When Wilderness Was King By Randall Parrish

Parrish (1858-1923) was an American author of popular and historical novels. He trained as a lawyer, spent time as an attorney, and for many years was a newspaper journalist, with stints as a railroad worker and sheep driver in between. In 1886, while managing editor of the Grafton (Nebraska) Leader he was persuaded to join the Congregational ministry and was given charge of churches at Leigh and Howells, Nebraska. He was later ordained by the Blue Valley Association and held a number of pastorates, and was also chairman of the Home Missionary Committee for Southern Illinois. This historical novel subtitled A Tale of the Illinois Country was his first work of fiction, accepted for publication when the manuscript was only half completed, and published in April 1904. Further editions followed in rapid succession - a remarkable sale for a first book, and he went on to establish himself as a successful writer. Reprinted from the third edition with illustrations by the husband and wife team Troy and Margaret West Kinney (The Kinneys).

1904. With six pictures and other decorations by Troy and Margaret West Kinney. The book begins: Surely it was no longer ago than yesterday. I had left the scythe lying at the edge of the long grass, and gone up through the rows of nodding Indian corn to the house seeking a draught of cool water from the spring. It was hot in the July sunshine; the thick forest on every side intercepted the breeze, and I had been at work for some hours. How pleasant and inviting the little river looked in the shade of the great trees, while, as I paused a moment bending over the high bank, I could see a lazy pike nosing about among the twisted roots below.

When wilderness was king: Large PrintBy Randall ParrishRandall Parrish (1858-1923) was an American author of dime novels. His works include: When Wilderness was King (1904), My Lady of the North (1905), The Sword of the Old Frontier (1905), Bob Hampton of Placer (1906), Beth Norvell: A Romance of the West (1907), Prisoners of Chance (1908), My Lady of the South (1909), Keith of the Border (1910), Love Under Fire (1911), My Lady of Doubt (1911), Gordon Craig (1912), Molly McDonald (1912), The Maid of the Forest (1913), Shea of the Irish Brigade (1914), Beyond the Frontier (1916), The Devil's Own (1917), Wolves of the Sea (1918), The Strange Case of Cavendish (1918), and The Case and the Girl (1922).

Since the passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964, a hotly contested debate over the value of wilderness reveals cultural anxieties about an American society that has spurned limits. Gratitude for the Wild explores how the wild known in wilderness raises our tolerance for mystery in the recognition of our limits and in the celebration of a God-loved world that exceeds our grasping. The idea of wilderness introduces questions about the balance between utility and appreciation, and between enjoyment and restraint. Wilderness is a nexus of competing and contested accounts of responsibility. In conversation with the work of Doug Peacock, Terry Tempest Williams, James Gustafson, and Martin Luther King Jr., Nathaniel Van Yperen offers an original argument for how wilderness can evoke a vision of a good life in which creaturely limits are accepted in gratitude, even in the face of ambiguity and mystery. Through the theme of gratitude, the book refocuses attention on the role of affection and testimony in ecological ethics and Christian ethics.