" FOR YEARS I have carried in my head a thought tossed out
by Aldo Leopold. In the early 20th century, he worked for
the U.S. Forest Service in Eastern Arizona, and he killed a
wolf to protect the cattle and increase the deer. He went
on to become a pioneer in wildlife management and a leading conservationist.
He wrote an essay about that killing. He’d decided
that when he’d pulled the trigger and helped remove the wolf from
the Southwest, he’d made the mountain a lesser place. He said we
had to learn to think like a mountain.
I stare into the gate of rock framing the entrance to Pima Canyon.
The mesquite leaves hang listless in the heat. Underfoot, a broken
field of granite spreads out. Past that stone gate, the freedom
of the Pusch Ridge Wilderness begins. The place feels wanting
without bighorns watching me. I can’t prove this. But I’ve known
it since I was a boy.
That’s why we look at the mountains and crave to be near them.
Maybe we can’t think like a mountain. But we can do better than
we have. We can bring the bighorns back where they belong.
Counting sheep, An Essay by "

― Charles Bowden