Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest

by Cenkl, Pavel; Elder, John

• ISBN13: 9781587298561
• ISBN10: 1587298562
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-03-15
• Publisher: Univ of Iowa Pr

Summary

Nearly 30 million acres of the Northern Forest stretch across New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Within this broad area live roughly a million residents whose lives are intimately associated with the forest ecosystem and whose individual stories are closely linked to the regionrs"s cultural and environmental history. The fourteen engaging essays inNature and Culture in the Northern Foresteffectively explore the relationships among place, work, and community in this complex landscape. Together they serve as a stimulating introduction to the interdisciplinary study of this unique region. Each of the four sections views through a different lens the interconnections between place and people. The essayists in "Encounters" have their hiking boots on as they focus on personal encounters with flora and fauna of the region. The energizing accounts in "Teaching and Learning" question our assumptions about education and scholarship by proposing invigorating collaborations between teachers and students in ways determined by the land itself, not by the abstractions of pedagogy. With the freshness of Thoreaurs"s irreverence, the authors in "Rethinking Place" look at key figures in the forestrs"s literary and cultural development to help us think about the affiliations between place and citizenship. In "Nature as Commodity," three essayists consider the ways that writers from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries thought about nature as a product and, thus, how their conclusions bear on the contemporary retailing of place. The writers inNature and Culture in the Northern Forestreveal the rich affinities between a specific place and the literature, thought, and other cultural expressions it has nurtured. Their insightful and stimulating connections exemplify adventurous bioregional thinking that encompasses both natural and cultural realities while staying rooted in the particular landscape of some of the Northeastrs"s wildest forests and oldest settlements.

Author Biography

Pavel Cenkl is dean of academics and a professor of humanities and regional studies at Sterling College in Vermont. He is the author of This Vast Book of Nature: Writing the Landscape of New Hampshire's White Mountains, 1784–1911 (Iowa, 2006). Pa

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Reading Place in the Northern Forest	p. 1
Encounters
Meeting Twinflower (Linnaea borealis)	p. 17
Music of the Northern Forest: Boreal Birdsong in Literature and on the Trail	p. 28
Life as Beech: Survival in the New England Forest	p. 49
Teaching and Learning
Robert Frost in the Fields and Nils-Aslak Valkeapää at the Treeline: Ecological Knowledge and Academic Learning at the Northern Forest Edge	p. 61
Interdisciplinary Teaching about the Adirondacks	p. 77
Youth, Refinement, and Environmental Knowledge in the Nineteenth-Century Rural North	p. 98
Place as a Catalyst for Engaged Learning at Franklin Pierce University	p. 133
Rethinking Place
Benton MacKaye's 1904 White Mountains Hike: Exploring a Landscape of Logging, "Camp Ethics,", and Patriotism	p. 153
William James at Chocorua: A Northern Forest Philosopher	p. 171
A Traverse of the Presidential Range with the Scottish Highlands on My Mind	p. 187
Living with the Woods: Disturbance Histories in Thoreau and Burroughs	p. 213
Nature as Commodity
In Awe of the Body: Physical Contact, Indulgence Shopping, and Nature Writing	p. 227
Claiming Maine: Acquisition and Commodification in Thoreau's The Maine Woods	p. 246
So Much Beauty Locked Up in It: Of Ecocriticism and Axe-Murder	p. 261
Contributors	p. 277
Index	p. 281
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