This PowerPoint presentation contains the essay "January Thaw" from A Sand County Almanac. It has the full text of the essay on slides paired with images to enhance public readings. Dave Winefske created these presentations for Aldo Leopold Weekend events. The images can only be used for these presentations and not elsewhere without permission. The intro slide should be removed before showing the presentation to audiences.

1. On this SlideShare page, you will find several Power Point presentations, one for each of the
most popular essays to read aloud from A Sand County Almanac at Aldo Leopold Weekend
events. Each presentation has the essay text right on the slides, paired with beautiful images that
help add a visual element to public readings. Dave Winefske (Aldo Leopold Weekend event
planner from Argyle, Wisconsin) gets credit for putting these together. Thanks Dave!
A note on images within the presentations: we have only received permission to use these
images within these presentations, as part of this event. You will see a photo credit slide as the
last image in every presentation. Please be sure to show that slide to your audience at least once,
and if you don't mind leaving it up to show at the end of each essay, that is best. Also please note
that we do not have permission to use these images outside of Aldo Leopold Weekend reading
event presentations. For example, the images that come from the Aldo Leopold Foundation
archive are not “public domain,” yet we see unauthorized uses of them all the time on the
internet. So, hopefully that’s enough said on this topic—if you have any questions, just let us
know. mail@aldoleopold.org
If you download these presentations to use in your event, feel free to delete this intro slide before
showing to your audience.

3. January
Thaw

4. Each year, after the midwinter blizzards, there comes a night of thaw
when the tinkle of dripping water is heard in the land.

5. It brings strange stirrings, not only to
creatures abed for the night, but to some
who have been asleep for the winter.

6. The hibernating skunk, curled up in his
deep den, uncurls himself and ventures
forth to prowl the wet world, dragging his
belly in the snow.

7. His track marks one of the earliest datable
events in that cycle of beginnings and
ceasings which we call a year.

8. The track is likely to display an indifference to mundane affairs
uncommon at other seasons; it leads straight across-country, as if its
maker had hitched his wagon to a star and dropped the reins.

9. I follow, curious to deduce his state of mind & appetite, and destination if
any.

10. The months of the year, from January up to June, are a geometric
progression in the abundance of distractions. In January one may
follow a skunk track, or search for bands on the chickadees,

11. or see what young pines the deer have browsed,
or what muskrat houses the mink have dug, with
only an occasional and mild digression into other
doings.

12. January observation can be almost as simple and peaceful as snow,
and almost as continuous as cold. There is time not only to see who has
done what, but to speculate why.

13. A meadow mouse, startled by my approach, darts damply across the
skunk track. Why is he abroad in daylight? Probably because he feels
grieved about the thaw.

14. Today his maze of secret tunnels, laboriously chewed through the
matted grass under the snow, are tunnels no more, but only paths
exposed to public view and ridicule. Indeed the thawing sun has mocked
the basic premises of the microtine economic system!

15. The mouse is a sober citizen who knows that grass grows in order that
mice may store it as underground haystacks,and that snow falls in order
that mice may build subways from stack to stack:

16. supply, demand, and transport all neatly organized. To the mouse, snow
means freedom from want and fear. A ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK comes
sailing over the meadow ahead.

17. Now he stops, hovers like a kingfisher, and then drops like a feathered
bomb into the marsh.

18. He does not rise again, so I am
sure he has caught, and is now
eating, some worried mouse-
engineer who could not wait
until night to inspect the damage
to his well-ordered world.

19. The rough-leg has no
opinion why grass
grows, but he is well
aware that snow melts
in order that hawks
may again catch mice.

20. He came down out of the Arctic in
the hope of thaws, for to him a thaw
means freedom from want & fear.

21. THE SKUNK TRACK ENTERS THE WOODS, and crosses a
glade where the rabbits have packed down the snow with
their tracks, and mottled it with pinkish urinations.

22. Newly exposed oak seedlings have paid for the thaw with their newly
barked stems. Tufts of rabbit-hair bespeak the year’s first battles
among the amorous bucks.

23. Further on I find a bloody spot, encircled by a wide-sweeping arc of
owl's wings. To this rabbit the thaw brought freedom from want, but
also a reckless abandonment of fear.

24. The owl has reminded him that thoughts of spring are no substitute for
caution.

25. THE SKUNK TRACK LEADS ON, showing no
interest in possible food, and no concern over the
rompings or retributions of his neighbors. I wonder
what he has on his mind; what got him out of bed?

26. Can one impute romantic motives to this corpulent fellow, dragging his
ample beltline through the slush?

27. Finally the track enters a pile of driftwood, and does
not emerge. I hear the tinkle of dripping water among
the logs, and I fancy the skunk hears it too.

28. I turn homeward, still wondering.

29. Photo Credits
•Historic photographs: Aldo Leopold Foundation archives
•A Sand County Almanac photographs by Michael Sewell
•David Wisnefske, Sugar River Valley Pheasants Forever, Wisconsin Environmental Education Board, Wisconsin
Environmental Education Foundation, Argyle Land Ethic Academy (ALEA)
•UW Stevens Point Freckmann Herbarium, R. Freckmann, V.Kline, E. Judziewicz, K. Kohout, D. Lee, K Sytma, R.
Kowal, P. Drobot, D. Woodland, A. Meeks, R. Bierman
•Curt Meine, (Aldo Leopold Biographer)
•Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Environmental Education for Kids (EEK)
•Hays Cummins, Miami of Ohio University
•Leopold Education Project, Ed Pembleton
•Bird Pictures by Bill Schmoker
•Pheasants Forever, Roger Hill
•Ruffed Grouse Society
•US Fish and Wildlife Service and US Forest Service
•Eric Engbretson
•James Kurz
•Owen Gromme Collection
•John White & Douglas Cooper
•National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
•Ohio State University Extension, Buckeye Yard and Garden Online
•New Jersey University, John Muir Society, Artchive.com, and Labor Law Talk