Barnhill, David L. (Ed.) : Guilford College in Greensboro
David Landis Barnhill is Associate Professor of Religion and Director of Interdisciplinary Studies at Guilford
College in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Review
"The physical earth is clearly under unprecedented siege--heated, toxified, scraped. But almost as if they
were antibodies, the finest nature writers of any era have come forward to help in the fight. This anthology collects
many of the most important, at their most eloquent. May it ring and echo and do some good!"
--Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature
"This is a stunning collection of vivid writing about landscapes and the people who inhabit them. The diverse
narratives gathered here do more than describe hawks diving and twigs snapping, although the book has its share
of moving accounts of the natural world. A concern to live responsibily in nature runs through this evocative anthology
like a subterranean stream, and that moral impulse, together with the lively prose, makes this the best collection
of nature writing I've seen."
--Thomas A. Tweed, editor of Retelling U.S. Religious History
University of California Press Web Site, January, 2002
Summary
Nature writing, as Thoreau knew, can be deeply subversive because it points to ways of living that diverge fundamentally
from dominant attitudes. Thoreau would have welcomed these essays by America's most important nature writers, for
in exploring our intrinsic relationship with the earth, they also consider our alienation from nature and how that
alienation is manifested.
The book's principal focus is on the possibilities of being at home on the earth: Finding place, reinhabitation,
and becoming native.The collection begins with essays by N. Scott Momaday and Leslie Marmon Silko, who accentuate
the links between culture and nature. Other essays speak to the loss of place and to being stewards of nature and
of bioregionalism, nativeness, and of interdependent communities, be they in rural areas or urban neighborhoods.
Several essays address how our current ideologies of growth and individualism run counter to a sustainable relationship
to the land and to each other. In the final three essays, Gary Snyder critiques various views of nature, Alice
Walker articulates a vision of a responsive universe, and Linda Hogan celebrates the interaction of nature and
human habitation. The contributors' views, writings, and contexts are variegated, but all share a sense that human
identity is intimately tied to the land one lives on. And as in an ecosystem, the collection's great diversity
yields abundant riches.
At Home on the Earth represents the cutting edge of environmental thinking in the United States today. Throughout,
the interactions between humans and nature convey a politics of hope, one sustained by faith in place itself. As
Gary Snyder writes, "We are all indigenous to this planet, this mosaic of wild gardens we are being called
by nature and history to reinhabit in good spirit."
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction, David Landis Barnhill
PART ONE: LIVING IN PLACE
Americans Native to this Land
A First American Views His Land, N. Scott Momaday
Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination, Leslie Marmon Silko
The Loss of Placefrom A Native Hill, Wendell Berry
Touching the earth, bell hooks
Shadows and Vistas, John Haines
The Possibility of Place from A Native Hill, Wendell Berry
Settliing Down, Scott Rissell Sanders from The Place, the Region, and the Commons, Gary Snyder
The Hudon River Valley: A BioregionalStory, Thomas Berry
Native Cultures and the Search for Place
Becoming Métis, Melissa Nelson
A Sprig of Sage, terry Tempest Williams
The Gifts of Deer, Richard K. Nelson
PART TWO: PLACE TO LIVE
Homesteading from The Writer as Alaskan: Beginnings and Reflections, John Haines
Ranching
The Subtlety of the Land, Sharon Butala
A Storm, the Cornfield, and Elk, Gretel Ehrlich
The Smooth Skull of Winter, Gretel Ehrlich
Farming
Learning to Fail, David Mas Masumoto
from A Country year: Living the Questions, Sue Hubbell
Living Between City and Country
On Willow Creek, Rick Bass
Ceremonial Time, John Hanson Mitchell
Into the Maze, Robert Finch
Urban Living
Water under American Ground: West 78th Street, Peter Sauer from This Place on Earth: Home and the Practice of Permanence,
Alan Thein Durning
Nothing Lasts a Hundred Years, Richard Rodriguez
Fantsasy of a Living Future, Sarhawk
Coda
The Rediscovery of Turtle Island, Gary Snyder
The Universe Responds: Or, How I Learned We Can Have Peace on Earth, Alice Walker
Dwellings, Linda Hogan