The Bertsch-Hokendauqua-Catasauqua Watershed Association (BHCWA), of which I'm a founding member, is dedicated to protect, improve and sustain water quality.

BHCWA is sponsoring its second annual scholarship essay contest for high school seniors, including those at Catasauqua High School and Northampton Area High School, who reside in the watershed and will attend college.

This year's essay topic is: "What is a flood plain?" Those entering the contest are to include the definition of the 100-year flood plain and address the function of riparian buffers in an essay of at least 750 words.

BHCWA will present $500 to the essay winner. A copy of the book, "A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There," also goes to the winner and the two runners-up. Contest information: lmb19@psu.edu.

"A Sand County Almanac" (1949), written by Aldo Leopold, an environmentalist and forester, describes changes in the land he observed around his home in Sauk County, Wisc.

"Sand County" is a layman's conservation bible, source book quoted by outdoor mentors from elementary school through university doctorate program and a title on outdoors curriculum reading lists. More than two million copies have been printed and it's been translated into 12 languages.

Leopold promulgated the idea of "a land ethic," focusing on a responsible relationship between humans and the area where they reside.

Leopold's son, Luna, compiled and edited his father's essays. The book was published a year after Leopold died. Anyone who reads the book for the first time will find it difficult to believe it was written in the 1940s

Leopold's insights are still important today: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

It's among his most memorable statements. A biotic community is a group of independent organisms inhabiting an area and interacting with each other.

I keep my copy on my desk where it is handy for reference or just for enjoyable rereading.

In the book's first sentence, Leopold wrote, "There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot."

Leopold's words remind me of the spirit and viewpoints of many friends involved in community environmental advisory councils, watershed associations, nature centers and outdoors journalism.

In the "February monthly entry - Good Oak" of his book, Leopold explains the oak, now aglow on his fireplace and irons, had grown on the bank of a road. He had felled his oak for firewood in 1945.

At my property, we lost our 80-foot-tall healthy red oak tree to Superstorm Sandy's powerful winds in 2012.

Our red oak stood proud and erect about 20 feet from the northeast corner of the house where its shade provided natural air-conditioning and food and shelter for local critters.

Gray squirrels were busy each fall finding, picking, eating and burying the red oak's acorns. It lowered the amount of raids on our feeders.

Leopold's oak stump measured 30 inches in diameter. Our stump measured 42 inches. His oak had 80 growth rings. Our oak had 128 rings. If my math calculations are correct, his oak laid its first growth ring around 1865 and our oak's first ring dates back to about 1887.

In his book, Leopold correlates local historical dates with the oak's growth rings as he saws across the fallen trunk. The timeline begins at the outer annual growth ring, the last one formed, and works toward the first year's center ring.

As I scanned the 1887 events and births relating to our old oak tree, I was surprised to find Aldo Leopold was born Jan. 11, 1887. What a coincidence: He may have been born the same year as our red oak was planted.

Other 1887 events include a Pennsylvania rodent's first weather prediction at Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney on Feb. 2; the first Groundhog Day.

On March 3, Anne Sullivan began teaching a blind and deaf six-year old Helen Keller. On April 10, President Lincoln was reburied with his wife in Springfield, Ill.

The next time someone asks you if you know anything about the year 1887 or when someone asks you questions about Aldo Leopold and "A Sand County Almanac," you now can surprise them with some answers.

That's the way I see it!

To schedule programs, hikes and birthday parties: 610-767-4043; comments: bbbcole@enter.net

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&Copy; 2015 Bud Cole