Thoreau's Country
Title | Thoreau's Country PDF eBook |
Author | David R. Foster |
Publisher | Harvard University Press |
Pages | 288 |
Release | 2009-06-30 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 0674037154 |
In 1977 David Foster took to the woods of New England to build a cabin with his own hands. Along with a few tools he brought a copy of the journals of Henry David Thoreau. Foster was struck by how different the forested landscape around him was from the one Thoreau described more than a century earlier. The sights and sounds that Thoreau experienced on his daily walks through nineteenth-century Concord were those of rolling farmland, small woodlands, and farmers endlessly working the land. As Foster explored the New England landscape, he discovered ancient ruins of cellar holes, stone walls, and abandoned cartways--all remnants of this earlier land now largely covered by forest. How had Thoreau's open countryside, shaped by ax and plough, divided by fences and laneways, become a forested landscape? Part ecological and historical puzzle, this book brings a vanished countryside to life in all its dimensions, human and natural, offering a rich record of human imprint upon the land. Extensive excerpts from the journals show us, through the vividly recorded details of daily life, a Thoreau intimately acquainted with the ways in which he and his neighbors were changing and remaking the New England landscape. Foster adds the perspective of a modern forest ecologist and landscape historian, using the journals to trace themes of historical and social change. Thoreau's journals evoke not a wilderness retreat but the emotions and natural history that come from an old and humanized landscape. It is with a new understanding of the human role in shaping that landscape, Foster argues, that we can best prepare ourselves to appreciate and conserve it today. From the journal: "I have collected and split up now quite a pile of driftwood--rails and riders and stems and stumps of trees--perhaps half or three quarters of a tree...Each stick I deal with has a history, and I read it as I am handling it, and, last of all, I remember my adventures in getting it, while it is burning in the winter evening. That is the most interesting part of its history. It has made part of a fence or a bridge, perchance, or has been rooted out of a clearing and bears the marks of fire on it...Thus one half of the value of my wood is enjoyed before it is housed, and the other half is equal to the whole value of an equal quantity of the wood which I buy." --October 20, 1855
The Wildest Country
Title | The Wildest Country PDF eBook |
Author | J. Parker Huber |
Publisher | |
Pages | 222 |
Release | 1981 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN |
Thoreau's New England
Title | Thoreau's New England PDF eBook |
Author | |
Publisher | UPNE |
Pages | 108 |
Release | 2007 |
Genre | Landscape |
ISBN | 158465581X |
"Steve Gorman is a true American visionary. His masterful images are beautifuland sometimes disturbing, but they offer tantalizing clues into the nature of our national character and our capricious relationship to the natural world. His work deftly inscribes our beliefs, our dreams, and our American story in an accessible and eye-opening way."--Dan Brown, author of "The DaVinci Code"University Press of New England
Thoreau's Notes on Birds of New England
Title | Thoreau's Notes on Birds of New England PDF eBook |
Author | Henry David Thoreau |
Publisher | Courier Dover Publications |
Pages | 369 |
Release | 2019-04-17 |
Genre | Nature |
ISBN | 0486833844 |
During his two-year residence at Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau became keenly aware of the natural world that surrounded him. Entries from his journals reflect his soulful, in-depth observations of local wildlife, and his remarks on birds are particularly plentiful and poetic. This book, originally published as Notes on New England Birds in 1910 and edited and arranged by Francis H. Allen, collects Thoreau's thoughts on the various bird species that populated the New England woods, from the great blue heron to the kingbird and the American finch. "Open to any page and you will find, besides apt descriptions of the natural world, a cogent remark or a philosophical observation," noted The Washington Post. Bird lovers and watchers, fans of Thoreau, and naturalists and environmentalists will delight in joining the author as he saunters through the woods and ponders the region's abundant wildlife. A new selection of 16 full-page color illustrations by John James Audubon enhances the text.
Thoreau Country
Title | Thoreau Country PDF eBook |
Author | Herbert Wendell Gleason |
Publisher | Random House (NY) |
Pages | 168 |
Release | 1975 |
Genre | American prose literature |
ISBN |
The Essays of Henry David Thoreau
Title | The Essays of Henry David Thoreau PDF eBook |
Author | Henry David Thoreau |
Publisher | Rowman & Littlefield |
Pages | 260 |
Release | 1992-03 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 9780808404316 |
To find more information about Rowman and Littlefield titles, please visit www.rowmanlittlefield.com.
Thoreau's Animals
Title | Thoreau's Animals PDF eBook |
Author | Henry David Thoreau |
Publisher | Yale University Press |
Pages | 280 |
Release | 2017-03-28 |
Genre | Nature |
ISBN | 0300228066 |
From Thoreau’s renowned Journal, a treasury of memorable, funny, and sharply observed accounts of his encounters with the wild and domestic animals of Concord Many of the most vivid writings in the renowned Journal of Henry David Thoreau concern creatures he came upon when rambling the fields, forests, and wetlands of Concord and nearby communities. A keen and thoughtful observer, he wrote frequently about these animals, always sensitive to their mysteries and deeply appreciative of their beauty and individuality. Whether serenading the perch of Walden Pond with his flute, chasing a loon across the water’s surface, observing a battle between black and red ants, or engaging in a battle of wits with his family’s runaway pig, Thoreau penned his journal entries with the accuracy of a scientist and the deep spirituality of a transcendentalist and mystic. This volume, like its companion Thoreau’s Wildflowers, is arranged by the days of the year, following the progress of the turning seasons. A selection of his original sketchbook drawings is included, along with thirty-five exquisite illustrations by naturalist and artist Debby Cotter Kaspari.