David Cook: Learning to think like a mountain

David Cook

Local storyteller Jim Pfitzer thinks Aldo Leopold may be the most important American we’ve ever forgotten.

Leopold, the Wisconsin conservationist and author of the influential “A Sand County Almanac,” is to American environmentalism what Bill Gates is to Windows. Kareem Abdul Jabbar to hook shots. Walt Disney to mice. And so on.

Yet the other day, while Pfitzer was beginning his lecture on Leopold to a class of local students, one interrupted with a most telling question.

“What’s an Aldo Leopold?” the student asked.

Not who. But what. Surely this was an elementary student. English-as-a-sixth-language. The class clown?