Aldo Leopold is best known as the author of A Sand County Almanac (1949), a volume of nature sketches and philosophical essays recognized as one of the enduring expressions of an ecological attitude toward people and the land. The rickety chicken coop known as the Leopold Shack, rebuilt by the family in 1935, has become a metaphor for living lightly on the land.  It was here at his weekend retreat, his "refuge from too much modernity" that Leopold gained insight into and inspiration from the complex workings of the land and its inhabitants.  Near the Shack, this white oak tree proudly stands.