"The allure of the Appalachian Trail has drawn hikers from all around the world to walk its 2,193 miles from Georgia to Maine. In Killing the Buddha on the Appalachian Trail John Turner hikes those rugged miles with us on a journey that begins in the forested southern mountains but also winds through the history of the trail, its geology, its unique hiker culture and the hazards, physical demands, and glories of some of the most beloved and beautiful landscapes on America's eastern seaboard. The journey also takes us to some unexpected places - to Africa in the aftermath of a terrible war, into philosophical exploration about the ethics of hiking, and the author's own inner turmoil as he struggles with past failures. We are introduced to characters as varied, brave and determined as any cast of a Broadway musical, each of them contending with the challenge of climbing steep mountains day after day through rain, mud, cold, and heat. Throughout this epic trek, we walk alongside Turner to experience the daily hardships, the milestones reached, the hike-ending accidents and the little victories along the way to the great mountain at the northern terminus - Katahdin in Maine. Turner guides us to Katahdin through a background of Buddhist teaching that gives meaning to the fellowship, solitude, suffering and ultimate triumph of the men and women who seek to hike the entire Appalachian Trail"--

Gathered here in book form for the first time, the fourteen essays in Where We Belong exemplify Paul Shepard's interdisciplinary approach to human interaction with the natural world. Drawn from Shepard's entire career and presented chronologically, these pieces vary in setting from the Hudson River to the American prairie to New Zealand. Equally impressive is Shepard's spatial range, as he moves from subtle differences to grand designs, from the intimacy of an artist's brush stroke to a vista of the harsh Greek terrain. Alluding to a range of sources from Star Trek to Marshall McLuhan to the Bible, the writings discuss such topics as the geomorphology of New England landscape paintings, beautification and conservation projects, the Oregon Trail, and tourism. Whether Shepard is pondering why the Great Plains conjured up sea imagery in early observers, or how pioneers often resorted to architectural terms--temple, castle, bridge, tower--when naming the West's natural formations, he exposes, and thus invites us to unshoulder, the cultural and historical baggage we bring to the act of seeing. Throughout the book, Shepard seeks the antecedents of environmental perception and questions whether the paradigm we inherited should be superseded by one that leads us to a greater concern for the health of the planet. This volume is an important addition to Shepard's canon if only for the new view it offers of his intellectual development. More important, however, these selections demonstrate Shepard's grasp of a wide range of ideas related to the physical environment, including the various factors--historical, aesthetic, and psychological--that have shaped our attitudes toward the natural world and color the way we see it.

The allure of the Appalachian Trail has drawn hikers from all around the world to walk its 2,193 miles from Georgia to Maine. In Killing the Buddha on the Appalachian Trail John Turner hikes those rugged miles with us on a journey that begins in the forested southern mountains but also winds through the history of the trail, its geology, its unique hiker culture and the hazards, physical demands, and glories of some of the most beloved and beautiful landscapes on America's eastern seaboard. The journey also takes us to some unexpected places - to Africa in the aftermath of a terrible war, into philosophical exploration about the ethics of hiking, and the author's own inner turmoil as he struggles with past failures. We are introduced to characters as varied, brave and determined as any cast of a Broadway musical, each of them contending with the challenge of climbing steep mountains day after day through rain, mud, cold, and heat. Throughout this epic trek, we walk alongside Turner to experience the daily hardships, the milestones reached, the hike-ending accidents and the little victories along the way to the great mountain at the northern terminus - Katahdin in Maine. Turner guides us to Katahdin through a background of Buddhist teaching that gives meaning to the fellowship, solitude, suffering and ultimate triumph of the men and women who seek to hike the entire Appalachian Trail.

The author lovingly reconstructs the journey of eighteenth-century naturalist William Bartram, retracing his painstaking survey of the flora, fauna, and cultures of the American Southeast. (Travel)

In this collection of natural-history essays, biologist Joan Maloof embarks on a series of lively, fact-filled expeditions into forests of the eastern United States. Through Maloof’s engaging, conversational style, each essay offers a lesson in stewardship as it explores the interwoven connections between a tree species and the animals and insects whose lives depend on it—and who, in turn, work to ensure the tree’s survival. Never really at home in a laboratory, Maloof took to the woods early in her career. Her enthusiasm for firsthand observation in the wild spills over into her writing, whether the subject is the composition of forest air, the eagle’s preference for nesting in loblolly pines, the growth rings of the bald cypress, or the gray squirrel’s fondness for weevil-infested acorns. With a storyteller’s instinct for intriguing particulars, Maloof expands our notions about what a tree “is” through her many asides—about the six species of leafhoppers who eat only sycamore leaves or the midges who live inside holly berries and somehow prevent them from turning red. As a scientist, Maloof accepts that trees have a spiritual dimension that cannot be quantified. As an unrepentant tree hugger, she finds support in the scientific case for biodiversity. As an activist, she can’t help but wonder how much time is left for our forests.

Reading the Roots is an unprecedented anthology of outstanding early writings about American nature--a rich, influential, yet critically underappreciated body of work. Rather than begin with Henry David Thoreau, who is often identified as the progenitor of American nature writing, editor Michael P. Branch instead surveys the long tradition that prefigures and anticipates Thoreau and his literary descendants. The selections in Reading the Roots describe a diversity of landscapes, wildlife, and natural phenomena, and their authors represent many different nationalities, cultural affiliations, religious views, and ideological perspectives. The writings gathered here also range widely in terms of subject, rhetorical form, and disciplinary approach--from promotional tracts and European narratives of contact with Native Americans to examples of scientific theology and romantic nature writing. The volume also includes a critical introduction discussing the cultural, scientific, and literary value of early American nature writing; headnotes that contextualize all authors and selections; and a substantial bibliography of primary and secondary sources in the field. Reading the Roots at last makes early American landscapes--and a range of literary responses to them--accessible to scholars, students, and general readers.

What wilderness lover, asks John Tallmadge, "would ever dream of settling deep in the Rust Belt astride polluted rivers?" The Cincinnati Arch holds the provocative answer to Tallmadge's question, which was prompted by his unplanned relocation from rural Minnesota to urban Ohio. Tallmadge tells of dismaying early encounters with the city's seeming barenness, his growing awareness of its vitality and abundance, and finally his new vision of all nature, from the vacant lots of his neighborhood to our great New England forests and Western deserts. New to the city, Tallmadge saw only its concrete, glass, smog, and debris. Soon his interest, stirred by the wonder of his children at their surroundings, focused Tallmadge to the "buzzing, flapping, scurrying, chewing, photosynthesizing life forms" around him. More deeply, Tallmadge began to learn from, and not just about, the city. Nature's persistence--within him and wherever he looked--wore away at old notions of wilderness that made no allowances for human culture. The "arch" of the book's title is richly resonant: as the name of a geologic formation molding the urban landscape Tallmadge comes to love; as an archetypal building form; and, in its parabolic shape, as a metaphor for life's journey. Filled with luminous lessons of mindfulness, attentiveness, and other spiritual practices, this is a hopeful guide to finding nature and balance in unlikely places.

"Describes sixty hiking routes within thirty miles of downtown Atlanta. Includes driving and hiking directions, maps, trailhead GPS coordinates, trail highlights, and notable trees for each hike listed"--

Factual and entertaining, compact and easy to follow, A Walking Tour of the University of Georgia takes the reader on a leisurely tour of the campus, its history and heritage. When the Georgia legislature chartered the nation's first state university in 1785, the town of Athens was a wilderness. The first university classes, in 1801, were held in a log cabin, and no permanent structure was built until Franklin College--now Old College--was completed in 1806. Since that time, the university has expanded vigorously. The buildings of the University of Georgia--spread over several miles and encompassing many architectural styles--range from the federal style of Demosthenian Hall and the classical design of Brooks Hall to the glass dome and marble of Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall. F.N. Boney's A Walking Tour of the University of Georgia guides the reader through the entire campus, offering easy-to-follow maps, photographs, and histories of most structures, as well as information about former students, college life, and the city of Athens.

Susan Fenimore Cooper (1813-1894), though often overshadowed by her celebrity father, James Fenimore Cooper, has recently become recognized as both a pioneer of American nature writing and an early advocate for ecological sustainability. Editors Rochelle Johnson and Daniel Patterson have assembled here a collection of ten pieces by Cooper that represent her most accomplished nature writing and the fullest articulation of her environmental principles. With one exception, these essays have not been available in print since their original appearance in Cooper's lifetime. A portrait of her thoughts on nature and how we should live and think in relation to it, this collection both contextualizes Cooper's magnum opus, Rural Hours (1850), and demonstrates how she perceived her work as a nature writer. Frequently her essays are models of how to catch and keep the interest of a reader when writing about plants, animals, and our relationship to the physical environment. By lamenting the decline of bird populations, original forests, and overall biodiversity, she champions preservation and invokes a collective environmental conscience that would not begin to awaken until the end of her life and century. The selections include independent essays, miscellaneous introductions and prefaces, and the first three installments from Cooper's work of literary ornithology, "Otsego Leaves," arguably her most mature and fully realized contribution to American environmental writing. In addition to a foreword by John Elder, one of the nation's leading environmental educators, an introduction analyzes each essay in various cultural contexts. Brief but handy textual notes supplement the essays. Perfect for nature-writing aficionados, environmental historians, and environmental activists, this collection will radically expand Cooper's importance to the history of American environmental thought.