Aldo Leopold: A Standard of Change

Jim Pfitzer

When Jim Pfitzer steps onto the stage in this one man show, he does not so much portray Aldo Leopold as become the noted conservationist who pioneered the land ethic and the academic field of wildlife management. Pfitzer read and reread Leopold’s seminal work A Sand County Almanac before he developed the production. He then reviewed papers and letters only available at the Aldo Leopold Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin and at the archives of the University of Wisconsin where Leopold taught.

Pfitzer had not yet determined the final form the production would take until he spent an extended time visiting “The Shack” where Leopold gathered the experiences that led to his classic book. He saw Sandhill Cranes there at sunset and credits that experience, in that specific location, with the inspiration to finalize the production. In the show he recites parts of Leopold’s essay, “Marshland Elegy,” a farewell to the cranes, which Leopold believed would soon become extinct. In his lifetime, they were a vanishing species.

Just as Leopold’s hard work as a conservationist paid off in restoration of the landscape, and a public commitment to conservation, Pfitzer’s hard work paid off in a presentation which has delighted audiences from Chattanooga to Baraboo and from the Geography of Hope Conference at Point Reyes, California to the Bonaroo music festival at Manchester, Tennessee. Pfitzer will certainly present his show in Chattanooga again. Don’t miss the opportunity to see this inspiring performance.

As Published in the Chattanooga Chat, newsletter of the Tennessee Ornithological Society, Chattanooga Chapter