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.

If I Were the Wind

 The wind that makes music in November corn is in a hurry. The stalks hum, the loose husks whisk skyward in half playful swirls, and the wind hurries on.

In the marsh, long windy waves surge across the grassy sloughs, beat against the far willows.

A tree tries to argue, bare limbs waving, but there is no detaining the wind

On the sandbar there is only wind, and the river sliding seaward. Every wisp of grass is drawing circles on the sand.

I wander over the bar to a driftwood log, where I sit and listen to the universal roar, and to the tinkle of wavelets on the shore.

The river is lifeless: not a duck, heron, marshhawk, or gull but has sought refuge from wind.

Out of the clouds I hear a faint bark, as of a far-away dog. It is strange how the world cocks its ears at that sound, wondering.

Soon it is louder: the honk of geese, invisible, but coming on. The flock emerges from the low clouds, a tattered banner of birds,

dipping & rising, blown up & blown down, blown together & blown apart, but advancing, the wind wrestling lovingly with each winnowing wing.

When the flock is a blur in the far sky I hear the last honk, sounding taps for summer. It is warm behind the driftwood now, for the wind has gone with the geese.

So would I – if I were the wind.

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