Aldo Leopold’s Shack

In Aldo Leopold’s Shack: Nina’s Story, Nancy Nye Hunt tells the remarkable tale of the famous Leopold family’s efforts to restore a worn-out farm along the lower Wisconsin River near Baraboo in the 1930s during the Great Depression and into the 1940s. Aldo Leopold, the world-renowned ecologist and conservationist—along with Estella, his wife, and their five children and two dogs, Gus and Flick—spent most weekends and vacations living and working at their Sand County farm that they called the Shack, now a National Historic Landmark that is also listed on both the National and Wisconsin Registers of Historic Places.

Told through the eyes of Nina, the eldest daughter, details of life at the Shack unfold seasonally. Along the way, readers learn about the family’s many experiences and adventures: healing the land and converting an old chicken coop into a cabin (the “Shack”); restoring prairies and improving woodlands; planting gardens, collecting firewood, and tending orchards; observing animal tracks, bird migrations, and times when plants bloom; cooking meals over an open fire; singing the family’s old Spanish songs from New Mexico, where Estella was born and raised and had deep Spanish roots, and having great fun walking, swimming, canoeing, cross-country skiing, and playing tracking games.

While at the Shack, Aldo and his family also recorded scientific observations in their “Shack journals.” These journals became the basis of Aldo’s 1949 landmark book, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. That book continues to inspire people today with its call for a land ethic in everyday life. Visiting the Shack, as thousands of people from all over the world do every year, is the equivalent of seeking out Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond as a pilgrimage site and source of inspiration.

Using interviews with Nina and the Leopold family and relying on the original Shack journals, historic family photographs, and her extensive field experiences over dozens of years, Hunt has captured the spirit of this special place as no other book previously has. Here, readers discover Nina’s story of growing up at the Shack and learn about the family’s favorite recipes and songs as well as genealogical information all that go back centuries. And the blending of Nina’s story with 161 historic and contemporary photographs of life at the Shack, maps, and original pencil drawings of wildlife all provide for a transformative reading experience.

First published in 2011 and now presented in an updated and greatly expanded new edition, including 38 new illustrations, 32 additional pages, and a new field trip to the Shack, readers will be able to appreciate and better understand Aldo’s famous concepts—the land ethic and phenology—that continue to influence our lives today. This book is a unique tribute and introduction to one of the world’s greatest conservationists and his family and how one place—the Shack—can help shape the world.