Weaving a Way Home

Using the author's archaeological research in two Upper Paleolithic caves as well as her personal experiences in sorting through her family's history and working in environmental education as a framework for examining the concepts of time, place, and human story,Weaving a Way Homeexplores the central themes of home, wildness, and ruins. Central to this framework are concepts of "person as place," tragic narratives and their impact on the natural world, and the role of human evolution and the anthropomorphizing brain as a vehicle for reconnecting humanity with the natural world. In the tradition of writers Lewis Hyde, Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, Joseph Meeker, Steven Mithen, Paul Shepard, Gary Synder, and Terry Tempest Williams, Leslie Van Gelder uses both creative nonfiction narrative and evolutionary biological theory to explore complex terrain. This book will appeal to readers of contemporary nature writing, ecocriticism, Native American studies, archaeology, architecture and design, religion, ecology, biological anthropology, and broad interdisciplinary thinking. "Van Gelder offers her most deeply personal stories as microcosmic examples of universal human experience, thus creating an empathic bond with her reader that conveys power and understanding simultaneously, and stimulates the reader's imagination toward reflection upon similarly personal stories of place. Van Gelder has modeled the relationship between story and place by telling placeful stories, and so has licensed the reader to do the same. Her writing throughout is rich and metaphoric. She is a gifted storyteller and a competent scholar, a combination to be treasured." ---Joseph W. Meeker, Professor Emeritus, College of Arts/Science, Union Institute and University; and author ofSpheres of Life,The Comedy of Survival, andMinding the Earth Leslie Van Gelder is Faculty Chair at the College of Education at Walden University, an online educational institution.

Leslie Van Gelder is Faculty Chair at the College of Education at Walden University.