115 ~ Thankful for some things Wisconsin: Leopold and Wright

Seeing the world through similar eyes, Aldo Leopold (left) and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Among things of which we Wisconsinites can be grateful, and proud, is that two of the most significant thinkers of the 20th century on the importance of uniting humans with nature, Aldo Leopold and Frank Lloyd Wright. were Wisconsin contemporaries, who did their most important work only about fifty road miles from one another. Remarkable.

 Of course, for millennia the original inhabitants of the area we now call Wisconsin, native peoples such as the Ho-Chunk and Menominee, have understood the importance of being in relationship with nature. But it's taken the European immigrants some time to catch up - and it's still a work in progress. Both Leopold and Wright were insightful, passionate advocates for this understanding.

            Of the two, Leopold's contribution to improving our relationship with nature is probably better known, mainly through his sublime work, A Sand County Almanac, published in 1949. ­There are probably not many Wisconsinites who haven’t yet read A Sand County Almanac, and perhaps it should be required reading for a Wisconsin driver’s license.  Although Leopold was a native born son of Iowa, his most important ideas coalesced during his tenure at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and he put many of his ideas to paper at his weekend and summer retreat, a shack near the banks of the Wisconsin River, between Portage and Wisconsin Dells - just upstream from Wright's creative base, his home and studio Taliesin, near Spring Green.

            Leopold's primary thesis is that humanity (at least, European immigrant humanity) urgently needs to evolve from simply using land (and often destroying it in the process), to being in reciprocal relationship with it. It's not that we need to become interdependent with land; rather, we always have been, and ignorance of this will lead to the mutual demise of both parties. Just as humans have long applied codes of ethics to guide our treatment of our fellow humans, Leopold proposed that a "land ethic" was equally - and urgently - needed to guide our relationship with the natural world - the world that supports us. We can't go on forever as takers only.  

            Wright embraced the same principle and expressed it through his architecture. He said that one should never build on anything, but always build with the land, so that the result will be a reciprocal beauty of both land and house.

            Wright was a solidly native son of Wisconsin. Born in 1867 in Richland Center, he grew up in Madison, and as a teen spent summers working on the farms of his uncles and aunts in the beautiful little valley near the Wisconsin River where he returned decades later, in 1911, to build Taliesin.  The house remained his primary residence and studio until he passed away in 1959, just a couple months shy of his 92nd birthday. Since 2019 Taliesin has been part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and guided tours are available from April through November.

            Although Wright's advocacy for joining humans with nature is perhaps less well known than Leopold's, he was equally committed to the concept. Wright said in an interview late in life that his spelling of 'God' was "Nature, with a capital N".  At the same time that Leopold was writing in a way no one had before about being in relationship with land, just downstream along the same Wisconsin River, Wright was designing buildings in relationship with the land in a way no one had before.  

            Wright said that the purpose of architecture is not to separate us from nature, but to unite us with it, and that's essentially what he did for his long and remarkably productive career. Recently I've been working part-time as a tour guide at Taliesin, and it's been a delight to explore and discover the myriad ways, both subtle and profound, that Wright merged his house with the surrounding land. It starts in various ways outside. The entire footprint of the house is more than 30,000 square feet, but as you approach you will see no brick, only limestone and sandstone quarried nearby - with the stone of the house walls left looking about as rough as it does in the quarry.  The sweeping, low roofs are shingled in cedar, and left untreated in any way, so as they fade they come to match the tone of the bark of the living trees that surround the house. And the roofs have no gutters - to allow the natural art of icicles to festoon the house in winter.

           Step inside, and the celebration of wild nature, and union with it, continues. The rough natural flagstones on the approach don't end at the door - Wright invites them right in to his luxury home. Once inside, you'll not find a house appointed in teak, mahogany, silk or marble - since none of these is local to the land here. In fact, each of the more than twenty fireplaces in the house looks like the fireplace of a Neanderthal - no framing with red brick, ceramic tile or marble, just coarse stone. In the formal living room, Wright placed large, load-bearing stone support columns, and two things to note: the stonework has been left as natural and unfinished as on the outside of the house, and with the walls no longer essential for load-bearing, Wright essentially got rid of them, with large windows to pour views of nature into the space. 

Taliesin living room (photo by Tim Long; courtesy of Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation).

Also notice something that's absent, something that probably every house in the United States had a hundred years ago, from a farmhouse to a Hearst mansion, that Taliesin doesn’t. And let a small smile unfurl when the penny drops: there's not one square inch of curtains or drapery in the living room, nor anywhere else in the house. Wright wasn’t about to forfeit the views of living nature he painstakingly arranged by shrouding them in cloth.

A guest who walked into Taliesin's living room early in the last century was walking into a designed space the likes of which no one had seen before.  And the house remains an inspirational delight today, in its constant blurring of the boundary between nature outside and our human space inside.  

            The first Thanksgiving was a harvest festival, in gratitude for gifts that Nature had provided. The pilgrims paused in their taking to give thanks for gifts of sustenance received. That's the start of a true relationship with Nature. And at this time of our American Thanksgiving, I have gratitude for the ways that both Leopold and Wright guided us toward understanding the importance of this - plus a bit of pride to call them Wisconsin homeys. 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Leopold's Shack can be visited May to October, through the Aldo Leopold Foundation (www.aldoleopold.org).  Guided tours of Taliesin are still available, through Sunday, December 1.  Advance booking is suggested, online at www.taliesinpreservation.org, or by calling (608) 588-7900.