History at Work; Two Days From Trout!

Until recently, I never paid much attention to the desk in the office I moved to last fall. With a solid, if heavily scratched wood top and attractively grained if peeling wood laminate on the front of the drawers, it was an improvement, aesthetically, over the steel and Formica job in the office I'd left, but it was still an overused, neglected piece of university furniture that would have been junked decades ago in any for-profit operation.

But a few days ago I happened to glance at the nameplate sunk into the upper drawer:



I remembered that Aldo Leopold, conservation legend and author of A Sand County Almanac, had been born in Burlington, IA, and that his family ran a furniture factory. I did a little searching and found that this was indeed the Leopold company founded by his father. (Not that I had much doubt...how many candidates could there be in Burlington?) I've read Leopold's works for years ( FTR readers quite likely will find Sand County Almanac indispensable) written about him, tacked a poster recounting his career on my office wall (and that before I knew about the desk). So my desk now offers not space for my work, but brings a new, albeit very small, measure of coherence to it.

My department is supposed to move to a new building next year, which will be equipped with new furniture, and I'm going to try to take the Leopold desk home. I don't think the university will miss it. I asked our department secretary how I could arrange to take it. She suggested pulling a van up to the building and trundling the desk out at midnight. That could happen.



If my schedule holds, I may take my first trout excursion of the year this Friday. Every April, the state stocks trout in a stretch of the Huron River upstream from me and opens a fly-only, catch and release season through the opening of the regular trout season at the end of this month. I've wanted to try it for years, despite the reports of crowds and of fish that become maddeningly selective after the first few trips through anglers' nets and hands. Not the kind of fishing I dream of over the winter ( my report of opening weekend--to be posted in just 27 days!--will explain that), but for now, it will provide excitement enough.