Rock, Water, Wild : An Alaskan Life

by Lord, Nancy

• ISBN13: 9780803225152
• ISBN10: 0803225156
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-09-01
• Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr

Summary

For Nancy Lord, what began as a yearning for adventure and a childhood fascination with a wild and distant land culminated in a move to Alaska in the early 1970s. Here she discovered the last place in America "big and wild enough to hold the intact landscapes and the dreams that are so absent today from almost everywhere else." InRock, Water, Wild, Lord takes readers along as she journeys among salmon, sea lions, geese, moose, bears, glaciers, and indigenous languages and ultimately into a new understanding, beyond geographic borders, of our intricate and intimate connections to the natural world. Vast and beautiful, and much more than a mere place, Alaska is nonetheless inescapably a land of natural extremes and exquisite subtleties. In Lord's explorations, "the country" of Alaska evokes reflections on the importance of place and space in our lives; arguments over roads carved in the wilderness; musings on the role of location and landscape in the Dena'ina Athabascan language; accounts of sport fishing in the Russian Far East in the first days of perestroika and of climbing in the Arrigetch Peaks of Alaska's Brooks Range; and considerations of the politics of whaling. In the tradition of naturalists John Muir and John Burroughs, Lord proves an excellent guide to the challenges and pleasures of making oneself at home on this Earth.

Author Biography

Nancy Lord is Alaska’s writer laureate and a Pushcart Prize–winning author. Her previous acclaimed books include Fishcamp, Green Alaska, The Man Who Swam with Beavers, and Beluga Days.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
On The Way
Being Peter	p. 3
On Rereading Siddhartha	p. 16
In the Giant's Hand	p. 29
In The Country
Words Honor Place	p. 39
Zen Moose	p. 52
Honk	p. 56
Quiet Time	p. 64
The Hidden Half	p. 68
How to Bear Witness	p. 79
Report from the Rookeries	p. 82
The Farthest Island	p. 94
A Border Runs Throught It	p. 97
The Conservationist as Wood Chopper	p. 107
The Experiment	p. 118
My Apologia	p. 125
In Our Time	p. 135
Out and Beyond
Magadan Luck	p. 151
The Rings	p. 161
Encounters with the Old Naturalist	p. 165
A Bigger World	p. 179
The Nature of Fakery	p. 183
From an Old World Sea	p. 196
Hope Is the Thing in Spring	p. 202
I Met a Man Who Has Seen the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, and This Is What He Told Me	p. 209
Enough	p. 212
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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