cardio walk. On a whim I texted him to see if he would be interested in getting together to build some Leopold benches for the Old Growth Trail in Lloyd Woods. It seems that each time we hike there we comment that the setting called for a place to sit. We had one spot in particular in mind.

Three seasons at “the spot” in LLoyd Woods.

Including the run to the big box hardware store for supplies, it took us about 3 hours to construct two benches. Below is a schematic for the construction. We made two because otherwise we would have had left over treated lumber. Links to two printable plans are at the end of the article.

The materials list for a single bench follows. In parenthesis are the needs for building two. Our cost for the two benches was $62.

• 2 x 6 x 48-inch board for backrest board (1 – 2 x 6 x 8 foot)
• 2 x 10 x 45-inch board for seat (1 – 2 x10 x 8 foot)
• 2 x 8 x 10-foot board for sides and legs (2 – 2 x 8 x 10 foot)
• (6) 3/8-inch x 3.5-inch carriage bolts with washers and nuts (12)
• (12) 3/8-inch x 3.5-inch #10 size flathead wood screws (24 – on-line plans called for #12 or #14 size but they were hard to find and size #10 is a substantial screw)

We were pleased with the final product.

And as is so common in this information age, that 3 hour project sent me down a rabbit hole. While I had a superficial familiarity with Aldo Leopold, for whom the bench is named, I wanted to know more.

Aldo Leopold on a “Leopold Bench” on his farm in Wisconsin.

Aldo Leopold was a Class of 1909 Yale trained forester and was one of the first employees of the newly formed U.S. Forest Service. He went on to become one the most impactful conservationist of the 20th century. His first job with the forest service took him to New Mexico and Arizona, far from his Midwestern roots in Iowa. Leopold’s advocacy led to the designation of the Gila Wilderness Area of New Mexico, the first extensive wilderness area in the U.S. Forest Service. In 1933 he became the head of the newly formed Department of Wildlife Management at the University of Wisconsin, which led to his becoming a respected authority in this field. During this part of his career he was the author of many journal articles and several books.

While at the university he and his wife purchased an abused 120 acre farm in rural Wisconsin, which they began to ecologically rehabilitate. It was here that he developed the habit of meandering the property with a notebook in hand, and writing down his thoughts on nature. Eventually he compiled his writings into a manuscript that he titled Great Possessions. He was turned down by a series of publishers before being accepted by Oxford Press in 1948. Unfortunately, Leopold passed away of a heart attack one week later, while fighting a grass fire on his property. The manuscript was published posthumously by his children. The publisher however, feeling the title Great Possessions was too similar to Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, changed the title to A Sand County Almanac – and a classic work on environmental philosophy was born. Of note, there is no “Sand County”, but rather the title references the region in Wisconsin that has deep glacial deposits of sand and relatively poor soils, and are generically referred to as the “sand counties”.

Over the past 4 decades I have held A Sand County Almanac in my hands many times, only to choose to purchase a more recently written book of environmental essays. I guess that I thought that the 1949 copywrite date would make the work obsolete. But as we embraced the benches, I felt that I really needed to settle in with this book, to get the full experience. So I searched my county library website, and was given the option of two videos and one book, and being a compulsive consumer of information, I, of course, requested all three. The first video, Aldo Leopold 1: His Life and Thought, was narrated by Lorne Greene and took me back to my childhood of watching Bonanza. It was primitive by today’s standards, but enjoyable. The second, Aldo Leopold 2: “A Sand County Almanac”, was more artfully done in the classic Disney wildlife video kind of way. The book however, was special. It was a 2001 copywrite that married Aldo Leopold’s words with contemporary photography of his farm.  Mesmerizing. 

I thought about trying to summarize Leopold’s essays, but felt that I could not do them justice. Trust me, they are worth your reading. Leopold’s forward pulled me in with these opening lines. ”There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.”

Suffice it to say that the essays, with his beautiful descriptions and observations of wildlife, put you there on the farm in the 1930s and 40s, eavesdropping on his thoughts on modern society’s role and responsibilities on the husbandry of the natural world.

The volume that I read was so good that I rationed out the chapters, wanting to spread the experience and joy over more days. The book is Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, with the outstanding photography of Michael Sewell. Sewell limited his images to the farm and neighboring lands that Leopold walked, “so not to stray from Leopold’s footsteps”. But the introduction, by Kenneth Brower, itself is enlightening, outlining how Leopold’s essays have led to the overarching environmental concepts of ecologic restoration, stewardship, and land ethic – a term coined by Leopold. Before I returned the book I reread the introduction, and it allowed me to better grasp the impact Leopold had, and continues to have, on the environmental movement.

Aldo Leopold never wrote down plans for the benches that he built out of scrap wood, as seen in the earlier photo and below. It is the simplicity of design, ease of construction, and low expense that has allowed them to be embraced across the world.

So it is appropriate that we placed these Leopold benches in Lloyd Woods, as Aldo Leopold would have loved to have experienced the setting – an old growth wood. He held trees in great esteem and few places offer the trees that are in this wood. I hope that some visitors will sit at the benches, and like Aldo, take out a notebook and jot down their thoughts on nature, and man’s place in it. Or perhaps write a poem. 

When we placed the benches I sat with my good friend Jerry, closer than two men usually sit. No words were spoken. We just took in the setting. And we each found peace. 

Photo credits to Peggy Juengling Burns, Patrick Burns (the bench photos), and the Leopold Foundation (the photos of Aldo).

Links:

https://www.aldoleopold.org/about/aldo-leopold

https://www.iowadnr.gov/About-DNR/DNR-News-Releases/ArticleID/1218/Build-a-Leopold-bench

https://www.outdoornews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/21-16-Leopold-bench.indd-t-ps.pdf