A Sand County Almanac: Part III: A Man’s Leisure Time Summary & Analysis

Leopold accepts as “gospel truth” the saying “how miserable are the idle hours of the ignorant man!” He believes any man who wastes his leisure time is ignorant, and any man who uses it well is educated, but he clarifies that this education need not have come from a school. Leopold sees hobbies almost as a spouse—a companion to take with you through your life.

Leopold attempts to define a hobby. He decides to call it “a defiance of the contemporary,” a radical act that rejects progress and celebrates the past. A hobby is not something undertaken with a result in mind, but rather is undertaken for the joy of doing. In Leopold’s mind, a hobby is inherently against progress.

Leopold tells a series of anecdotes about men he knew who made good use of their leisure time. First he recalls a merchant from childhood who would carve fossils out of local limestone. After he died, Leopold realized the man was a “world authority” on the subject of fossils. Next, he discusses a bank president who loved roses, and a man who made wheels but truly loved tomatoes, each ostensibly getting more joy from his hobby than his job.

Leopold proposes that falconry is the “most glamorous hobby” he knows. Hunting with a falcon is much less efficient than hunting with a gun, but Leopold argues that a hawk, when trained well, is a perfect weapon that surpasses anything man can make. Similarly, Leopold argues that using a longbow is a perfect hobby: less efficient than a gun, but requiring more time and skill to master. Leopold then amends his earlier definition of a hobby. He clarifies that a good hobby must involve some kind of risk, and must require the hobbyist to make something, or make the tools to make something else, “and then [use] it to accomplish some needless thing.”