SILVER CITY, NM—When Aldo Leopold published the essay “Thinking Like a Mountain” as part of the collection “A Sand County Almanac” in 1949, he coined a phrase that continues to reverberate today.

For Leopold, the naturalist who first proposed setting aside a half-million acres surrounding New Mexico’s Gila River as wilderness, “thinking like a mountain” meant appreciating the profound interconnectedness of the elements of an ecosystem.

That interconnectedness is demonstrated and meditated upon in a new exhibition at the Francis McCray Gallery of Contemporary Art at Western New Mexico University. Flagstaff-based artist Shawn Skabelund used elements of nature to create a mixed-media installation that takes full advantage of the gallery’s space.

“For over thirty years,” Skabelund said in his artist’s statement, “my work as an artist has been to ‘collaborate with a place’ as I prepare for exhibitions and installations all over the United States.” For the exhibition at the McCray, Skabelund took inspiration from the landscapes along the route between Flagstaff and Silver City.

His materials are gathered from the forest and include everything from a burnt tree to Ponderosa pine pollen to a mummified hummingbird. These natural elements are assembled to create four place-based installations in the gallery.

The exhibition, said Skabelund, “is my rumination on the life of Aldo Leopold as it intersects with my art, which has focused on land health, land ethics and justice for over thirty years.”

Development of a land ethic is central to “A Sand County Almanac,” in which Leopold claimed that there were two things that interested him: “the relation of people to each other, and the relation of people to the land.” These relationships are what Skabelund explores in the exhibition at the McCray.

“I believe that to think like a mountain is a creative process akin to collaborating with a place,” said Skabelund. “Driving through the landscape of the Mogollon Highlands along U.S. Route 180 helped me focus and develop the four place-based installations in this exhibition. The drive, or the route, became my studio, and the landscape out my car window, where Leopold once lived and worked, the place.”

The exhibition, “Thinking Like a Mountain,” will be on display until October 2. Gallery hours are Tuesday–Friday, 10:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m.