From ghostly orchards to tumbledown stone walls, every feature of the rural landscape tells a story. Here, a renowned environmental scientist takes readers on a tour and teaches them how to glean from these signs a forgotten history.

William Faulkner once said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Nowhere can you see the truth behind his comment more plainly than in rural New England, especially Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and western Massachusetts. Everywhere we go in rural New England, the past surrounds us. In the woods and fields and along country roads, the traces are everywhere if we know what to look for and how to interpret what we see. A patch of neglected daylilies marks a long-abandoned homestead. A grown-over cellar hole with nearby stumps and remnants of stone wall and orchard shows us where a farm has been reclaimed by forest. And a piece of a stone dam and wooden sluice mark the site of a long-gone mill. Although slumping back into the landscape, these features speak to us if we can hear them and they can guide us to ancestral homesteads and famous sites. Lavishly illustrated with drawings and color photos. Provides the keys to interpret human artifacts in fields, woods, and roadsides and to reconstruct the past from surviving clues. Perfect to carry in a backpack or glove box. A unique and valuable resource for road trips, genealogical research, naturalists, and historians.

Hikes and walks throughout the Nutmeg State Leave the dense cities and tourist destinations of New England behind to explore the woods and hills of this beautiful state. Connecticut boasts a diversity of parks, sanctuaries, hills, woodlands, and wetlands, with hidden gems to satisfy hikers and explorers of all ilks. This sixth edition has been fully revised and updated to be the most comprehensive and thorough guide to Connecticut’s trails. The hikes range in length from 1 to 13 miles, and an overview chart makes it easy to choose a hike at a glance. Each chapter includes a detailed, easy- to- read map, information on mileage and rise, a clear trail description, and a wealth of information on natural and human history you’ll encounter along the way. Hikes include: • Sleeping Giant State Park • Bear Mountain • Wadsworth Falls • Windsor Locks Canal • Green Fall Pond

Environmental impact assessment is now firmly established as an important and often mandatory part of proposing any development project. Environmental Impact Assessment in the United States provides foundational knowledge of environmental review in the United States as carried out at federal, state, and local levels, with detailed information about the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and its applications, and other relevant federal and state legislation. This book will aid planners, architects, engineers, project managers, or consultants who work with environmental impact statements to assess the effects of a proposed activity on the environment and who develop and assess measures to avoid or minimize those impacts. It will serve as a desk reference for professional environmental planners as well as a core textbook for students who intend to work in the fields of environmental policy, civil engineering, environmental law, resources management, or other areas of environmental management.

A generously illustrated handbook for identifying and understanding structures that symbolize the region's unique cultural and historical landscape

Chronicles the forest in New England from the Ice Age to current challenges

The Routledge History of Rural America charts the course of rural life in the United States, raising questions about what makes a place rural and how rural places have shaped the history of the nation. Bringing together leading scholars to analyze a wide array of themes in rural history and culture, this text is a state-of-the-art resource for students, scholars, and educators at all levels. This Routledge History provides a regional context for understanding change in rural communities across America and examines a number of areas where the history of rural people has deviated from the American mainstream. Readers will come away with an enhanced understanding of the interplay between urban and rural areas, a knowledge of the regional differences within the rural United States, and an awareness of the importance of agriculture and rural life to American society. The book is divided into four main sections: regions of rural America, rural lives in context, change and development, and resources for scholars and teachers. Examining the essays on the regions of rural America, readers can discover what makes New England different from the South, and why the Midwest and Mountain West are quite different places. The chapters on rural lives provide an entrée into the social and cultural history of rural peoples – women, children and men – as well as a description of some of the forces shaping rural communities, such as immigration, race and religious difference. Chapters on change and development examine the forces molding the countryside, such as rural-urban tensions, technological change and increasing globalization. The final section will help scholars and educators integrate rural history into their research, writing, and classrooms. By breaking the field of rural history into so many pieces, this volume adds depth and complexity to the history of the United States, shedding light on an understudied aspect of the American mythology and beliefs about the American dream.