“It’s possible to understand the world from studying a leaf,” wrote Misha Kassam ’31 in her essay that earned an honorable mention in the 2026 Aldo Leopold Writing Contest. Misha likened her family’s journey to a drought-stricken plant revived by the first splash of rainfall.
The contest received more than 600 submissions.
Each year, the Aldo Leopold Writing Contest invites New Mexico students in grades 6-12 to submit essays in response to a carefully crafted and thought-provoking prompt inspired by the writings of Aldo Leopold. Encouraged by their teachers, students delve into his philosophies of land stewardship, especially as set forth in A Sand County Almanac, and explore the relevance of Leopold’s classic and timeless observations to issues that they experience personally, locally, and globally.
The 2026 prompt asked students to reflect on quotes by two environmental writers: Aldo Leopold, who believed that the idea of community should include humans, plants, animals, and the land, and Joy Harjo, an Indigenous writer, musician, and poet, who writes about humankind’s connection to land.
