Fire on the Mountain

Ecology Gets its Narrative Totem

Authors

  • Gavin Van Horn Center for Humans and Nature

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v5i4.437

Keywords:

green fire, ecological worldview, wolves, narrative myth, biosphere, Henry David Thoreau, Ernest Thompson Seton

Abstract

Aldo Leopold’s essay ‘Thinking Like a Mountain’ was more than a parable about a redemptive personal moment; it was the fruition of a larger effort on Leopold’s part to effectively communicate the fundamentals of a ‘land ethic’. I explore striking narrative antecedents to Leopold’s ‘green ?re’ moment, including writings by Henry David Thoreau and Ernest Thompson Seton, and articulate why wolves provided the quintessential totem animal for communicating a larger ecological ‘drama’. Both these literary antecedents and the essay’s ongoing—sometimes surprising—impacts are worth exploring, not just because of the high regard in which the essay itself is held but because Leopold succeeded in navigating a problem that persists in our own time: the gap between scienti?cally informed understandings of the world and effectively communicating those understandings to the public.

Author Biography

  • Gavin Van Horn, Center for Humans and Nature
    Director of Midwest Cultures of Conservation, Center for Humans and Nature.

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Published

2011-12-28

How to Cite

Van Horn, G. (2011). Fire on the Mountain: Ecology Gets its Narrative Totem. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 5(4), 437-464. https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v5i4.437