Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest: Region, Heritage, and Environment in the Rural Northeast (American Land & Life) [1 ed.] 1587298562, 9781587298561

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Natur e and Cultur e in the Norther n For est

A mer ic a n L a nd a nd L ife Ser ies  |  Wayne Franklin, series editor

Nature and Culture in 

the Northern Forest

Region, Heritage, and Environment in the Rural Northeast edited by pav el cenk l for ewor d by john elder

University of Iowa Press  |  Iowa City

University of Iowa Press, Iowa City 52242 Copyright © 2010 by the University of Iowa Press www.uiowapress.org Printed in the United States of America Design by April Leidig-Higgins No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. All reasonable steps have been taken to contact copyright holders of material used in this book. The publisher would be pleased to make suitable arrangements with any whom it has not been possible to reach. The University of Iowa Press is a member of Green Press Initiative and is committed to preserving natural resources. Printed on acid-free paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nature and culture in the northern forest: region, heritage, and environment in the rural Northeast / Pavel Cenkl, editor.   p.   cm. — (American land and life series) isbn-13: 978-1-58729-856-1 (pbk.) isbn-10: 1-58729-856-2 (pbk.) 1. Human ecology — Northeastern States.  2. Human beings — Effect of environment on — Northeastern States.  3. Landscape — Social aspects — Northeastern States.  4. Community life — Northeastern States.  5. Regionalism — Northeastern States.  6. Northeastern States — Intellectual life.  7. Northeastern States —  In literature.  8. Forests and forestry — Northeastern States.  9. Northeastern States — Environmental conditions.  10. Northeastern States — Rural conditions.  I. Cenkl, Pavel, 1971 – gf504.n86n387  2009 304.20974 — dc22 2009027581

Contents John Elder Foreword  vii Acknowledgments  xi Pavel Cenkl Reading Place in the Northern Forest  1

Encounters Timothy Stetter Meeting Twinflower (Linnaea borealis)  17 Terence D. Mosher Music of the Northern Forest: Boreal Birdsong in Literature and on the Trail  28 Natalie Coe Life as Beech: Survival in the New England Forest  49

Teaching and Learning Kathleen Osgood Dana Robert Frost in the Fields and Nils-Aslak Valkeapää at the Treeline: Ecological Knowledge and Academic Learning at the Northern Forest Edge  61 Ernest H. Williams, Patrick D. Reynolds, and Onno Oerlemans Interdisciplinary Teaching about the Adirondacks  77 Jill Mudgett Youth, Refinement, and Environmental Knowledge in the Nineteenth-Century Rural North  98

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Catherine Owen Koning, Robert G. Goodby, and John r. Harris Place as a Catalyst for Engaged Learning at Franklin Pierce University  133

Rethinking Place Larry Anderson Benton MacKaye’s 1904 White Mountains Hike: Exploring a Landscape of Logging, “Camp Ethics,” and Patriotism  153 Daniel S. Malachuk William James at Chocorua: A Northern Forest Philosopher  171 Richard Paradis A Traverse of the Presidential Range with the Scottish Highlands on My Mind  187 Jim Warren Living with the Woods: Disturbance Histories in Thoreau and Burroughs  213

Nature as Commodity Priscilla Paton In Awe of the Body: Physical Contact, Indulgence Shopping, and Nature Writing  227 Lorianne DiSabato Claiming Maine: Acquisition and Commodification in Thoreau’s The Maine Woods  246 Matthew Bolinder So Much Beauty Locked Up in It: Of Ecocriticism and Axe-Murder  261 Contributors  277 Index  281

Foreword  |  John Elder

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ecause the Northern Forest encompasses both northern New En­ gland and the Adirondacks of New York, it blurs our usual sense of political and regional boundaries. With its combination of the East’s wildest forests (in the Adirondacks and upper Maine) and some of the country’s oldest settlements and industrial sites (in southern New Hampshire and northwestern Massachusetts), this heavily wooded landscape also belies easy distinctions between nature and culture. In sum, the Northern Forest provokes bioregional thinking — an approach that is simultaneously comprehensive, adventurous, and place-based. Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest views the land, and the web of human and nonhuman life it supports, as an intricate, dynamic, yet unified circuit of energy. In its commitment to such an approach, this collection of essays manages to subvert the divisions both between academic disciplines and between states. Hence the many fresh insights and stimulating connections offered here. This book could be appropriately described, in a phrase Bill McKibben has applied to the Northern Forest as a whole, as “an explosion of green.” The farming, pasturing, and logging prevalent in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have faded away in many parts of the Northern Forest today. Second- or third-growth forests, both hardwood and softwood, have reclothed denuded slopes. More than 80 percent of this landscape has in fact been reforested over the past half-century or so, even in densely populated Massachusetts. Wildlife has rebounded, not only in the return of white-tailed deer, beaver, and porcupine but also with viable populations of black bears, bobcats, and fishers. Coyotes are becoming larger, grayer, and wolfier along the northern tier and — depending on whom you ask — catamounts are taking up residence again. But these recoveries don’t constitute a return to ecological business

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as usual for the forest of this zone. Not only is there extremely little old growth remaining, but the forest composition has often dramatically shifted after clear-cutting. Relics of human activity are also frequently in evidence. As Pavel Cenkl points out in his thought-provoking introduction, thousands of miles of stone walls still angle through these thickening woods. And a hiker in the depopulated heights stumbles upon snarled choker-cables, half-flattened sap buckets, and mouldering trucks nearly as often as upon those looming boulders so grandly named glacial erratics. Natural history and human history are inextricable here. The Northern Forest may not always be the best place to seek untrammeled or pristine landscapes. By the same token, though, it is hard to beat as a venue for dialogue about the rich affinities between a place and the literature, thought, and other cultural expressions it has nurtured. These flinty reaches thus also turn out to be particularly fertile places in which to rethink our assumptions about education and scholarship. Tom Wessels — the field ecologist whose concept of “disturbance histories” frames Jim Warren’s provocative essay — has noted the ubiquity of spirals in his own writing about the Northern Forest. From the unfurling of ferns to the whorl of branches around a spruce’s trunk, Wessels observes the elegant ratios and sequences associated with the mathematical formula called the Golden Section. The remarkable inclusiveness of such a pattern speaks to the comprehensiveness of Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest, too. The field of environmental studies unfurls in seeking to encompass both natural and cultural realities. But this kind of expansiveness is likely to be most coherent if rooted in a particular landscape. Beginning with its investigation and celebration of birdsong, the section of “Encounters” seeks to register the affinities among natural history, aesthetics, and human emotions. Such an intention is conveyed in prose that seems to have its hiking boots on, field guides and binoculars in its rucksack. To put this another way, the essays in the first section of this book do not suffer from the truncations and self-censorship of C. P. Snow’s “two cultures.” They spiral outward, as the broader field of environmental history has done in the wake of William Cronon’s Changes in the Land and as the study of environmental literature has done since the founding of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment.

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Throughout this book’s diverse forays into the Northern Forest, an appetite for immediacy and particularity is apparent, a pleasure in the harmony between apparently disparate fields of study. As the inspiring accounts in the section on “Teaching and Learning” reveal, one upshot of such openness is the possibility for invigorating new collaborations between teachers and students. Pedagogy and methodology cease to be abstract or premeditated when taken out under the sky; they are determined by a landscape’s bedrock, channeled by its outcroppings, and inflected by its seasons. Writers, too, become inextricable from terrain’s character and meaning. Thoreau, a key figure in the history of the Northern Forest, is also an essential reference for the present collection of essays. But our sense of his place in American literature has also evolved significantly in the period during which lovers of the Northern Forest have begun referring to it by that name. In part, this is because The Maine Woods has been increasingly celebrated within Thoreau’s oeuvre. His yearnings in it, toward both unmediated experience and a Native American perspective, prefigured a reorientation in today’s environmental scholarship. Like Thoreau himself, the writers in this collection are trying to reach beyond the Transcendentalist and lyrical context of Walden even while honoring its motivating power. Thoreau’s refreshing irreverence, honed by his interest in surprising connections and contrasts, also infuses the approach of authors in the final two sections of this book. “Rethinking Place” undertakes comparative studies of a highly original, and sometimes amusing, sort. Both the engaging personal voices and the surprising range of associations in this section remind a reader that affiliation with a place can also be the beginning of a much more expansive exploration of citizenship. “Nature as Commodity” brings the collection to an enlivening close by stretching the frame of reference even more startlingly to include such unanticipated topics as indulgence shopping and axe-murder. The concluding group of essays also manages to link this book with a high degree of theoretical sophistication to a range of contemporary critical approaches beyond ecocriticism. Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest celebrates the beauty and dynamism of a long-settled area that also holds one of the major forests of the earth. It exemplifies a venturesome and inventive moment in the

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unfurling of environmental studies. And it articulates a more vividly integrated vision of education and conservation alike. One in which the boreal and tropical zones of the Bicknell’s thrush are simultaneously held in mind and in which the dialogue of literature, science, and history becomes central to the academic curriculum, not just a topic for speculation on weekend hikes.

Acknowledgments

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his collection represents several years of work compiling and editing essays as well as organizing the two conferences, Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest and the Rural Heritage Institute (RHI), which helped spark the ideas so clearly articulated in this volume. None of this could have happened without the assistance and support of many, many people. Foremost, of course, I owe a considerable debt of gratitude to the conference participants and to the authors whose works appear in this collection: for their hard work, patience, support, and ultimately for their desire to share their passion for the Northern Forest. The 2004 Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest Symposium could not have happened without the work of faculty and staff in Plymouth State University’s heritage studies and graduate programs and support from the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE); the Appalachian Mountain Club; the Monadnock Institute of Nature, Place and Culture at Franklin Pierce University; the White Mountain School; the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests; the Northern Forest Center; and the Northern Forest Heritage Park. In particular, the support and guidance of the then president of ASLE, John Elder, were instrumental in making the symposium a success. I am similarly indebted to a number of organizations for helping support the Rural Heritage Institute in 2008: the Windham Foundation; the Monadnock Institute for Place, Nature and Culture at Franklin Pierce University; the NorthWoods Stewardship Center; the New England and American Study Program at the University of Southern Maine; the Fairbanks Museum; the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment; and both the Kingdom and Galaxy bookshops. I am particularly thankful for the gracious support of faculty, staff, and students at Sterling College, without whose work the event would not have been possible.

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Although it would be impossible to list all of the individuals who have added their comments, suggestions, and time to this project, I would like to thank in particular Marcia Schmidt Blaine, Lorianne DiSabato, and Susan Sutheimer for their editorial comments on the individual essays and Wayne Franklin for his guidance and comments on the manuscript as a whole. Julia Shipley, Heidi Wilson, Rick Thomas, Johanna Burdet, and Hannah Morgan were invaluable in helping to brainstorm and develop the program for RHI; John Harris was happy to share his thoughtful approach to region and culture both in the planning stage and during each of the conferences; and the encouragement of Sterling College President Will Wootton was essential to cultivate a successful inaugural Rural Heritage Institute and champion its continuation. I would also like to acknowledge the loss of Sterling faculty member and RHI workshop facilitator, Jeff Bickart, whose passion and keen interest in the details of fiber making, organic gardening, and homestead arts will be forever missed. Finally, I thank my wife, Jen, and son, Orion, for their continued support and eagerness to walk, climb, bike, and paddle with me as we explore our home in the Northern Forest together.

Natur e and Cultur e in the Norther n For est

Reading Place in the Northern Forest Pavel Cenk l

A

s I write this in early spring, outside the door of our home in north ern Vermont the ground in the yard has started to give a little underfoot, and the snow has begun to recede up the mountain slopes, leaving visible some of the secrets it has kept since late fall. Alongside the misplaced garden tools, dog toys, and flowerpots that are slowly reappearing after months of absence, more subtle contours of our neighborhood’s earlier history also become apparent as they lose their winter mantle. Squaring off fields, shoring up slopes, and helping to guide our road through fields and woods, miles of stone walls frame the narrative of this landscape. Although many of the walls near us appear thrown together only haphazardly, as though a farmer tossed stones over his shoulder and left them where they fell, in their heyday many of the walls stood straight and square and helped to determine a farm’s success or failure. In the century and a half since the majority of the region’s walls were built, annual cycles of freeze and thaw, the insistent push of tree roots, denning animals, and curious or mischievous visitors have all taken their toll — as Robert Frost writes, “something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” The pasture across the road, now a tangle of matted yellow grass and clover, punctuated here and there by an errant poplar sapling, none-

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theless remains girded by walls of granite stones covered in the mossy vestments of age. The walls that define the landscape in Vermont, neighboring New Hampshire, and throughout the Northern Forest are veritable stories of our region’s history as they run from fields, through woods, and across unlikely stretches of hardscrabble hillside. According to one estimate, there are more than 250,000 miles of walls in New England and New York. Written in granite, schist, lichen, and moss, these occasionally improbable lines of stony verse indelibly trace the history of our place even as they inevitably succumb to the soft earth’s invitation to tumble down. The writer and wall builder Kevin Gardner has made a craft of mixing metaphor with manufacture in the deliberate and meditative practice of building stone walls today. For him, the work is about cat caves, cigars, cantaloupes, puddle caps, snouts, and cheap seducers. Building a stone wall seems almost as much like writing as writing sometimes feels like precariously stacking stones in a wall. In the glossary to Gardner’s book The Granite Kiss, he defines the “granite kiss” of the book’s title as a euphemism to describe fingers pinched between two rocks. I like to think of the term as more descriptive of rocks that fit tightly together, each dependent upon the other’s stability to keep the wall standing straight, but Gardner offers terms for these rocks as well — through-stones, which pass the width of a wall, and thrufters, which add strength by reaching into the depths of a wall. Of course, the stones themselves are fragments of the region’s geologic record, their composition hinting at which northern ledges glaciers bore them from thousands of years before. Weaving in and out of woodlots, coursing beside roads, skirting the edges of fallow fields, these walls piece together stories of the land, its people, and the history of their encounters. What the language of the walls tells us is the relationship between people and the place they inhabit; it isn’t only strength that a wall’s larger stones provide, but interdependence. If a frost heave dislodges a thrufter, the wall will not stand long. The environmental and cultural stories that interweave the nearly 30 million acres of the Northern Forest are an uncountable array of stones, all fitting closely together.1 The Northern Forest, stretching across New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, is part of the larger boreal forest that reaches north into Canada and west across the Great Lakes. In the Northeast the forest is a zone of transition between the broadleaf

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forests of central and southern New England and the spruce-fir forest that stretches toward the Arctic Circle. Within this broad area live roughly a million year-round residents, many of whose lives are intimately associated with the forest ecosystem and whose individual stories are closely linked to the region’s cultural and environmental history. In the story of the area’s early settlement and development, environmental, industrial, and cultural narratives have been inextricably connected. Early residents turned acres of forest into potash and charcoal to support local mining industries, while others denuded hillsides in Vermont and New Hampshire for farming. Henry David Thoreau, during an 1858 visit to New Hampshire’s White Mountains, described the view from Franconia’s Mount Lafayette as encompassing a “leopard-spotted land” of patchwork clear-cuts, farmland, and forest. Many towns rose from the Northeast’s challenging hilly terrain in the 1820s and 1830s and, in one of the region’s greater historical ironies, disappeared with equal rapidity as more fertile and less rocky farmland was settled to the west. The farmhouse foundations, millraces, and miles of stone walls they left behind remain as stories for willing, patient readers. The second half of the nineteenth century saw the proliferation of large-scale logging throughout the Northeast, and the inevitable accompanying fires and silt-laden streams led the native Vermont conservationist George Perkins Marsh to chastise North Country logging as an example of the “terrible destructiveness of man.”2 Marsh’s seminal 1864 book, Man and Nature, motivated other conservation advocates, including Joseph B. Walker and John E. Johnson to declare toward the end of the century that without intervention the Northern Forest would become a “blackened, hideous, howling wilderness.”3 As preservation- and conservation-minded opponents to unchecked logging and development in the region grew more vocal toward the end of the nineteenth century, forest protections were gradually written into state and federal legislation. After a quarter-century-long debate between industrial leaders and conservationists, in 1885 New York Governor David Hill signed a bill designating nearly three quarters of a million acres in the Adirondacks as a forest preserve. In New Hampshire, after the passage of the pivotal Weeks Act in 1911, the path was open to set aside federally protected national forests, and many local and regional activists shepherded the creation of the White Mountain National Forest in the same year. Twenty years afterward, Maine Governor

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Percival Baxter proclaimed the region surrounding Mount Katahdin a recreational preserve for the people of Maine. In 1932, after almost three decades of appeals to state and federal governments, Vermont’s Green Mountain National Forest was set aside as a 102,000-acre conservation area, an area which would more than double three years later. These four major preserves, three of which are within a day’s drive of approximately 70 million people, include nearly 4.5 million acres of forestland.4 Bridging the land between these areas, surrounding them, and often within their boundaries is a patchwork of federal, state, local, and private land holdings, the last of which account for nearly 85 percent of total land ownership in the Northern Forest as a whole. It is this mix of ownership, as well as the region’s accessibility for a variety of recreational, developmental, and industrial uses, that largely defines the complex and occasionally contentious narrative of the Northern Forest. The last quarter of the twentieth century saw a series of significant land sales, principally from defunct or consolidating paper and lumber operations to developers.5 Public outcry at the apparent loss of public access to these lands, the loss of jobs that accompanied their sale, and the considerable cost to northeastern states to purchase many of these properties for conservation purposes has been vocal and effective. The land sales of the 1980s and 1990s have been catalysts that have helped to shape continuing discussions and affect policy decisions that attempt to balance local environmental, economic, and cultural concerns with the pressures of outside interests. The 1994 Northern Forest Lands Council report, for example, was an attempt to use a variety of lenses to index the Northern Forest as a unique place and to suggest some possible directions for its future development and preservation. Dozens of nonprofit organizations across the Northeast, in growing collaboration, advocate for a variety of initiatives to preserve both the Northern Forest’s cultural and environmental heritage. In only one example of the kind of innovative collaboration that current land use demands, in response to the 2001 proposed sale of 171,000 acres in northern New Hampshire by International Paper in October 2003, a diversity of conservation, forestry, and recreation organizations, with the help of New Hampshire state officials and federal Forest Legacy and Wetlands Conservation grants, successfully purchased and protected from development what is now known as the Connecticut Headwaters region. Nonprofit organizations such as the Northern Forest Center have worked to consolidate and focus re-

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gional resources to work toward a sustainable environmental, economic, and cultural future for forest. The dynamic, shifting economic and environmental landscape of the Northern Forest is reflected as much in the writing that the region precipitates as in the ties of the people to the land. Thickets of meaning —  and of saplings — abound in the New England and New York woods. There are stories everywhere in the Northern Forest; residents know well that one cannot walk far in these woods without stumbling on some artifact of the logging, farming, mining, or tourist industry. At the center of this collection is the notion that one does not need to go far at all to find a landscape rich with stories; one just needs to know how to look. In many ways, the intimate wildness of the Northeast has strengthened residents’ connection to the land they live on — the thick undergrowth, forested mountainsides, hidden ponds and streams insist upon thorough knowledge and close reading of the stories written in the layers of forest duff. As early as the 1880s, essayists such as Bradford Torrey and Frank Bolles sought to retell the stories hidden in derelict barns and fallow fields and orchards across New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Today’s writers follow their footsteps through now trackless woods to trace what John Elder has called “the natural, historical, and aesthetic thickness of the landscape.”6 As much as contemporary discourse about the Northern Forest largely centers on conservation easements, sustainable timber harvesting, and the future of a rural economy, it also considers the story of the region as a unique place. The intent of this book is to define the region as broadly as possible, geographically, ecologically, and culturally, in order to most effectively explore the layering of cultural and natural history in the Northern Forest’s often-contested terrain. In an attempt to turn a critical eye upon the many layers of this varied and diverse landscape, a pair of symposia convened more than 150 scholars, artists, writers, community members, teachers, and students to help define what is meant by terms like Northern Forest or northern New England’s Rural Heritage. For one event, held in June 2004 at the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Highland Center Lodge at the height of Crawford Notch in the White Mountains, more than 100 participants celebrated the environmental and cultural heritage of the forest at the Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest Symposium.

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The event, sponsored principally by the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), along with the Appalachian Mountain Club, Plymouth State University, and a number of regional nonprofit organizations, sought to implement an interdisciplinary approach to Northern Forest studies and to foster dialogue among diverse voices about the intersection of environmental and cultural concerns across the region. Held on three remarkably cloud- and black-fly-free days in early June, the symposium brought together an international group of scholars, educators, forestry and recreation professionals, artists, and writers. Organized partly to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the publication of the Northern Forest Lands Study, the symposium generated many questions about how to define the Northern Forest as well as how we might constructively rethink the region’s boundaries. What arose from the symposium were perhaps more questions than answers, but also ideas about how to think more broadly about the interconnections between place and people and between the literary history of the region and its contemporary cultural, political, economic, and environmental concerns. A second symposium, the Rural Heritage Institute, was held in the summer of 2008 at Sterling College in Vermont to provide a venue for discussing and exploring firsthand the relationships between place, work, and community across the Northeast. The 2008 institute’s theme was “The Place of Work in Rural Communities,” and over the course of four days in June, participants balanced scholarly discussions with field trips to local farms, historical societies, and archeological sites as well as having firsthand experience with draft horses, oxen, and the farm chores integral to an emergent sustainable regional foodshed. As a complement to the 2004 Northern Forest symposium, this regional institute challenged participants to engage the realities of rural life in the Northern Forest region — not as nostalgia but rather as a complex layering of tradition, community, work, and contemporary economic and social pressures. The fields of Northern Forest and New England studies effectively combine a diversity of disciplines by integrating literary, historical, cultural, and environmental perspectives on the unique cultural and ecological transition zone along the northern tier of New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. In recent years, a variety of book-length studies of the region have helped to shape the discourse about this transitional and occasionally contested landscape. David Dobbs and Richard

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Ober’s anecdotal account of people’s relationships with the land in The Northern Forest, Christopher McGrory Klyza’s Wilderness Comes Home: Rewilding the Northeast, Klyza and Stephen Trombulak’s The Future of the Northern Forest, Kent Ryden’s study of the intersections of cultural and natural landscapes in rural New England in Landscape with Figures, Dona Brown’s discussion of the “Currency of Scenery” in Inventing New England, Eric Purchase’s study of early White Mountain tourism in Out of Nowhere, and Christopher Johnson’s This Grand and Magnificent Place: The Wilderness Heritage of the White Mountains all serve to illustrate that Northern Forest studies is a fertile and growing field. What follows in this volume is a selection of essays that either expand upon or were inspired by the many fruitful discussions that took place during the symposia at both Crawford Notch in 2004 and Sterling College in 2008. The essays are presented here as an introduction to the study of the Northern Forest as a unique and complex region; the diversity of voices that were part of the conversation resonate in these 14 essays, which bring to bear questions from cultural studies, the natural sciences, literary criticism, and ecocriticism. As the history and contemporary cultural and environmental legacy of the Northern Forest make clear, the stories of relationships between people and place that make up the region’s narrative present a difficult text, but also a rich and rewarding one for the willing reader. Much like tracing the voices of early settlers in the fitted blocks of a stone wall, understanding the narratives of the Northern Forest demands patient, careful reading and an intimate knowledge of the many layers that make up the story of a place. It is this story, finally, that is at the heart of these essays. This book is divided into four distinct sections, each of which considers the relationship between nature and culture in the Northern Forest through a particular lens. “Encounters” presents three different visions of the forest by turning our attention to personal encounters with flora or fauna specific to the region. The four essays in “Teaching and Learning” continue this discussion by exploring ways that students (and teachers) can use their own types of encounters to enrich both the learning process and our understanding of the world in which we live. The authors in “Rethinking Place” look at key figures in the region’s literary and cultural development to help us think about the place of the Northern Forest through different eyes. In “Nature as Commodity,” three authors

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consider the ways that historical and contemporary commercial influences on the Northeast affect how we might read the region through the works of writers like Thoreau, Emerson, and Frost. The opening section is our first encounter with the Northern Forest as a unique place. Authors Timothy Stetter, Terence D. Mosher, and Natalie Coe all look at the details of specific parts of the Northern Forest bioregion. Stetter’s situation of the twinflower, Linnaea borealis, at the heart of writing by eminent naturalists like Henry David Thoreau, John Burroughs, John Muir, and Carl Linnaeus himself not only shows the prevalence of this flower in northern forests the world over but also introduces the interplay of nature, culture, and literature that is at the heart of our own Northern Forest region today. There is no denying, as Stetter makes apparent, the interweaving of people and place throughout the Northeast’s forest landscape. As he narrates his own climbs in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, Stetter finds that, in Muir’s words, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”7 Much of what weaves the Northeast’s forests together is the airy and often seasonal birdsong that, much like the twinflower, declares the uniqueness of the boreal forest to those who take time to listen. Terence Mosher’s attention to the resonant voices of birds in his essay “Music of the Northern Forest” listens for the echoes of birdsong in the poetry and prose of two of the Northeast’s most accomplished and literate birders, Thoreau and Robert Frost. Mosher not only explores Frost’s descriptive metaphor but also reveals the melodic resonance of phoebe and thrush as an undercurrent in Frost’s New England poems. For Frost, as for Thoreau, birdsong trills with the essence of the New England wild, a wildness that Mosher tells us the birds “faintly echo . . . and many of us who are drawn to the forest keep chasing after it, hoping to hear it in the next song.” In her piece on the developing scholarship and pedagogy surrounding Beech Bark Disease, Natalie Coe focuses on the ways that students can combine classroom skills and field experience to help trace the progression of this debilitating forest ailment. By empowering students to participate in field and laboratory research with real-world consequences, Coe posits, they will become more engaged with the world they inhabit and will underscore the significance of both cultural and environmental factors that determine their local and regional landscapes.

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The authors contributing to “Teaching and Learning” are all engaged in work that interweaves place, nature, and culture in a broad range of learning experiences. Kathleen Osgood Dana describes a field course that takes students from the campus of Sterling College in northern Vermont to explore the culture and environment of Lapland to better understand the voices of that region’s Sámi poets. In what Dana describes as “literary ecology,” students and faculty alike are exposed to cultural traditions that, though like Vermont are situated in a northern boreal forest, inform a poetic tradition which is uniquely tied to the rhythms and sensations of northern Finland. By pairing the Sámi poet Nils-Aslak Valkeapää with Robert Frost, Dana gives her readers, much as she gives her students, a window into how “taking poems into the field gives them a life beyond the page.” The strong connection between land and literature in Lapland is also made apparent in the interdisciplinary course on the Adirondacks outlined by Ernest H. Williams, Patrick D. Reynolds, and Onno Oerlemans. The course, offered at Hamilton College, provides students the opportunity to look closely and comprehensively at place with faculty from the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and arts. Their tripartite essay in many ways models as well as describes the course they teach. Developing such an interdisciplinary course is not without its logistical and ideational questions, and Ernest Williams outlines some of the underlying questions posed by drawing the methodologies of different disciplines into a single course. Patrick Reynolds and Onno Oerlemans demonstrate the viability of such an approach as they read the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Russell Banks, and William Murray beside the painting of  William James Stillman and the Adirondack Park’s forest ecology and geologic history to reveal the region’s “integrated sense of place.” By looking closely at a range of texts and narratives, Jill Mudgett engages the relationship between regional identity and cultural influence on Vermont’s youth in her chapter, “Youth, Refinement, and Environmental Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century Rural North.” Deftly interweaving narrative accounts of the potential effects of haute couture on rural culture with an examination of John Locke’s influence on local and natural history education in North Country village schools, Mudgett draws attention to the late-nineteenth-century challenge to keep youth in Vermont rather than seeing them leave for new opportunities far from the Green Mountains.

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The authors of “Place as a Catalyst for Engaged Learning at Franklin Pierce University,” Catherine Owen Koning, Robert G. Goodby, and John R. Harris, describe the development and operation of the Monadnock Institute of Nature, Place and Culture at Franklin Pierce University, established in 1996 to promote the study of place and community. By using a curriculum that combines reading landscape clues and researching local archives with work in the classroom, the authors show us, students can become more closely tied to the environment and community in which they learn. Key to the Monadnock Institute curriculum is the notion of transforming the world immediately outside the classroom into a laboratory, which the faculty do in a variety of ways — archeology, wetland ecology, and archival research, for example — each of which is meant to help program participants piece together their roles in the local and regional environments. The essays in the third section, “Rethinking Place,” engage the ways that specific writers and thinkers have helped to shape our contemporary perceptions of the Northern Forest. Larry Anderson takes us along on a 1904 hike through the White Mountains with Benton MacKaye, the pioneer of the Appalachian Trail. MacKaye’s narrative of his 10-day hike records much about a landscape changing in the face of tourist and logging industries at their peak, as well as the era’s emerging environmental sentiment. Anderson’s essay challenges a single reading of the turn-of-the-century landscape that MacKaye witnessed by suggesting that even among the mountains’ heavily visited and largely denuded hillsides, one could nonetheless find some of the region’s “wildest places.” Indeed, among the trappings of a human, built environment, Anderson finds in MacKaye a lesson in preservation, for one “to cherish the land as he would his home.” If Benton MacKaye was a visionary at the forefront of preserving the wildness of the East’s mountain trails, William James, as Daniel S. Malachuk argues, is the forgotten philosopher of the Northeast. Framing James’s visits to Chocorua, New Hampshire, with a discussion of pragmatism, Malachuk examines the philosopher’s attention to the sublime and the pastoral, as well as his critique of the growing disconnect between the tourist class and the local environment at the turn of the nineteenth century. In James, Malachuk posits, there is the potential for re-examining the role of foundationalist pragmatism as a useful perspective on the virtue of environmental preservation.

r e a ding pl ace in the norther n f or est  •  11

As visitors to the Appalachian Mountain Club huts in New Hampshire’s White Mountains learn under Richard Paradis’s tutelage, the treeless alpine landscape they navigate between cairns and scree walls is similar to that of Scotland in many respects. In the balance of descriptive narrative and meditation on inhabiting and visiting special landscapes mindfully, Paradis’s playfully titled “A Traverse of the Presidential Range with the Scottish Highlands on My Mind” helps readers understand the evolution of our nuanced relationships with mountain landscapes on both sides of the Atlantic. “William James at Chocorua” gives us a new way to explore James’s reading of the White Mountains, much in the same way that Jim Warren, in “Living with the Woods,” gives us insight into how the forest landscape itself might hold the key to better understanding the writings of Thoreau and Burroughs. Looking at land use in the Northern Forest through the lenses of landscape ecology and conservation biology, Warren invites us to join him both on his personal walks through the woods and in his journey through the narratives of two naturalists who discuss disturbed landscapes on both sides of the Canadian border. The ability to read a landscape’s history from the land’s own story, Warren asserts, gives readers the necessary “ecological eye” to better read stories about the landscape. The final section, “Nature as Commodity,” considers how writers from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries thought about nature as a product and how their conclusions can be brought to bear on the contemporary retailing of place. As the subtitle to her essay “In Awe of the Body” suggests, Priscilla Paton critiques the ways in which physical contact with nature has largely been replaced by consumer goods. Using Thoreau’s desire for, yet discomfort with, contact atop Maine’s highest peak as a starting point, Paton follows threads from sociology and eco­psychology to explore the role of bodily contact in both societal and literary responses to the place of the Northern Forest. Although, as Paton writes, “the woods soothe in a way that no mall purchase can,” the physicality of the wild remains a challenge for writers like Frost and Thoreau as it does for contemporary consumers of wildness. In her essay “Claiming Maine,” Lorianne DiSabato reads The Maine Woods with an eye for Thoreau’s somewhat problematic use of the language of economic acquisition and commodification. Thoreau mocks those who claim Maine in order to log its forests and harvest its wildlife;

12  •  r e a ding pl ace in the norther n f or est

however, his critique is made problematic by his own status as a visitor to the region. In denouncing the loggers, hunters, and speculators who venture into the Maine wilderness to reap monetary profit, DiSabato asserts, Thoreau incriminates his own practice of venturing into the wild to reap literary profit. Perhaps the truly Thoreauvian solution to the commodification of the wild, offers DiSabato, would be for civilized persons to learn how to be more “at home” in the wild: in other words, to return the “eco” to “economy.” Matthew Bolinder turns similarly to the Maine Woods in his essay, though the woods to which he turns can be found for sale on the internet. Beginning his foray into the cultural construction of “Maine” and the “Northern Forest” as products with a critique of an advertisement for Maine fire logs, Bolinder turns a critical eye toward what he might call a myopic environmentalism that ignores the increasing ideological complexities of place. In a fitting capstone to the essays in this collection, Bolinder asserts that without looking at the diversity of ways in which places are construed and without refashioning itself to think more broadly about the cultural, political, and economic layers of a place, ecocriticism is destined to become “merely a form of hypocritical and largely irrelevant nay-saying.” Together, the essays in this collection serve as an introduction to interdisciplinary study of the Northern Forest bioregion. From a focus on a specific flower by Timothy Stetter to the survey of disturbance and land use history in Jim Warren’s discussion of Thoreau and Burroughs, to a landscape packaged for consumption in the book’s final section, it is clear that the Northern Forest resists simple definition while it demands careful attention to a wealth of environmental, cultural, historical, literary, political, and economic concerns, all of which help to create a complete picture of this unique region.

Notes

1. The total land of the Northern Forest is calculated to be between 25.8 and 31.35 million acres, depending upon whether its borders follow or cross county boundaries. 2. Marsh, 36. 3. Judd, 103. 4. Although the Adirondack Park encompasses 6 million acres, only 2.4 million acres are owned by the State of New York; the remaining 3.4 million

r e a ding pl ace in the norther n f or est  •  13 acres are privately owned, but still managed under the Park Land Use and Development Plan. 5. Between 1982 and 1988, 1.7 million acres of forestland in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine fell victim to the vicissitudes of the decade’s corporate mergers and takeovers, changing hands twice before being offered for public sale in 1987. The following year, 90,000 acres in New Hampshire were purchased by Rancourt Associates, and, under the threat of potential subdivision or development, the State of New Hampshire bought nearly 47,000 acres for $12.5 million. Land in Maine and Vermont was similarly purchased with the cooperation of state, local, private, and nonprofit agencies. See Klyza and Trombulak, The Future of the Northern Forest, for further discussion. 6. Elder, 112. 7. Muir, 157.

References

Bolles, Frank. At the North of Bearcamp Water: Chronicles of a Stroller in New England from July to December. Boston, 1899. Brown, Dona. Inventing New England: Regional Tourism in the Nineteenth Century. Washington, DC, 1995. Dobbs, David, and Richard Ober. The Northern Forest. White River Junction, VT, 1995. Elder, John. Reading the Mountains of Home. Cambridge, MA, 1998. Gardner, Kevin. The Granite Kiss: Traditions and Techniques of Building New England Stone Walls. Woodstock, VT, 2003. Johnson, Christopher. The Grand and Magnificent Place: The Wilderness Heritage of the White Mountains. Hanover, NH, 2006. Judd, Richard W. Common Lands, Common People: The Origins of Conservation in Northern New England. Cambridge, MA, 1997. Klyza, Christopher McGrory, ed. Wilderness Comes Home: Rewilding the North­ east. Hanover, NH, 2001. Klyza, Christopher McGrory, and Stephen Trombulak, eds. The Future of the Northern Forest, Hanover, NH, 1994. Marsh, George Perkins. Man and Nature, or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action, edited by David Lowenthal. Cambridge, MA, 1974. Muir, John. My First Summer in the Sierra. Reprint, Boston, 1998. Purchase, Eric. Out of Nowhere: Disaster and Tourism in the White Mountains. Baltimore, 1999. Ryden, Kent C. Landscape with Figures: Nature and Culture in New England. Iowa City, IA, 2001. Torrey, Bradford. A Rambler’s Lease. Boston, 1889.

Encounters

Meeting Twinflower (Linnaea borealis) Timoth y Ste t ter

O

ur alpine flora class hiked upward toward Mount Adams in the White Mountains on a July afternoon. Having poured through field guides and scientific papers on alpine plants, our eyes were tuned to the green around us. We noticed, in spite of the rocky trail and our 50-plus-pound packs, the transition from northern hardwoods to spruce-fir forest. Many of the broad-leaved trees and shrubs slowly vanished, and in their place flourished the dark growth of moss, red spruce, and balsam fir. The ascent reminded me of Clingman’s Dome in the Smokies or Mount Mitchell in the Black Mountains. We were climbing in the Whites, however, in the purported home to not only the fiercest weather on earth but also the largest alpine zone in eastern America. As a graduate alpine flora class, we had trekked here to study plants above the treeline: tiny, wind-blasted blooms nestled in crevices and tucked tightly to the earth. Little did I know the plant that would fascinate me most would be a sub-alpine plant. The connections that radiate from this wildflower — particularly to some of our exemplary naturalists  — are endlessly surprising. Before sunrise of our first morning, I rose and slipped out the door of our cabin with my boots in hand. The air was crisp and smelled of balsam. My legs felt tight from the ascent, and I sauntered to a craggy overlook a few hundred yards from the cabin, perched on a rock, and

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stared east as the morning light grew and shifted colors. The cloudsteeped form of Mount Jefferson framed my field of view. The song of a white-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) pierced the stillness of morning on this northern mountainside. The sun rose, and I stood and headed back to the cabin. With a double glance, I spotted pink flowers low to the ground, sprouting from what resembled a bed of moss. Crouching to see, I recognized the plant I had before only seen in drawings and photographs: Linnaea borealis, the twinflower. This meeting would mark the first step in my fascination for this wild plant. If it had not been flowering, I might have overlooked it. The twinflower is accurately described as dainty. Its evergreen leaves reach only a few centimeters in length, and the plant spreads low along the ground —  a growth form called “trailing” or “creeping” by botanists. The woody stem of the twinflower is the source for a much older name; the Dena’Ina people of present-day Alaska called the plant “k’ela H’lia,” which translates as “mouse’s rope.”1 Its trailing stems support leaves growing opposite one another. Leaves are variably-sized but small, short-stalked, and marked by a few shallow teeth in the upper half of the leaf edge. They feature centimeter-long hairs sprouting from both sides; viewed with a hand lens, these hairs seem disproportionally long for the leaf. Undersides of the leaves are lighter green than the upper surface. Older leaves furthest down the stem fade to a copper-brown. The common name twinflower is a tribute to its delicate pairs of flowers. Along the horizontal stem, flower stalks shoot upwards every few centimeters. These stalks split at the top into Ys. From both tips dangles a tubular, pink-and-white flower. With my hand lens, I see that the five petals sparkle as if dusted with fine glitter, and the flower’s inside appears tangled in cottony hairs not unlike a cotton swab or thistle down. Twinflower’s species name, borealis, reveals the plant’s preference for cool, northern sites. Borealis descends from Boreas, Greek god of the north wind. You can find twinflower in northern hardwoods, northern spruce-fir forests (also called boreal forest or taiga), cool bogs, and even into the krummholz or “crooked wood” zone below treeline. A few plants, including clintonia or bluebead lily (Clintonia borealis) and starflower (Trientalis borealis), share with the Northern Lights twinflower’s species-name and habitat. (Twinflower represents the only species within

mee t ing t w infl ow er  •  19

the genus Linnaea.) Other associated wildflowers include Canada mayflower (Maianthemum canadense), bunchberry (Cornus canadensis), and goldthread (Coptis groenlandica). As for associated naturalists, twinflower carries an esteemed list. One of these is Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). As he did with many other plants, Thoreau recorded his observations of twinflower, particularly when it flowered. The following entries from his Journal exemplify his attentiveness to the plant. (Thoreau refers to the plant by its generic name Linnaea rather than its common name twinflower.) June 19, 1852: “I cannot find the linnaea in Loring’s; perhaps because the woods are cut down; perhaps I am too late” (115; Volume IV). June 24, 1852: “The Linnaea borealis just going out of blossom. I should have found it long ago. Its leaves densely cover the ground” (140–41; Volume IV). May 24, 1854: “Linnaea, not seen” (299; Volume VI). May 30, 1854: “I find the Linnaea, and budded [with flower buds]” (318; Volume VI). June 7, 1854: “Linnaea abundantly out some days; say 3rd or 4th ” (333; Volume VI).

Thoreau learned through his journal-keeping that in Concord twinflower blooms each year in early June. Further north, however, the bloom begins in late June or early July and extends into August. Thoreau even named sites and charted his route by the plant: January 21, 1852: “This winter they are cutting down our woods more seriously than ever — Fair Haven Hill, Walden, Linnaea Borealis Wood, etc., etc.” (212–213; Volume III). June 3, 1853: To Annursack — “By way of the linnaea, which I find is not yet out” (220; Volume V). June 6, 1853: To Linnaea Woods (225; Volume V). June 7, 1854: To Dugan Desert via Linnaea Hills (333; Volume VI).

Thoreau also encountered twinflower while climbing Mount Lafayette in the White Mountains, very close to where I first found the plant. In his Journal for July 15, 1858, he described the view: “In the dwarf fir thickets above and below this pond, I saw the most beautiful linnaeas that I ever saw. They grew quite densely, full of rose-purple flowers,— deeper

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reddish-purple than ours, which are pale,— perhaps nodding over the brink of a spring, altogether the fairest mountain flowers I saw, lining the side of the narrow horsetrack through the fir scrub.”2 Two other naturalists who found twinflower in the Northeast were Thomas Nuttall (1786–1859) and John Burroughs (1837–1921). Thomas Nuttall, the English botanist and ornithologist, first sighted twinflower in 1806 while exploring the Great Lakes with the surveyor of the Michigan territory. In 1823, while at Harvard, he reported finding the plant just a short walk from Cambridge village — an unlikely meeting in the Cambridge of today.3 The rambling naturalist Burroughs found twinflower near his woodland home in New York state and also farther afield. In his book Signs & Seasons, he describes finding twinflower in central Maine: “The woods about Moxie Lake were literally carpeted with Linnaea. I had never seen it in such profusion. In early summer, the period of its bloom, what a charming spectacle the mossy floors of these remote woods must present! The flowers are purple rose-color, nodding and fragrant.”4 As Burroughs mentions, a blooming twinflower is an olfactory delight. A member of the honeysuckle or Caprifoliaceaea family of plants, twinflower’s endowment includes a “pleasing fragrance.”5 One field guide states that the flower releases a “very sweet perfume, strongest near evening.”6 Another claims “its delicious fragrance is often the first indication of the twinflower’s presence.”7 Some people apparently are able to locate twinflower using only their sense of smell. When I pointed out the patch of Linnaea borealis to a few of my classmates, we took turns crouching to smell the flowers. The word “sweet” fell from our mouths, as well as “honeysuckle.” One person compared the scent to cotton candy. But perhaps accurately describing the smell is not possible. As Diane Ackerman asserts in A Natural History of the Senses, “smell is the mute sense, the one without words.”8 Besides flowering and producing seeds, twinflower also reproduces asexually. It clones in the same way beech and aspen trees can, yielding individual plants with identical genetics that are all connected underground to the “mother” plant. Miraculously, patches of twinflower can reach hundreds of years in age.9 Twinflower’s genus name Linnaea was my entry point to its connections with our great naturalists. The name pays tribute, of course, to Carolus Linnaeus or Carl von Linné (1707–1778), founder of the modern

mee t ing t w infl ow er  •  21

system of scientific classification. In popular field guides, several versions exist for the story of how twinflower received Linnaeus’s name. One goes that Linnaeus was so taken by twinflower that he affixed his own name to it.10 Another states that one of Linnaeus’s teachers named it in his student’s honor.11 As I later discovered, each version of the story depends on the naturalist’s first expedition north. At age 25, Linnaeus explored Lapland, the region of Europe above the Arctic Circle that includes northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland. He traveled roughly 4,600 miles — more than twice the length of the Appalachian Trail — on foot and on horseback. On this trek, Linnaeus discovered more than 100 plants unknown to science. Yet of all the plants he saw, his favorite was twinflower. His teacher Jan Frederik Gronovius took notice of his student’s fondness for the plant and, perhaps because of Linnaeus’s entreatment, renamed twinflower Linnaea borealis in honor of his student and the northern expedition. (Twinflower had been named Campanula serphyllifolia by Linnaeus’s predecessor Caspar Bauhin.) Lin­naeus reveals the story in his book Species Plantarum: “Linnaea was named by the celebrated Gronovius and is a plant of Lapland, lowly, insignificant and disregarded, flowering but a brief space — from Linnaeus who resembles it.”12 For the rest of his life, Linnaeus took twinflower as a sort of emblem. He had portraits painted with the plant, insisting the artists depict him holding twinflower.13 One portrait of 1753, “Linnaeus in His Lapland Dress,” shows the naturalist dressed in the traditional Lapland tunic, holding the delicate, pink flowers in his right hand. Some of the covers of his more than 180 books on plants include a depiction of the plant. The cover of Flora Lapponica, for instance, the book describing his botanical findings in Lapland, features a blooming twinflower in the foreground. Because Linnaeus also had standing as a medical doctor, twinflower was soon embroidered on the collars of physicians’ shirts.14 Linnaeus also promoted twinflower as an ingredient for tea, naming it “Lapp Tea.” The drink apparently never gained much popularity. Linnaeus’s own son reported that “one shouldn’t use too many [twinflower leaves], for then [the tea] is rather repulsive.”15 (Twinflower does merit attention, however, as a medicinal tea. Some Native peoples used the plant for pain relief and to treat inflamed limbs, colds, cramps, and fever.16) According to one of the naturalist’s biographers, even 30 years after the tea’s introduction, “the aging naturalist still expected that his

22  •  enc ou n ter s

namesake, a frail flower some two inches high, would be cultivated as the national beverage.”17 Despite the failure of Lapp Tea, my learning of Linnaeus’s meeting with twinflower expanded my awareness of this plant’s range. I had assumed twinflower was only found in North America. Indeed, Thoreau, Nuttall, and Burroughs all found twinflower in the northeastern and north central United States; the Dena’Ina people also knew the plant in the Northwest. Yet Linnaeus found twinflower in Europe! What we have is a wild plant that, with its botanically classified subspecies of Americana, longiflora, and borealis, ranges across the entire boreal region of the Northern Hemisphere, with established presence in the northern reaches of North America, Europe, and Asia. Twinflower has the unusual characteristic of being “circumboreal.” The array of circumboreal plants and animals includes other prominent members of the Northern Forest: speckled alder (Alnus rugosa), common juniper (Juniperus communis), evening primrose (Oenothera biennis), mountain cranberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea), common cattail (Typha latifolia), leatherleaf (Chamaedaphne calyculata), marsh marigold (Caltha leptosepala), quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides), red admiral butterfly (Vanessa atalanta), northern goshawk (Accipiter gentilis), bohemian waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus), lynx (Lynx canadensis), and moose (Alces alces). Many species of mosses, lichens, grasses, and fungi are also circumboreal. In North America, the range of twinflower stretches from Canada and the great spruce-fir forests down through the hardwood forests of northern New England, even into Maryland and the mountains of  West Virginia, north across the Midwest through Ohio, Indiana, and South Dakota, high into the western mountains of Arizona and New Mexico, and north through the mountains to Alaska.18 To continue traversing the range of twinflower, one need only cross the Bering Strait into Asia. While there is no clear explanation for its circumboreal distribution, there are a few clues. Twinflower tolerates cold, wind, and snow. It is long lived. It can reproduce both sexually and asexually. Another clue might lie in the transport of its seeds. The seeds of twinflower, approximately the size of sesame seeds, are sticky and burred with hooked bristles: perfect packages for adhering to feathers and fur. (Pressing them to my sleeve, I learned that fleece also serves as a vehicle for these stowaway seeds.) Although many other plants with the same seed-dispersal strategy have not established themselves as circumboreal, these seeds that

mee t ing t w infl ow er  •  23

stick fast to widely traveling birds and mammals may have played a role in twinflower’s around-the-globe presence. At least one writer-naturalist could have enhanced twinflower’s range by carrying seeds in his unruly beard. Claiming never to have shaved, and always one to press his face closely to plants, John Muir (1838–1914) represents another profound connection. Muir encountered twinflower at least twice: once in the East and another time in the West. At age 26, while tromping alone in a tamarack swamp near Lake Ontario, Muir found and collected a specimen of Linnaea borealis. Earlier in that trip, Muir had an ecstatic discovery of another circumboreal wildflower, the calypso orchid (Calypso bulbosa).19 He jointly praised these two plants, once saying to his long-time friend Jeanne Carr that “Heaven itself would not answer without Calypso and Linnaea.”20 More remarkable is the following meeting from the summer of 1877, as retold by Muir 20 years later in a biographical essay on Linnaeus:   A hundred years after Linnaeus died, our own Asa Gray, Sir Joseph Hooker, and I were botanizing together on Mount Shasta, the northernmost of the great mountains of California . . . After a pause in the flow of our botanic conversation that great night, . . . Gray said, “Muir why have you not found Linnaea in California? It must be here or hereabouts on the northern boundary of the Sierra. I have heard of it, and have specimens from Washington and Oregon all through these northern woods, and you should have found it here.” In reply, I said I had not forgotten Linnaea. “That fragrant little plant, making carpets beneath the cool woods of Canada and around the great lakes, has been a favorite of mine ever since I began to wander. I have found many of its relations and neighbors, high up in the mountain woods and around the glacier meadows; but Linnaea itself I have not yet found.” “Well, nevertheless,” said Gray, “the blessed fellow must be living here­ abouts no great distance off.”21

The next day, Hooker and Muir found twinflower, marking the plant’s first documented discovery in California. For Muir, the meeting also represented a connection between the distant Great Lakes and his beloved Sierra Nevada Mountains. At least seven exemplary naturalists, then, have been enchanted by this small wildflower: Henry David Thoreau, John Burroughs, Thomas

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Nuttall, Linnaeus, John Muir, Asa Gray, and Sir Joseph Hooker. The plant’s namesake, who described and named nearly six thousand plants, held twinflower above all others as his favorite. Muir, who also knew thousands of plants, wrote that twinflower is “the wildest and the gentlest, the most beautiful and most loveful of all the inhabitants of the wilderness.”22 Clearly these are enthusiastic naturalists, and there are others still, but why this rave over twinflower? Its low, almost secretive growth? The tight display of pink, bell-shaped flowers? The sweet, perhaps intoxicating, fragrance? Perhaps more important than the reasons for its allure is that this wildflower reveals a network of connections between natural and cultural history, or between “wild” and “human.” The boreal forests of Russia and Canada create similar and suitable habitat for this hardy, delicate plant. Because flies are its main pollinators, and because these insects travel only short distances, widely separated patches of twinflower might be vulnerable to sexual failure and extinction — especially when combined with habitat loss.23 Before aspirin or Tylenol, I might have relieved pain by drinking a bitter tea steeped with twinflower leaves. When Muir revelled in twinflower’s discovery along a California streambank, he evoked the wonder of Linnaeus combing distant Lapland. Twinflower thrives in a place where nature and culture interweave. As Muir himself once wrote, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”24 These connections intersect the borders between traditional disciplines. One must wander the fields of botany, art, geography, history, anthropology, literature, and ecology. Meeting twinflower requires this transgression. When so much of our best education, writing, research, and thinking stresses connection and synthesis, a primary challenge becomes finding the convergence point between disciplines. Given our environmental crises, finding a convergence point drawn from the natural world is paramount. Yet twinflower represents only one example of how a single species can serve as an integrating context. Walk in the Northern Forest and you will find countless flowers, birds, frogs, trees, mammals, and insects that could become centers around which a world of inquiry revolves. Consider the wood frog (Rana sylvatica) or “frog of the woods.”

mee t ing t w infl ow er  •  25

This most northern of all North American amphibians and reptiles —  surviving even within the Arctic Circle — has quacked its breeding song in early spring for millennia. What other plants and animals intersect its life cycle? How is this species responding to acid rain? How many people have surprised a wood frog on an unnamed trail, crouching on knees to see? How many times has it been woven into stories and songs, poetry and art? The singing of these amphibians, breaking the season of winter, resonates as part of the natural calendar for many naturalists. Pennsylvania naturalist Marcia Bonta, as just one example, wrote: “I begin to anticipate it sometime in the depths of January. ‘In only a little over two months the wood frogs will be courting,’ I tell myself during yet another ice storm.”25 On and on the story goes. Circumboreal species may reveal even broader-reaching connections. Naturalists throughout northern Europe, Asia, and North America have met some of the same plants and animals. Have they all seen and related to aspen or moose in the same ways? How do cattails or lynx integrate with a region’s ecology, nature study, and literature? In what ways might juniper or red admirals connect us with distant peoples and places? For naturalists, historians, writers, artists, researchers, and educators in the Northern Forest, these species hold an unknown wealth of connections. When I first met twinflower along a fir- and spruce-lined trail in the White Mountains, I made a connection to Thoreau, Burroughs, and the other people, places, and stories that touch this miraculous plant. These connections have no end. I returned home with two sights and two smells for my wife, Sandy: a yellow-and-green birch leaf, a pink-purple fir cone, a sprig of balsam fir, and a single, odorous leaf of skunk currant (Ribes glandulosum). Yet I brought home no twinflower, no leaves pressed between pages of a book — not even the flowers, which would have fit safely inside my hand lens. If I spent more time looking at and smelling this plant than any other, why wouldn’t I have brought home a sample? Perhaps the experience of twinflower cannot be separated from the experience of its place. Perhaps the intoxication of its perfume arises only at high elevation. Or perhaps I can thank my subconscious, cleverly planting the seed for a return trip to the Whites with Sandy, to find it together, crouched on a nameless path: the next in a long line of meetings with twinflower.

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Notes

1. Johnson, et al., 204. 2. Thoreau, XI: 46–47. 3. Graustein, 51, 177. 4. Burroughs, 132–133. 5. Craighead, et al., 181. 6. Johnson, et al., 204. 7. Appalachian Mountain Club, 126. 8. Ackerman, 6. 9. Wilcock, 121–131. 10. Slack and Bell, 23. 11. Appalachian Mountain Club, 126. 12. Quoted in “Linnaea borealis,” Linnean Society of London. 13. Koerner, 17. 14. Lindroth, 2. 15. Koerner, 151. 16. Johnson, et al., 204. Native American uses of twinflower and other plants are commonly noted in field guides and ethnobotanical studies. Whether using plants for food, clothing, shelter, or medicine, native cultures have a rich history and knowledge of plant properties. A classic survey of native uses of plants specific to a region is Erna Gunther’s Ethnobotany of Western Washington: The Knowledge and Use of Indigenous Plants by Native Americans. 17. Koerner, 79. 18. Niering and Olmstead, 445; Spellenberg, 449. 19. Wolfe, 93. 20. Quoted in Wolfe, 93. 21. Muir, “Linnaeus,” 9081–9082. 22. Muir, “Linnaeus,” 9083. 23. Wilcock, 121–131. 24. Muir, First Summer, 157. 25. Bonta, 47.

References

Ackerman, Diane. A Natural History of the Senses. New York, 1990. Appalachian Mountain Club Field Guide to Mountain Flowers of New England. Boston, MA, 1977. Bonta, Marcia. Appalachian Spring. Pittsburgh, 1991. Burroughs, John. Signs & Seasons. New York, 1981. Craighead, John, Frank Craighead, Jr., and Ray Davis. A Field Guide to Rocky Mountain Wildflowers, From Northern Arizona and New Mexico to British Columbia. Cambridge, MA, 1963. Graustein, Jeannette. Thomas Nuttall, Naturalist: Explorations in America, 1808–1841. Cambridge, MA, 1967.

mee t ing t w infl ow er  •  27 Gunther, Erna. Ethnobotany of Western Washington: The Knowledge and Use of Indigenous Plants by Native Americans. Seattle, 1945. Johnson, J. Derek, Linda Kershaw, Andy MacKinnon, and Jim Pojar. Plants of the Western Boreal Forest and Aspen Parkland. Edmonton, Alberta, 1995. Koerner, Lisbet. Linnaeus: Nature and Nation. Cambridge, MA, 1999. Lindroth, Sten. “The Two Faces of Linnaeus.” In Linnaeus, the Man and His Work, edited by Tore Frängsmyr, 1–62. Berkeley, CA, 1983. Linnean Society of London. “Linnaea borealis.” http://www.linnean.org/ index.php?id=381, accessed April 10, 2009. Muir, John. “Linnaeus.” In Library of the World’s Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, edited by Charles Dudley Warner, 9077–9083. New York, 1896–1899. ———. My First Summer in the Sierra. Reprint. Boston, 1998. Niering, William, and Nancy Olmstead. The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers. Eastern Region. New York, 1979. Slack, Nancy G., and Allison W. Bell. Appalachian Mountain Club Field Guide to the New England Alpine Summits. Boston, 1995. Spellenberg, Richard. National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers. Western Region. New York, 1998. Thoreau, Henry D. Journal of Henry D. Thoreau, 14 vols., edited by Bradford Torrey. Boston, 1906. Wilcock, C. C. “Maintenance and Recovery of Rare Clonal Plants: The Case of the Twinflower.” Botanical Journal of Scotland 54 (2002): 121–31. Wolfe, Linnie M. Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir. New York, 1945.

Music of the Northern Forest Boreal Birdsong in Literature and on the Trail Ter ence D. Mosher

J

une 2, 2000. The first day of our annual retreat from western New York to Downeast Maine. Under darkening skies and an early morning drizzle, my wife and I hiked across the blueberry barrens of  Petit Manan Point, a peninsula shouldering out between Dyer Bay and Pigeon Hill Bay toward open ocean. A pair of ravens wheeled in slow, silent circles over an evergreen woods beyond the barrens. Reaching the woods, the trail led us under the canopy and out of the foggy, mizzling rain. For a long, grateful moment, we stood breathing the lemony fragrance of balsam fir, a pleasure we’d sorely missed for the past twelve months. We listened for a winter wren or a white-throated sparrow to give the forest its characteristic voice. Silence. The trail moved off through the woods, dipping down into a bog where streamers of usnea lichen hung from the spindly branches of tamaracks, then rising into a rocky clearing where the showy lavender blossoms of rhodora brightened a dark woods and a dark morning. Again we stood still, listening. This time, from a thicket of rhodora and Labrador tea behind us, a hermit thrush broke the stillness: one long, flute-like tone, then a faint, fragile jumble of trills that seemed to spiral up through the canopy of spruce and fir and dissolve into the morning mist. With that song, we’d come

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back to the Northern Forest, the woods that Thoreau called “all mossy and moosey.”1 Subtract birdsong from such places, and we enact a boreal version of Rachel Carson’s sobering parable in the opening chapter of Silent Spring. Like her “town in the heart of America,”2 a Northern Forest without its music is a sterile, lifeless prospect. Partly to hear it, hikers take to the trails from Old Forge to Baxter State Park every summer. Searching out its meanings and evoking its beauty, American nature writers from Henry David Thoreau to Bernd Heinrich have written memorably about this annual chorus of woodland song. In this essay, I will examine the music of the Northern Forest in the work of Thoreau and Robert Frost, the first and (in my view) still the greatest American writers to treat the topic in depth in their different genres. While concentrating on Thoreau and Frost, I will draw on a handful of other nature writers and on my own experience of birdsong in the forests of northern New York and New England. My thesis is that, both in literature and in direct outdoor experience, the music of birds does four things: First, it quickens the Northern Forest, calls it to spring and summer life. Second, it gives particular communities within the boreal forest a voice. Third, it distills the essence of northern wilderness. And fourth, it locates those who attend to it on the border between the human and the natural worlds, where it is good for us to live. A disclaimer is called for here. Each of the four functions above is also served by other woodland creatures and by events other than birdsong. To a winter-weary eye and heart, the blossoming of the first spring beauties quickens the Northern Forest as surely as the first April song of a hermit thrush does. But neither the wildflowers nor the thrush song should be missed, and neither can be spared. Both have spoken deeply to American nature writers, and both cut close to the forest’s heart.

Calling the Forest to Life Approaching the side of a wood on which were some pines, this after­ noon, I heard the note of the pine warbler, calling the pines to life, though I did not see it.3

At first blush, the pine warbler seems unqualified for the job of quickening an evergreen forest in the spring. With a slow and deliberate style

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of foraging, retiring habits, and obscure streaking on a breast that is sometimes bright yellow but often dull and greenish, the bird makes a pleasant but soft-edged impression. Its musical trill, which reminds me of the gentle flow of water over smooth stones, is lovely, but easily overlooked. The bird and its music are a far cry from the fiery plumage and arresting songs of a scarlet tanager or Baltimore oriole. Still, each April I repeat Thoreau’s experience. When I first hear this little warbler’s soft trill in a stand of white pines near our country home, the forest reawakens from the half life of winter. With a start and a catch of the breath, something in me revives as well. In his journal, Thoreau describes this reawakening further: “The warm pine woods are all alive this afternoon with the jingle of the pine warbler. . . . Its jingle rings through the wood at short intervals, as if, like an electric shock, it imparted a fresh spring life to them.”4 The song may be modest — a pleasant little “jingle” — but its effect is electric, quickening the woods, ringing in the spring, lifting up the heart. Take away this warbler’s trill and the pines never quite awaken from winter sleep. In the handful of years when I have missed this song, spring has never fully arrived for me, either. Moving north from the civilized second-growth woods of Concord to the virgin spruce-fir forests of mid-nineteenth-century Maine, we find Thoreau ascribing to the whistle of the white-throated sparrow the same life-giving power that he attributes to the pine warbler’s “jingle.” In this account of a morning in July 1857, Thoreau is camped near Chesuncook Lake: The note of the white-throated sparrow, a very inspiriting but almost wiry sound, was the first heard in the morning, and with this all the woods rang. This was the prevailing bird in the northern part of Maine. The forest generally was all alive with them at this season. . . . [T]hough commonly unseen, their simple ah, te-te-te, te-te-te, te-te-te, so sharp and piercing, was as distinct to the ear as the passage of a spark of fire shot into the darkest of the forest would be to the eye.5

As the pine warbler’s trill breathes spring life into the woods of Concord, the white-throated sparrow’s whistle breathes (“inspirits”) morning life into the forests of Chesuncook. In fact, it shoots “a spark of fire” into both the woods and the traveler. Fittingly, Thoreau calls waking to this song “a kind of matins.” From the beginning, his day is touched with

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holiness and with the sense of early morning freshness and promise in which he often urges us to live in Walden. In this way, birdsong quickens not only a forest but also a morning and a human heart.

Giving Particular Forest Communities a Voice When other birds are still the screech owls take up the strain, like mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu. Their dismal scream is truly Ben Jonsonian. . . . I was also serenaded by a hooting owl [one of Thoreau’s names for the great horned owl]. Near at hand you could fancy it the most melancholy sound in Nature. . . . I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have. All day the sun has shone on the surface of some savage swamp, where the double spruce stands hung with usnea lichens, and small hawks circulate above, and the chicadee lisps amid the evergreens, and the partridge and rabbit skulk beneath; but now a more dismal and fitting day dawns, and a different race of creatures awakes to express the meaning of Nature there.6

If Thoreau’s pine warbler gives voice to the inviting shade of an evergreen grove on a warm spring afternoon, his owls speak for darker, more forbidding natural places. Touched by Thoreau’s imagination, these wooded swamps turn larger and deeper than any he ever encountered on his walks or surveyed for his Concord neighbors. Impenetrable by human beings and barely lit by the sun itself, they threaten to swallow up their own creatures. Above their double spruces, hawks look small. In the lichen-festooned branches of such trees, chickadees only “lisp.” As if menaced both by predators and by the vast and desolate woods themselves, rabbits and partridges “skulk.” What birds could speak for such places? Thoreau’s choices, the screech and great horned owls, are wonderfully apt. The descending quavers of a screech owl are as doleful a natural sound as I know of, while the great horned owl, a deadly hunter without natural enemies, readily evokes the deep, unforgiving reaches of the Northern Forest. Still, Thoreau’s use of the great horned owl in this passage has its

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curious side. While the screech owl’s tremulous, eerie call does sometimes suggest demented moaning, the deep, round, booming notes of the “hooting owl” do not. In fact, the barking, cackling calls of the barred owl sound far more “maniacal,” more like insane howling, than the bass hooting of the great horned ever does. More specialized in its breeding habitat than the great horned, the barred is also more inclined to nest in swampy woods like those Thoreau describes above. We know that at least once he encountered this owl in Walden Wood7 and that he saw an injured bird of this species in a Concord shop8. Probably he heard its endless, crazed-sounding variations on “Who cooks for you, who cooks for you-all?” many times. Did he confuse these calls with those of the great horned owl? Could he have ascribed the barred owl’s voice to the great horned in order to blend the latter’s predatory fierceness with the more “maniacal” sound of the former? Whatever Thoreau’s intention, the blend works well. In it, the swamps of the Northern Forest find a voice more expressive than any single owl’s. Birds speak not only for particular communities within the Northern Forest but also for the special qualities of those forest communities during certain seasons. Each winter my wife and I wait for the great horned owls to begin their courtship calling in the second-growth hardwood forest near our home. On a clear, still night around New Year’s, we first hear them. Typically the male begins the exchange with seven resonant bass hoots, followed by a five-hoot reply from the female, a bit faster and higher than her mate’s call. Booming these calls back and forth under a sky full of stars, the birds give perfect voice to the winter woods. At Walden, Thoreau thought the same. The great horned owl’s call, he wrote, is “such a sound as the frozen earth would yield if struck with a suitable plectrum, the very lingua vernacula of Walden Wood.”9 While great horned owls hoot with the accent of frozen earth, common loons yodel and laugh in the dialect of summer lakes. Like the owls, they give unique expression to a particular place and season in the Northern Forest. In his account of a visit to friends at a camp in Maine, essayist Robert Finch describes their evening concerts this way: The camp sits on the eastern shore of Kezar Lake, a fine, long, northern lake near the Maine-New Hampshire border. . . . All through the evenings and nights we spent there we could hear the loons calling to one another across the dark lake: wild, wondrous canticles plucked from

music of the norther n f or est  •  33

the lake’s bottom on their long, deep dives, balanced a moment in their throats, then flung up toward the stars, the moon-edged clouds, and the dark, brooding shapes of the mountains sliding away, one behind the other, into the steep night. What a noise there must have been when owls sang in the tall virgin pines, when lynx screeched out their passion, and wolves added their howls to the loons’ weird wailings!10

Who could hear loons converse on a northern lake without sharing Finch’s delight? As he suggests, they speak both to and for their boreal homes: the spruce-fir forests, the night skies undimmed by city lights, the cold glacial lakes, the aboriginal past when these woods were wilder than today. Uplifting as it is, Finch’s description also has its unsettling side. If acid rain continues to deplete the loons’ food supply and motor­ boat traffic continues to erode their solitude, the strange, wild calls of the Great Northern Diver will be heard less and less often on these mountain lakes. Should this happen, the boreal forest will lose one of its most ancient and eloquent voices. The loon’s voice is integral to its forest home, rising from the lake bottoms and carrying up to the steep mountains and star-filled skies of northern New England. To Robert Finch and many others who love it, that voice is unimaginable anywhere else, including on the ponds of Finch’s Cape Cod home, where loons pause on migration and sometimes overwinter: A loon could no more sing on a Cape Cod pond than a box turtle could hiss on the arctic tundra. They draw their notes from those long, deep, mountain-channeled waters and throw them against the surrounding slopes and the tall trees. It is a song that calls for an echo, and gets it. It is there they most belong, on those dark northern lakes, lifting their high turning cries on summer nights over the fragrant pines and the solemn hills.11

Loon-like, this passage cries with long, assonant i’s (“high”, “cries”, “nights”, “pines”) and echoes in the deft sequence of t’s that ends its third sentence and begins its fourth (“. . . gets it. It . . .”). Reading the passage, we celebrate a perfect fit between setting and song. And we come away with a new urgency about protecting the ancient partnership between the Northern Forest and its loons. Just as the birds need solitary wooded lakes to breed successfully across this forest, the forest needs its loons in

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order to sing. Through them, its boreal spirit, distilled into the “deep, mountain-channeled waters” of loon country, finds expression.

Distilling the Essence of Northern Wilderness There is a sweet wild world which lies along the strain of the wood thrush — the rich intervals which border the stream of its song — more thoroughly genial to my nature than any other.12

If birdsong gives expression to particular boreal forest settings, it also cuts across them. It resonates not only with the wildness of this or that type of forest community but also with wildness itself: the elusive quality common to the alpine summit of Mount Washington and the bogs of Paul Smith’s, the marshes of the Champlain Valley and the spruce-fir islands of Downeast Maine. Thoreau chose well in making the wood thrush his voice of wildness. He heard it from Concord to the Allegash. And, like so much wild beauty, the “sweet . . . world” it evokes contains hints of sadness. From late May through mid-July, this thrush sings at dusk in a mixed woods along our country road. Listening to the bird’s ethereal triplets, which to me suggest a blend of flute, wind chime, and double-stopped violin, I feel what C. S. Lewis calls a “stab of joy,”13 a surge of happiness that somehow aches. Although Thoreau tastes hints of the elixir of wildness in the wood thrush’s song, he longs for a purer distillation. Camped by Chamberlain Lake on his third and last visit to Maine, he anticipates Robert Finch’s encounter with loon song over a century later, thrilling all night to the wild cries of common loons. But another, wilder chorus escapes him. “We were not so lucky as to hear wolves howl,” he writes, “though that is an occasional serenade. Some friends of mine, who two years ago went up the Caucomgomoc River, were serenaded by wolves while moosehunting by moonlight. . . . They heard it twice only, and they said it gave expression to the wilderness which it lacked before.”14 And so it goes: Thoreau hears loons, but never wolves. His friends hear wolves, but only twice. Every song of wildness fades into silence, and each one hints at a finer singer not yet heard, giving clearer voice to the essence of northern wilderness. In birdsong as in love, “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter.”15 The songs of the Northern Forest awaken a Keatsian longing that must be its own reward. The wildness they faintly

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echo keeps receding, and many of us who are drawn to the forest keep chasing after it, hoping to hear it in the next song. Each spring Thoreau renews this joyful quest when the first robin song reaches his cabin by Walden Pond: “I heard a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for many a thousand years, methought, whose note I shall not forget for many a thousand more, — the same sweet and powerful song as of yore. O the evening robin, at the end of a New England summer day! If I could ever find the twig he sits upon! I mean he; I mean the twig.”16 Granted, a Walden robin’s wildness is the backyard rather than the boreal variety, and for Thoreau the first robin of the season sings less of wilderness than of summer. Still, like the cry of a loon on Chamberlain Lake, the song stirs in Thoreau an old and restless longing. A robin is back, singing from a twig near his cabin. An ancient springtime joy, gone for what feels like millennia, has revived. But where is the haunting, dimly remembered song that this one faintly echoes? Where is the evening robin, singing from the twig? Thoreau has begun to search for that bird, and to strain his ears for its song, for another season. About actually finding the bird or hearing the song, Thoreau has no illusions. As in his lifelong search for the lost hound, bay horse, and turtle dove of Walden, the important thing is to be on the trail.17 In his journal, too, Thoreau affirms that what he most wants cannot be had: “I long for wildness, a nature which I cannot put my foot through, woods where the wood thrush forever sings, where the hours are early morning ones, and there is dew on the grass, and the day is forever unproved, and I might have a fertile unknown for a soil about me.”18 Writing now in late July, I understand Thoreau’s longing for a thrush that “forever sings.” The vesper song of the wood thrush has gone silent near our home, and the pleasure of dusk in the country has lessened. With most young birds in our neighborhood safely fledged, adult males have stopped defending territory, and the season of song is slipping away. Walking to the paper box each morning, I miss the cardinal’s bright, slurred whistles, the towhee’s vigorous “Drink your TEA,” and from the hardwood forest across the road, the sweet, tireless chant of the hooded warbler: “You must come . . . to the woods . . . or you won’t SEE me.” After the dawn choruses of May and June, when it was hard to distinguish separate species among dozens of birds singing at once, the near-

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silence of early mornings in mid-summer can be lonely and dispiriting. When the quiet is broken by the desultory trilling of a chipping sparrow or a few paired phrases from an indigo bunting (“sweet-sweet, chewchew”), I feel grateful. Who has not wished, with Thoreau, for a morning freshness that no midday heat burns away, a dawn chorus that never abates, or a season of song that never fades into sultry summer silence? Who has not dreamed of hiking a trail that never ends, in a woods one can never walk out of onto a road? As fleeting as spring wildflowers and the butterflies of summer, birdsong awakens our longing “for wildness, a nature [one] cannot put [one’s] foot through,” unbounded by space and time. Echoing Thoreau, Alaskan essayist Richard Nelson strains to hear the essence of wildness in thrush song. Camped on a favorite island in the Tongass National Forest, he awakens to the music of a hermit thrush, arguably the signature song of the northern forest from Newfoundland to Alaska: I awaken to the bird songs long after dawn, and look out through a ghostly curtain of fog. The ethereal voice of a hermit thrush pours down from the timbered slope above our camp. It’s the first I’ve heard this year, and I feel like whispering a welcome or a word of thanks, but I only lie quietly and listen. On and on it sings, filling the air with notes that shimmer like a rainbow in the mist. And then it’s suddenly gone, swallowed into the silence of the forest as if it was too enchanted to have been here at all.19

“We wake,” says Annie Dillard, “if we ever wake at all, to mystery.”20 Nelson would agree. The voice he wakes to is “ethereal” — light and impalpable as ether — and enshrouded in a “ghostly curtain of fog.” Its notes “shimmer like a rainbow,” the aerial mirage that no sooner brightens than it fades. Who is singing, then? Is this the spotted brown thrush with the reddish tail, well known to New Englanders as Vermont’s state bird? Scientifically speaking, it is, and a sober ornithologist might remind us that its “ethereal” song is probably a declaration of territory — something on the abrupt, prosaic order of “Beat it, Buddy, I got here first.” Of what Nelson heard, however, ornithology gives only a partial account. Because we listen to birdsong not only with the ear and intellect but also with the imagination and heart, its meanings are many. To compass them, we

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need both the language of science with its empirical objectivity and the poet’s language of metaphor, the rhetoric of “as if.” An ornithologist’s field notes might tell us that “the hermit thrush ended its early-morning territorial singing at 6:22 a.m.” Nelson, however, talks of a shimmering rainbow, a sound “suddenly gone,” and a haunting sense that, just maybe, this was no ordinary singer or song. In the language of his poetry-inprose, it is “as if  [the song] was too enchanted to have been here at all.” Like Thoreau, Nelson evokes the magic of birdsong in the Northern Forest. For both, a “sweet wild world” lies along its strain, an enchanted world one enters only while the singing lasts — and again, perhaps, when that music is recollected in Wordsworthian tranquility or evoked in artful language. In the field, birdsong is soon “swallowed into the silence of the forest.” Both the music and the wildness it faintly voices entice us, enchant us, and fade away. In the silence, we are left with the question of Keats’s speaker in “Ode to a Nightingale”: “Fled is that music: —  Do I wake or sleep?”21

Reminding Us Where We Live In “The Need of Being Versed in Country Things,” Robert Frost meditates on the song of a pair of phoebes nesting on a farm lost to fire. For a reader acquainted with the birds of the Northeast, the poem’s presence in this essay calls for a word of explanation. After all, neither the habitat nor the range of the eastern phoebe at once suggests the Northern Forest. In villages and on farms, along stream banks and on bridges, this adaptable, well-traveled bird gives its hoarse call from the Northwest Territories to Texas and from southern Quebec to central Georgia. Still, the bird speaks for a particular community within New England’s forest and for the history of that forest over nearly the past two centuries. David Foster suggests why this is so, stating that beginning in the 1830s, “as New Englanders deserted their farms for the expanding mill towns, urban centers, and distant destinations, the plowed fields became rough pastures, the abandoned pastures and meadows grew into shrublands and new forests, and collapsed cellar holes, stone walls, and abandoned lane-ways became frequent sights in an increasingly natural and forested landscape.22 On rotting window sills and sagging rafters, over unhinged doors and under warping eaves, the eastern phoebe has nested in the decaying houses and barns of New England’s abandoned farms as long as

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those structures have remained standing. I have found them in barns and sheds with one or two collapsed walls, overgrown by sumac and blackberry bushes and shaded by young white pines. As Tom Wessels notes, the story of New England’s forests is partly the story of her deserted farms: “Farm abandonment and the associated loss of pastures over the past 150 years has created the single most obvious historical pattern in the region’s landscape. The succession of pasture to forest is primarily responsible for the composition of today’s woodlands.”23 Across northern New York and New England, the eastern phoebe’s reedy call still sounds from hundreds of old farms reverting to forest. In Frost’s poem, a phoebe sings in just this kind of setting, and its song has a double meaning. For Frost, as for Thoreau, birdsong is at once a functional necessity in the reproductive cycle of birds and a phenomenon rich in beauty and mystery, a fit subject for both science and poetry: The house had gone to bring again To the midnight sky a sunset glow. Now the chimney was all of the house that stood, Like a pistil after the petals go. The barn opposed across the way, That would have joined the house in flame Had it been the will of the wind, was left To bear forsaken the place’s name. No more it opened with all one end For teams that came by the stony road To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs And brush the mow with the summer load. The birds that came to it through the air At broken windows flew out and in, Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh From too much dwelling on what has been. Yet for them the lilac renewed its leaf, And the aged elm, though touched with fire; And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm; And the fence post carried a strand of wire.

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For them there was really nothing sad. But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept, One had to be versed in country things Not to believe the phoebes wept.24

The concluding poem in Frost’s 1923 collection New Hampshire, this sweetly melancholy account of a farm abandoned by its family looks ahead nearly a quarter century to his late masterpiece “Directive,” with its journey through a second-growth woods to “a farm that is no more a farm.”25 It looks back, too, to Thoreau’s description of the decaying homes of Walden Wood’s “Former Inhabitants.” A lifelong reader of Walden, Frost may have written the poem with Thoreau’s somber scenes in mind: Cato Ingraham’s cellar hole, screened by pines and filling in with sumac and goldenrod; the “dim outline” of Hugh Quoil’s garden; and the “well dent” on every abandoned property in Walden Wood, where the departing family’s well was “covered deep . . . with a flat stone under the sod.” With an atypical lapse into melancholy, Thoreau exclaims, “What a sorrowful act must that be, — the covering up of wells! coincident with the opening of wells of tears.”26 Who could disagree? After two decades of birding and botanizing in the second-growth forests of western New York, I’ve grown used to walking over well dents, tracing the dimly outlined remains of farm gardens, eluding half-hidden loops of rusty barbed wire that once stretched tightly between pasture fence posts, tasting the wormy wild apples of overgrown orchards, and resting on stone walls in various states of disrepair. Exploring “a farm that is no more a farm,” I sometimes find myself “sighing for what has been” and thinking of Frost and Thoreau. And I remember the truth that the young philosopher-husband told in Frost’s “West Running Brook”: Some say existence like a Pirouot And Pirouette, forever in one place, Stands still and dances, but it runs away; It seriously, sadly, runs away To fill the abyss’s void with emptiness.27

In “The Need of Being Versed in Country Things,” Frost faces at least three dilemmas. The first is flux: a world in which everything of value — farms, their families, and their way of life included — “runs

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away.” The second might be called the loneliness of human consciousness. Alone among all creatures, human beings seem born to see and to resist mortality, the falling of all things into “the abyss’s void.” The third dilemma is our heart’s desire to bridge the gulf of awareness between us and other living things, to affirm a kinship with creatures whose minds and lives seem alien from our own. In the phoebe’s song, Frost finds a way to narrow that gap, though not to bridge it fully. As anyone who has heard the bird knows, the eastern phoebe seems to call its name, repeating over and over again a pair of simple, wheezy phrases that rise, then fall: “fee-BE; FEE-be.” Nesting in a barn without horses or hay, near a burned-out house on a farm no longer farmed, Frost’s phoebe seems to sigh over the loss of “what has been.” One can almost hear the bird’s repeated lament: “Ah-ME; AH-me.” But Frost is “versed in country things.” Like Thoreau, he is both seer and reader. From direct outdoor study of birds and his reading of basic ornithology, he knows that male songbirds sing to defend a breeding territory, attract a mate, and cement the pair bond between male and female. The phoebe does not weep, and his song is no sigh, because wild creatures cannot enter into human concerns or share human sorrows. End of discussion, then? Not quite. If clear-eyed science has the last word here, much of the poem pulls in another direction. Four of its six stanzas elegize the lost farm, so that the phoebe’s sigh-like “murmur” is colored with sadness by the logic of imaginative association, the “as if ” that makes an enchanted bird of Richard Nelson’s hermit thrush. And, with characteristic slyness, Frost comes close to ascribing to the farm the sympathetic awareness he finally denies to the birds. “For them” — for the nesting phoebes — the lilac and elm leaf out and offer cover. “For them” the pump handle and the strand of fence wire provide perches, from which these flycatchers can hawk insects. Thus a ruined farm assists a pair of nesting birds. As for the birds themselves, if they do not sorrow over human affairs, they “rejoice” in their own. Raising their young, they feel something like the elevated human emotion of joy. In his illuminating essay “The Poetry of Experience,” John Elder shows that a full reading of this poem must go beyond “conventional academic readings of Frost, which delight in the poet’s sardonic debunkings of the pathetic fallacy.”28 Beautifully poised between two ways of hearing the phoebe’s song, and thus of responding to nature, the poem is a clear example of what Reuben Brower calls Frost’s modern habit

music of the norther n f or est  •  41

of “entertaining an illusion in the act of breaking it.”29 Like Wallace Stevens, Brower says, Frost accepts “the physical world of positive, scientific fact” and rejects “comforting myths that deny the evidence of the senses.” For both poets, however, there are also “transforming moments in which the imagination creates undeniable reality of another sort.”30 Nor, I would add, are these moments entirely opposed to close, objective observation of natural facts. Partly because he has listened carefully to the song of an eastern phoebe, so much like a human sigh, Frost can dream the Romantic dream of correspondence between the human and the natural worlds, even as the amateur field biologist in him resists this vision. To be “versed in country things,” then, is not to reject one kind of truth outright in favor of another. It is to make peace with objective fact, imaginative vision, and the creative tensions between the two. It is also to live in the border country where nature is both alien and kin to human beings. Wherever phoebes occupy the abandoned farms of the Northern Forest, close attention to their songs locates thoughtful listeners on this boundary. In “Come In,” a lyric from the later collection A Witness Tree, Frost again invites us to have our cake and eat it, too, indulging a Romantic response to birdsong even as he questions it: As I came to the edge of the woods, Thrush music — hark! Now if it was dusk outside, Inside it was dark. Too dark in the woods for a bird By sleight of wing To better its perch for the night, Though it still could sing. The last of the light of the sun That had died in the west Still lived for one song more In a thrush’s breast. Far in the pillared dark Thrush music went — Almost like a call to come in To the dark and lament.

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But no, I was out for stars: I would not come in. I meant not even if asked, And I hadn’t been.31

At first, the worlds of bird and human being could scarcely seem more separate. The man is walking in an open field; the bird, fixed for the night on a perch in the woods. It is dusk in the man’s world, dark in the bird’s. The man is “out for stars” (a source of pleasure) while the bird is singing a “lament.” And four times, the poem’s last stanza insists on this separation of the human and natural worlds: “But no . . . / I would not . . . / I meant not . . . / I hadn’t . . .” As in “The Need of Being Versed in Country Things,” however, the relationship between man and bird goes deeper than these important differences. Separated by a boundary that the speaker rightly refuses to violate, the two are distant kin nevertheless. Within their separate worlds, both must sing. Admittedly, the bird makes the music of thrush song; the man, of poetry. But, to borrow from another Frost lyric, for them both “the end [is] song.”32 Moreover, if the speaker’s four refusals to cross the boundary between field and woods and “come in” reflect his determination to resist the bird’s enchantment, they also suggest how deeply he longs to yield. And then there is the poem’s title, offering the invitation that the closing line denies was ever offered. There may be one more kind of kinship between the two singers in this poem, and this possibility requires a short digression. Is the “thrush music” of “Come In” the music of any and every woodland thrush (they all sing beautifully), or the song of a particular species? If “The Need of Being Versed in Country Things” is any measure, Frost pays specific, not generic, attention to birds and their songs. John Elder makes the point tellingly: As far as the standard, reductive reading [of “Country Things”] goes, the word “phoebe” could as well be replaced by “birdy.” “Robin” or “starling” would also do, if rhythm were all. But the fact is that these other birds would not do. Here is where a late-spring or summer field trip to one of the sugarhouses, hunting camps, or abandoned farm houses that dot the New England woods might enhance students’ experience of the poem.33

music of the norther n f or est  •  43

  Readers of Frost could certainly do worse than imitate the poet himself, for whom every walk was a “field trip,” versing him in country particularities like the rhythm and intonation of an eastern phoebe’s song. It makes good sense, therefore, for Reginald Cook to assume that the singer of “Come In” is a specific species of thrush. The poem, Cook says, evokes “the haunting sweet-sadness in the hermit thrush’s note at evening, heard in darkening wood aisles.”34 Cook knew Frost the naturalist well and may even have talked with him about which species he had in mind. Still, I suspect that this cagey poet not only was thinking of the wood thrush’s song, but was subtly imitating it, in “Come In.” Like the hermit thrush, the wood thrush sings steadily at dusk, and Frost heard it often. It is still a prevailing bird in the woods near Frost’s former home in South Shaftsbury, Vermont, and also breeds near the old Frost farm at Derry, New Hampshire. The bird generally sings a threenote song, verbalized “ee-o-lay” by Roger Tory Peterson.35 It is tempting, therefore, to hear echoes of a wood thrush’s triplets, in which the third note is slightly accented and elongated, in the poem’s many anapestic feet, and especially in the three anapests of the opening line: As I came ee-o-LAY

to the edge ee-o-LAY

of the woods ee-o-LAY

Frost is fond of sharing such jokes with readers “versed in country things.” For example, “The Oven Bird” never mentions that an ovenbird’s song is often verbalized “teacher-teacher,” or that this warbler is therefore called the “teacher bird.” But in Frost’s poem the bird sings a solemn song about loss and change, and we are left to enjoy the teasing suggestion that, yes indeed, the “teacher bird” has something profound to teach. It just takes a shrewd observer like Frost to discover that the familiar mnemonic is even more apt than we thought. Is a sly hint of roughly this kind at work in “Come In”? Given Frost’s attention to natural detail and fondness for an implied joke, it seems fair to answer, “Maybe.” If so, the songs of poet and thrush are more alike than we might at first suspect, and the human and natural worlds are entwined in one more way, even as the poem affirms their separation. Standing on the border between field and woods, the speaker also stands where two ways of seeing — or hearing — the natural world intersect. In Frost’s art, Romantic dream and scientific objectivity often tug against each other. From their fruitful opposition,

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we learn what it means to be in-between creatures, part of nature yet distinct from it, entertaining illusions even as we break them. Of all Frost’s poems about birdsong, “The Oven Bird” achieves perhaps the richest blend of factual detail and imaginative suggestion: There is a singer everyone has heard, Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird, Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again. He says that leaves are old and that for flowers Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten. He says the early petal fall is past, When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers On sunny days a moment overcast; And comes that other fall we name the fall. He says the highway dust is over all. The bird would cease and be as other birds But that he knows in singing not to sing. The question that he frames in all but words Is what to make of a diminished thing.36

Here, the precision of natural fact is especially striking. To begin, this warbler is indeed “a singer everyone has heard” — everyone, that is, who has spent any time near a mature deciduous or mixed woods in a Northeastern spring or summer. Walter Ellison writes that “the Ovenbird’s loud ringing song is one of the most familiar sounds of the forests of Vermont,”37 and the same could be said about the forests of northern New York and the rest of New England. Identifying the song while leading nature walks, I usually see smiles of recognition and hear comments like “So that’s what that is! I’ve heard that.” As Ellison says, the bird’s chanting crescendo reaches a high volume, a fact Frost underscores by placing the word “Loud” at the beginning of his second line, setting it off with a comma, and making it the first, stressed syllable in a trochaic foot. The effect is arresting, even startling, like the ovenbird’s hammering song. As Frost says, this bird “knows in singing not to sing.” He is no thrush. Do “the solid tree trunks” actually echo an ovenbird’s loud song, and does that song persist into midsummer, when most other birds have fallen silent? To both questions, yes. Ovenbirds breed in open mature woods, where sizeable tree trunks amplify their voices and very little

music of the norther n f or est  •  45

undergrowth mutes them. They also sing later in the season than many other woodland birds. As Stephen Eaton writes in The Atlas of Breeding Birds of New York State, a “long period of dependency by the fledglings [distinguishes] this species, which can be readily found by its loud, nearly always recognizable song and call note.”38 As long as the fledglings require the care of their parents, the adult males continue to sing. Occasionally, an abundant food supply also prolongs the ovenbird’s singing. In The Birder’s Handbook: A Field Guide to the Natural History of North American Birds, Ehrlich, Dobkin, and Wheye note that this species “appears to respond to spruce budworm outbreaks by . . . producing up to 3 broods.”39 Budworm outbreaks are cyclical in the Northern Forest, and raising more than a single brood would extend an ovenbird’s song period far into the summer. In short, the poem’s remarkable sureness of fact reflects a long and close acquaintance with this species, a singer “everyone has heard” but few have observed with such care. Small wonder that, while talking with Reginald Cook about natural detail in his poetry, Frost once said, “I’d rather be right than wrong in such things.”40 That remark was an artful understatement, cloaking in Yankee reserve the poet’s meticulous attention to natural fact. To imaginative suggestion, Frost is just as receptive. For him the oven­ bird’s musical question, like the phoebe’s murmur and the thrush’s lament, takes its emotional quality partly from its setting in place and time. Colored by that setting, it becomes a memento mori. As any country walker knows, a mid-summer woods is indeed “a diminished thing.” Leaves, already “old,” start to tatter and curl. A scattering of wintergreen and wood sorrel makes a poor showing as we remember the spring, when lush patches of blue and yellow violets, red and white trilliums, and peppermint-veined spring beauties colored the forest floor. We miss the few short weeks when flowering shadbush painted whole hillsides white and every woodland bird was in full song. Especially if we remember Frost’s poem as we walk the woods, we regret the several “falls” that span the seasons: spring “petal fall,” the summer settling of “highway dust . . . over all,” and the inevitable approach of autumn, each of which reminds us of Creation’s fall into flux and death. Like the clouds in Wordsworth’s “Intimations” ode, which “take a sober colouring from an eye / That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality,”41 the ovenbird’s song acquires somber overtones from a poet who has kept the same watch. Once again, man

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and nature draw oh-so-close together, and the bird’s song almost becomes the poet’s question: What do we make of a season, a world, and a human life so indelibly marked by mortality? Like other great American writers who have made the Northern Forest a principal subject, Robert Frost writes under the long, deep shadow of Henry David Thoreau, a tireless observer of natural detail. Almost to a person, Thoreau’s disciples “would rather be right than wrong in such things.” Describing birdsong in the Northern Forest, they point us carefully to the facts: when the pine warbler’s trill is first heard in the spring, how long an ovenbird’s song period lasts, which bird’s voice prevails in the woods of northern Maine. It is not birdsong in general that fires their imaginations, but this song, sung by this bird in a particular forest community. As we read these authors, we learn to walk the Northern Forest with the same attentive ear to its music, hearing each song with the objective care of an amateur naturalist, but open to what Reuben Brower calls “transforming moments in which the imagination creates undeniable reality of another sort.”42 In such moments, a warbler’s trill calls the Northern Forest to life. A forest community — swamp or pine grove, brushy clearing or mountain lake — finds its voice. The essence of wildness resonates in the rich notes of an evening thrush. And we come home to the border country where objective fact and imaginative vision make congenial neighbors.

Notes

1. Thoreau, The Maine Woods, 377. (Hereafter cited as TMW.) 2. Carson, 1. 3. Quoted in Cruikshank, 166, April 2, 1858. (All quotations from Thoreau’s Journal are taken from this source. Citations include date of entry.) 4. Cruikshank, 166, April 15, 1859. 5. TMW, 263–264. 6. Thoreau, Walden, 84–85. (Hereafter cited as W.) 7. W, 177. 8. Cruikshank, 113, December 14, 1858. 9. W, 181. 10. From “Loon,” Finch, 30. 11. Finch, 33. 12. Cruikshank, 145, May 31, 1850. 13. Lewis, 21. 14. TMW, 307.

music of the norther n f or est  •  47 15. From John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” William Frost, 236. 16. W, 208. 17. W, 11. 18. Cruikshank, 147, June 22, 1853. 19. Nelson, 111. 20. Dillard, 2. 21. William Frost, 242. 22. Foster, 9. 23. Wessels, 61. 24. Robert Frost, 241–242. 25. Robert Frost, 337. 26. W, 175. 27. Robert Frost, 259. 28. Elder, 657. 29. Brower, 93. 30. Brower, 94. 31. Robert Frost, 334. 32. Robert Frost, 223–224. 33. Elder, 657–658. 34. Cook, 170. 35. Peterson, 246. 36. Robert Frost, 119–120. 37. Ellison, 314. 38. Eaton, 406. 39. Ehrlich, et al., 542. 40. Cook, 165. 41. William Frost, 101. 42. Brower, 94.

References

Brower, Reuben. The Poetry of Robert Frost: Constellations of Intention. New York, 1963. Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Boston, 1962. Cook, Reginald. The Dimensions of Robert Frost. New York, 1958. Cruikshank, Helen. Thoreau on Birds. New York, 1964. Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. New York, 1974. Eaton, Stephen W. “Ovenbird.” In The Atlas of Breeding Birds in New York State, edited by Robert F. Andrle and Janet R. Carroll, 406. Ithaca, NY, 1988. Ehrlich, Paul R., David S. Dobkin, and Darryl Wheye. The Birder’s Handbook: A Field Guide to the Natural History of North American Birds. New York, 1988. Elder, John. “The Poetry of Experience.” New Literary History 30:3 (Summer 1999): 649–659.

48  •  enc ou n ter s Ellison, Walter G. “Ovenbird.” In The Atlas of Breeding Birds of Vermont, edited by Sarah B. Laughlin and Douglas P. Kibbe, 314–315. Hanover, NH, 1985. Finch, Robert. Common Ground: A Naturalist’s Cape Cod. Boston, 1981. Foster, David. Thoreau’s Country: Journey through a Transformed Landscape. Cambridge, MA, 1999. Frost, Robert. The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. New York, 1969. Frost, William, ed. Romantic and Victorian Poetry, second ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1961. Lewis, C. S. Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. New York, 1955. Nelson, Richard. The Island Within. New York, 1989. Peterson, Roger Tory. A Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern and Central North America, fifth ed. Boston, 2002. Thoreau, Henry David. The Maine Woods, intro. Edward Hoagland. New York, 1988. ———. Walden. In Walden and Resistance to Civil Government, second ed., edited by William Rossi, 1–223. New York, 1992. Wessels, Tom. Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New En­ gland. Woodstock, VT, 1997.

Life as Beech Survival in the New England Forest Nata lie Coe

T

he year is 1929, and our story begins in Downeast Maine. To many, Downeast is synonymous with Maine. For those that live in Maine, well that’s just plain flatlander gibberish. Downeast Maine stretches from Ellsworth to the Canadian border and sure as heck does not include Portland, or any portion of coastal Route 1 before Ellsworth, for that matter. Downeast (the two word version, Down East, is also all right as used by the popular monthly magazine) was a sailors’ term coined in response to prevailing winds from the southwest that forced schooners downwind toward the east. Sailors off the northeast coast would be pushed downeast and, well, the name stuck. Name calling aside, by 1929, it was perhaps already too late Downeast. A strange new disease had begun to spread through the boreal Maine woods. Thoreau’s woods. Your grandfather’s woods. Our children’s woods. Now granted, there were outbreaks in Europe. It was not as if there was no precedent, no examples, no history. It was not a pandemic by any means. Or was it? Nothing had prepared us for what would happen on this side of the pond. This was an old disease in a new place. A pathogen that did not slowly coevolve over eons with our native forests. This sickness without treatment would wreak havoc on beech populations. The

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yet unnoticed deadly pathogens would mercilessly attack our native beech trees, leaving their bark calloused and cankered, their cambium gnarled, their leaves yellowed, and their once plentiful masts diminished. Fast forwarding several decades we find the disease now spread throughout New England, as far south as the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, and as far west as Ohio and into parts of Michigan. Researchers from the United States Forest Service predict that the disease will spread to most of the eastern beech range by 2025. But let’s retrace our ecological steps. In this way, we can try to understand why today nearly all of our New England beech trees are either dead or dying. As with every good yarn, there are heroes. Certain resilient beech have thankfully remained healthy due to sheer molecular luck perhaps tucked away in their genetic makeup. All hope is not lost. Relatively speaking, a handful of beech have escaped, have survived and reproduced, beaten the odds of natural selection. There are speculations as to why a beech can survive the onslaught. But it would be naïve to consider it sheer luck. European beech, which harbor a coevolutionary relationship with the pathogens, also contain trees within its population that appear to be resistant to this disease. Researchers have found that there are certain regions in the DNA of resistant trees that are more similar to each other than to those same regions in susceptible trees. A correlation between disease susceptibility and genotype (specific genetic loci) of the European beech has been recently published. A similar correlation likely exists in the American beech. There is mounting evidence that perhaps older, healthier beech trees may be targeted since they are more hospitable hosts for pathogen invasions. Topography (elevation), soil quality, forest type, and land use history, all coupled with individual genetic differences are the likely contributors to health and therefore to susceptibility or resistance to disease. Some protection may be conferred in second-growth forests that have lower levels of bark nitrogen than comparable old-growth forests since some studies show a positive correlation between bark nitrogen levels and susceptibility to this disease. Natural resistance to initial infection may lie in the structure of the bark itself, specifically in the composition of specialized cells of the cortex. You can imagine that the thickness, as well as how well patched together sections of cells are, could work together to provide a structural defense mechanism that may ward off the disease. Whether susceptibility lies in holding on to nitrogen, not shar-

l ife a s bee ch  •  51

ing resources, putting up structural road blocks, or some other reason we have not yet thought of, there is clearly a biochemical role, and therefore genetic component, to explain resistance. As foresters search for elm that have survived despite Dutch Elm Disease, it is clear that genetic differences or heterogeneity within trees, like people, leads to diversity that can help an organism (regardless if flora or fauna) survive through tumultuous times. To deny this is scientifically dangerous. Although it is doubtful that anyone is concerned with the possibility of beech tree extinction, the substantial loss of the beech tree mast (i.e., beechnuts) as beech trees continue to die, will clearly have a devastating effect on those creatures that depend on beechnuts. Beech trees do not generally mast until they are at least a foot in diameter, and mast production is generally compromised after Beech Bark Disease. Wildlife is critically dependent on the beech mast. Beechnuts are sweet in flavor and high in fat (and are likely rather tasty, although not typical human fodder). Unfortunately, the precautionary principle is not strong enough to ward off the inevitable. No beechnuts means no bears. We do need published sets of carefully controlled experiments to prove the obvious, and we are feverishly gathering the necessary data to warrant continued research, support, and ideally, solutions. Now granted, one can argue that beech is one of many food sources for bears, porcupines, marten, deer, and squirrels. But coupled with habitat fragmentation, habitat loss, apathetic laws that only mildly protect our forests, and our scarcely remaining bits of wildness, the beech and the bears are in trouble. It becomes a question of numbers, of inescapable mathematics. The loss of thousands of pounds of nuts, a primary food staple, will have a tremendous impact on any forest ecosystem. It is important to place the disease, which only affects beech trees, in the context of the greater ecosystem, so the need to understand it, here and now, is clear and immediate. It is not the goal of this piece to thoroughly dishearten you with the prognosis, but like the physician and the patient, it can be empowering to understand how a disease, even one so deadly, actually works. The disease has a formal name that is accurate, although not terribly descriptive. It is also not unique to American beech. Beech Bark Disease, referred to as BBD by foresters and scientists, is a disease that affects the bark of beech trees — both American (Fagus grandifolia) and European (Fagus silvatica). Affects the bark puts it rather politely. As described in great detail by David R. Houston (American beech), D. Lonsdale

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(European beech), and a handful of others, BBD results from infection of both a tiny scale (a beetlelike insect) and a fungus. Specifically BBD results from the commensalistic relationship of the woolly beech scale (Cryptococcus fagisuga Lind.), also known as the felted beech coccus, and the Nectria fungi (Nectria coccinea var. faginata, Nectria galligena Bres.). The naturally thin bark of the beech increases its susceptibility to attack by the beech scale. Nectria fungi inhabit the minute stylet-bored holes left by the beech scale, and it is the fungus infection (not the beech scale, as once thought) that will eventually kill a susceptible beech. Nectria may prefer scale infected bark due to the presence of certain enzymes as well as particularly hospitable fungal accommodations (such as elevated bark pH and a variety of products originating from typical scale physiology). Unlike N. coccinea, N. galligena Bres. is a native Ascomycete fungus. Interestingly, if both fungi are present in a given ecosystem, the exotic N. coccinea can effectively outcompete even the native pathogen for these select scale-bored sites. Natural selection and interspecies competition at its finest? Or at its worst? You decide. How this particular European scale and fungus arrived in the United States is up for speculation, although a reasonable hypothesis has been developed. The likely culprit was an ornamental beech tree, originally shipped from Europe to a nursery in Nova Scotia in the late 1800s. It’s estimated that over the next 20 to 30 years the scale and fungus found their ways to Maine, although the particular travel accommodations are unknown. Even now, much is still to be learned about how this fungus preferentially moves from site to site. Summer breezes are perhaps one accomplice, but this does not rule out the potential roles of migratory birds, logging, or general habitat disruption. It is almost too easy to find examples of how disturbed areas are prone to cultivation by invasive species. Take the nonnative, forever propagating phragmites that characterize the drainage ditches along our major highways, for instance. As with ecologically overwhelming and highly visible phragmite infestations, the symptoms of BBD are not subtle. The dynamic pathogenic duo of scale and fungus leaves noticeable signs. First, the beech scale bores minute holes in the bark with stylets seemingly designed for this very job, but this is not typically what kills the beech trees. After setting up house, the scale will inevitably begin to start a family. The microscopic larvae of the beech scale in mass secrete a noticeable whitish wax, a literal “whitewashing” that can profusely cover a beech’s trunk

l ife a s bee ch  •  53

and stems. The waxlike substance provides necessary overwintering protection for the developing larvae. Although the beech scale itself can cause reasonable damage, it is the Nectria fungus infection that destroys the cambium and is fatal. Visible symptoms of Nectria infection include “tarry spots” that result from sappy slime exuding from the trunk and rusty bright colored patches covered with Nectria fruiting bodies. Trunks or limbs weakened by BBD can literally break off (“beech snap”), but more typically beech die slowly, as additional insects (such as Ambrosia beetles) bore into the dead bark allowing rot fungus and other decay fungi to invade. BBD, once it has taken hold, is uncompromising. Often, but not always, the undergrowth of infected beeches is covered in beech thickets. Self-cloning from the callus tissue of a tree’s root system is normal, but may or may not occur in the presence of BBD. There is speculation that this could be a stress-adaptive trait to increase the likelihood of successful reproduction. Recent studies have shown that this thicket can compromise the survival of competing sugar maple seedlings. Since vegetatively reproduced beech saplings are genetically identical to the parent, they are also likely to be susceptible to BBD, and the cycle will continue — assuming some of the saplings reach maturity. It is not uncommon to find lower limbs on beech with BBD, which gives a very uncharacteristic look, not typical of this predominantly canopy species. The long-term ecological effects of BBD on other species remain to be seen, but clearly BBD has changed ecosystem dynamics, both directly and indirectly. To control the spread of BBD, heavily infected stems and trees could be removed and resistant beech maintained to encourage proper stand density. Unfortunately, it is only clear after an advancing and killing front has swept through a stand which trees are in fact resistant to infestation. Since little is known about how the pathogens spread, removal of infected trees or limbs may or may not be advisable. We only have to look to the ash borer for reasons why not to remove wood from an afflicted forest. Ash borer, also a nonnative pest that hijacked to the US and slipped through customs, is being inadvertently spread by campers carting infected firewood as they visit and explore their state parks. Perhaps you have long been aware of BBD. If not, it is inevitable that you will now return to a familiar forest, only to discover the disease abundant and dispersed, wondering how you could have never noticed such massive devastation. BBD is common throughout New England and is exceptionally pervasive in Maine.

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Each year nearly one million tourists come to explore coves and cliffs, to climb Cadillac Mountain, to splash in the waves of Sand Beach, and to bike the nearly 50 miles of carriage roads of Acadia National Park in Downeast Maine. I was on a bike ride myself in this national park, on a trail circling pristine Eagle Lake, when I became part of this story. Although BBD is obviously prevalent, even to the untrained eye, millions of park visitors most likely do not even notice its devastating effects. Beeches are extremely resilient, and their majestic canopies still cover the carriage roads, even though close examination shows that the trees are afflicted. During a recent Vermont spring, prior to that Downeast bike ride, I attended the Northern Taconics Research Consortium meeting at Smokey House Center in Danby, Vermont. Smokey House Center is a nonprofit educational organization that works with adolescents to strengthen their relationship with the land and to gain a sense of place, through a stewardship-based curriculum that stresses problem-solving, critical thinking, and teamwork. The mission of the center no doubt complemented the interest of the attendees and invited speakers. It was here that Jim White, a Forester for Bennington County, Vermont, voiced urgency for basic BBD research to complement management-focused studies as he reported on the disheartening spread of BBD in southern Vermont. David Houston figured out much of what we do know about Beech Bark Disease today in New England, following the groundbreaking and foundational work of  J. Ehrlich in the 1930s. Dr. Houston made a career out of understanding the pathology of this disease, developing a resistance screening technique, and characterizing disease progression. Known in certain circles as “Dr. Beech Bark,” he has certainly earned the title and has become the country’s foremost leader in understanding this insidious, temperamental bark infection. Although Houston has worked ardently to educate other foresters and ecologists, the American beech tree (Fagus grandifolia), being misunderstood and underappreciated, lacks the economic incentive of the pine, the social appeal of the sugar maple, and the noble stature of the mighty oak. In general, the American beech, although seventh among the top ten most common tree species in New England, is lousy for wood, and so it’s largely ignored. Will we miss the breathtaking canopies of brilliant green leaves that shade the forest floor and turn a dazzling yellow to initiate autumn? Will we notice the decline in bear and marten in our woods? Will we

l ife a s bee ch  •  55

worry about human-induced strain on intraspecific and interspecific competition for dwindling forest food? Will we notice the substantial northern shift that has been predicted for the range in light of global warming? Perhaps. This will require a walk in the woods. The woods, our woods, the woods where my study of Beech Bark Disease began in 2003, is relatively small and unassuming. The Deane Preserve, an 85-acre mixed northern hardwood and dry oak forest located on the eastern slope of St. Catherine Mountain in the towns of Wells and Poultney in Rutland County, Vermont, attracts few visitors. The first step to developing a research program focused on figuring out exactly how a beech tree was able to ward off Beech Bark Disease was to walk the land — every last inch of it — and look closely at what would become our study population. Two hundred and twenty-one beech trees immediately signed on to the project once the internal review board was assured that all the trees understood their roles in the study and that although they might not in fact benefit directly from the proposed work, their children just might. Some were at first startled by the idea of annual removal of a handful of buds, but soon they could look past the short-term inconvenience to the greater good for all beech. Locating beech stand locations and every tree on the Deane preserve required the help of a professional surveyor. I’m grateful that a local land surveyor, Kenneth Coe, agreed to join the project. Equipped with a GTS212 Topcon and joined by two college biology students (John Gallagher and Robin Sleith), Coe and colleagues located and mapped every beech tree over the course of an academic year. Maps designating the specific locations of infected and noninfected individual beech trees were generated so that the health of individual beeches could be (and are) monitored over time. To monitor Beech Bark Disease, we use a standard published 1–5 ranking system, with 1 representing a tree that is clear of disease or barely showing any signs of demise and 5, well, you guessed it, dead from Beech Bark Disease. Three separate stands have been located at the Deane Preserve, and many trees are classified as 2. In each stand there are trees ranging from 1 to 5. In addition to the Deane Preserve, survey and classification of BBD is underway at an additional site in Pawlett, Vermont. The North Pawlett Hills Preserve is managed by the Nature Conservancy. Beech Bark Disease had not been previously documented at the site, but initial surveys have revealed that BBD has been quite fatal to beech that have been examined so far, at least at the lower elevations.

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Fortunately, even in the most ravaged areas, certain beech trees stand disease-free in our New England forests. The Deane Preserve and Paw­ lett Hills are only two of thousands of potential study sites in which we see a handful of perfectly healthy trees surviving amidst a stand of primarily dying or dead beech. Stopping the spread and propagation of BBD is unrealistic, but increasing our population of resistant beech trees will ensure survival of beech in our New England forests. Explaining why certain beech trees are resistant, and identifying pathways and specific genetic and environmental players, will increase our basic understanding of this pathology and will inform other scale-fungal pathologies. It will also provide a context for how we should look at forests currently at the killing front as well as those experiencing the aftermath of BBD progression. Perhaps forests can be repopulated with diverse, yet resistant, beech trees, “screened” for genetic resistance to BBD. A lack of information available at the molecular level to explain resistance to BBD and the potential value of this information is clearly evident. The specific aim of our research at Green Mountain College is to identify genetic factors while continuing to evaluate environmental factors that appear to increase susceptibility to BBD in Vermont. At this writing in 2004, the references included here are just a glimpse of the tremendous work that has already been published and to which we plan to contribute. Green Mountain College is a four-year institution that prides itself in being a distinctive and progressive environmental liberal arts college. Our research takes advantage of a unique interdisciplinary curriculum and of faculty and students whose interests lie in making broad connections. Current projects not only provide short-term (one semester) and long-term (up to four years) research opportunities for science majors but also provide introductory laboratory experiences for non–science majors. Through generous grants from Vermont’s Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research and the National Science Foundation, along with continued support from the college, a burgeoning program utilizing state-of-the art equipment has been developed to answer these questions. My students and I are attempting to understand BBD resistance from multiple angles. We are using microarray analysis or gene chips to differentiate patterns of gene expression between beech resistant or susceptible to the disease. Along with a genomics approach, we are also taking a proteomic tack, using two-dimensional electrophoresis to find proteins

l ife a s bee ch  •  57

that are preferentially expressed (or not) by beech buds taken from trees either with or without BBD. Concurring environmental assessment includes extensive soil analyses and vegetation surveys. Potential and likely environmental contributions that may help to explain resistance at our study sites include nutrient availability, soil, air and water quality, forest type, forest dynamics, and previous and current land use (including agriculture, logging, and pollution). Understanding resistance to disease in beech trees may not be so different than understanding disorders in our own population. Nature and nurture, genes and the environment, and some old fashioned luck are all at play in the woods of New England. We hope to have some answers soon. Come take a walk with us, and we can find even more questions to ask.

References

Cammermeyer, J. Life’s a Beech and Then You Die. American Forests 9 (July/ August 1993) 20–21, 46. Ehrlich, J. The Beech Bark Disease, a Nectria Disease of Fagus Following “Cryptococcus Fagi” (Baer.). Cambridge, MA, 1934. Griffin J. M., G. M. Lovett, M. A. Arthur, et al. “The Distribution and Severity of Beech Bark Disease in the Catskill Mountains, NY.” Canadian Journal of Forest Research 33 (September 2003): 1754–1760. le Guerrier, C., D. Marceau, D., A. Bouchard, and J. Brisson. “A Modeling Approach to Assess the Long-term Impact of Beech Bark Disease in Northern Hardwood Forest.” Canadian Journal of Forest Research 33 (September 2003): 2416–2425. Hane, Elizabeth N. “Indirect Effects of Beech Bark Disease on Sugar Maple Seedling Survival.” Canadian Journal of Forest Research 33 (May 2003): 807–813. Houston, D. B., and D. R. Houston. “Allozyme Genetic Diversity among Fagus grandifolia Trees Resistant or Susceptible to Beech Bark Disease in Natural Populations.” Canadian Journal of Forest Research 30 (May 2000): 778–789. ———. “Variation in American Beech (Fagus grandifolia, Ehrh.): Isozyme Analysis of Genetic Structure in Selected Stands.” Silvae Genetica 43 (May/ June 1994): 277–284. Houston, D. R. “Major New Tree Disease Epidemics: Beech Bark Disease.” Annual Review of Phytopathology. 32 (1994): 75–87. ———. “Temporal and Spatial Shift within the Nectria Pathogen Complex Associated with Beech Bark Disease of Fagus granifolia.” Canadian Journal of Forest Research 24 (May 1994): 960–968 Houston, D. R., and J. T. O’Brien. “Beech Bark Disease.” Forest Insect and Disease Leaflet 75. US Department of Agriculture Forest Service, 1983.

58  •  enc ou n ter s Jones, R. H. and D. J. Raynal. “Root Sprouting in American Beech: Production, Survival, and Effect of Parent Vigor.” Canadian Journal of Forest Research 17 (June 1987): 539–544. ———. “Spatial Distribution and Development of Root Sprouts in Fagus grandifolia (Fagaceae).” American Journal of Botany 73 (December 1986): 1723–1731. Krabel, D., and R. Petercord. “Genetic Diversity and Bark Physiology of the European Beech: A Coevolutionary Relationship with the Beech Scale.” Tree Physiology 20 (April 2000): 485–491. Latty, E. F., C. D. Canham, and P. L. Marks. “Beech Bark Disease in Northern Hardwood Forests: The Importance of Nitrogen Dynamics and Forest History for Disease Severity.” Canadian Journal of Forest Research 33 (February 2003): 257–268. Lonsdale, D., and D. Wainhouse. “Beech Bark Disease.” Forestry Commission Bulletin 69: 1–14. London, 1987. McCullough, D., R. Heyd, and J. O’Brien. “Biology and Management of Beech Bark Disease, Michigan’s Newest Exotic Species Pest.” Extension Bulletin E-2746. Reprinted March 2005. McGee, G. “The Contribution of Beech Bark Disease-induced Mortality to Coarse Woody Debris Loads in Northern Hardwood Stands of Adirondack Park, New York, U.S.A.” Canadian Journal of Forest Research 30 (September 2000): 1453–1462. Runkle, J. R. “Eight Years Change in an Old Tsuga canadensis Woods Affected by Beech Bark Disease.” Bulletin Torrey Botanical Club 117 (October– December 1990): 409–419. Sage, R. W., Jr. “The Impact of Beech Bark Disease on the Northern Hardwood Forests of the Adirondacks.” Adirondack Journal of Environmental Studies 3 (1996): 6–8. Sander, T., S. König, G. M. Rothe, G.M., A. Janssen, and H. Weisserber. “Genetic Variation of European Beech along an Altitudinal Transect at Mount Vogelsberg in Hesse, Germany.” Molecular Ecology 9 (September 2000): 1349–1361. White, J. “Beech Bark Disease.” Northern Taconics Research Consortium Meeting (Danby, Vermont). (Unpublished presentation, 2003.)

Teaching and Learning

Robert Frost in the Fields and Nils-Aslak Valkeapää at the Treeline Ecological Knowledge and Academic Learning at the Northern Forest Edge K athleen Osg ood Da na

A

s a teacher of poetry, I am often confounded by the difficulties faced by emerging readers as they sort out the literal and symbolic meanings of a poem. New readers of poetry seem ready to leap to symbolic interpretations but often just plain miss the real, tangible things that give those symbols their life — literally. The overwhelming emphasis on alienation in modern Western literature and on fragmentation in postmodern Western literature seems to have widened the divide between an object, its metonymic association, and the metaphor based on those constructions,1 a divide that is particularly manifest in poetry, the most humane of intellectual endeavors. An example of how this fragmentation of meaning plays out may be found in a simple classroom discussion of Robert Frost, a mainstay of college literature anthologies. With traditional students, I have had to go to great lengths to help them understand the actual and literal meanings of the poems, which they typically conclude are high-flung symbolic statements. Instead of nature, they read Nature; instead of reality, they

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read Reality. Most students simply do not know the stuff of life from north of Boston that Frost knew through hard work on his hardscrabble farms.2 Of course, some of this confusion on the part of young readers is due to their emergence as critical readers, but much of it is due to their actual ignorance of the poet’s everyday reality, the ache of muscles used hard, the killing frost of autumn, the grim isolation of a country setting. For instance, in “Into My Own,” the poem that opens A Boy’s Will (1913), Frost writes about escaping into “those dark trees.” For him the forest is a source of danger and temptation and renewal. Even students who are not outdoorsmen appreciate the notions of escape and renewal, but students who have spent time in the woods know the subtleties of the actual darkness in woods — dependent on time of day or year, tree species, altitude, available water, and more — subtleties that add depth and meaning to the qualities of flight into dark woods. More problems of interpretation come later for traditional students when we look at the particulars of the poem. In the second stanza of this sonnet, Frost is at his very best, using the actual nature of the New En­ gland agrarian tradition to describe the physical reality of such escape: I should not be withheld but that some day Into their vastness I should steal away, Fearless of ever finding open land, Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.3

Rather than reading “open land” as an actual landscape of open pastures and meadows and hayfields beckoning at the forest edge, students typically see only the symbolic Reality of open space, in contrast to the symbolic darkness of the forest. And “the slow wheel” that “pours the sand” is not also an actual buggy wheel rolling over a sandy road leading homeward perhaps, but rather some symbolic representation of a human lifespan. So, while the basic symbolic meaning of the poem seems accessible to even the novice literary scholar, the actual physical and experiential sensation of open land and slow wheel have not been part of their suburban upbringings and, thus, are absent from their catalogue of experience and understanding. A reader unfamiliar with the realities of New England farming leaps to the Reality of the poem, unfamiliar with the “need of being versed in country things.”4 My students at Sterling College and the Center for Northern Studies come versed in country

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things, and that knowledge makes all the difference for teaching poetry of the North. When you sit in the reading room of Brown Library at Sterling College in Craftsbury Common, Vermont, you look west out over the college farm with its pastures. Like a postcard beckoning one to Vermont, these green pastures and hayfields, with their usually tranquil animals and seemingly pristine farm buildings seem comfortingly familiar, if somewhat old-fashioned. If you look beyond the Sterling College farm to the hardwoods of the Northern Forest, you will notice sugarbushes, flaring scarlet in the fall but laced with sap lines in the spring to bring in the maple syrup harvest. When your eyes sweep yet further west, they take in the chain of the Green Mountains, often mistily blue in the distance. Mount Mansfield, Vermont’s highest peak at 4,393 feet, is in the center of this vista, providing an ideal laboratory for the geomorphology studied in mountain landscapes courses. Thus, in one sweeping glance from the comfort of the college library, the eye embraces agrarian, boreal, and alpine realities; the mind takes in the familiar patterns of farm and field, the sublime beauty of the forest, and the wilderness ridgeline of the Appalachian chain. Sometimes classes are held in this room, with its ever-present reminder of the natural world just beyond, but just as often Sterling College students are out in those fields studying sustainable agriculture, in those woods learning axe and saw skills, or in the mountains mapping watersheds or studying bird populations. Often the odors in the Sterling dining hall mingle the fresh produce from our own organic gardens with the sharp tang of pine pitch on our hands or wood smoke on our clothes. The outdoors comes in, and the natural world is tangible gustatorily and olfactorily, a reality that carries over into the classroom. Similarly, at the nearby Center for Northern Studies (also a part of Sterling College), the boreal forest is right at our doorstep, and our intensive program often takes students into the woods, the swamps, or the mountains to reinforce the lessons of the classroom. Northern studies encompass the cultural and ecological realities of the northern world, which is characterized by a nearly universal circumpolar distribution of key plants and animals. The arctic/subarctic divide is usually marked by the transition from the boreal forests of the taiga region to the bogs and glaciers of the tundra region, a transition mirrored in the walk from

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the temperate Northern Forest at our doorstep to the subarctic environment of Bear Swamp, just a short distance through the wood, or nearby Mount Mansfield. It is not unusual for a barred owl to perch in a yellow birch outside the classroom to listen to us recite Sámi creation myths or Chukchee stories. During our January winter ecology course, students often see the tracks of winter animals — if not the animals themselves — as they make their way to class by skis or snowshoes. In our interdisciplinary approach to the problems of the Far North, we find an ideal classroom in our own Northern Forest, and we further actualize those particulars with our field courses.

Taking Poetry into the Field and Forest and Up on the Mountains My own research has looked closely at contemporary literary traditions among northern native peoples, and I have chosen a comparative lens for my practice of literary ecology. My particular focus has been the work of Nils-Aslak Valkeapää (1943–2001), a Sámi (formerly, Lappish) poet. Also known by his Sámi name of Áillohaš, or Áilu, Valkeapää is perhaps the best known Sámi artist today, his identity closely tied to his poems and his sense of natural language. Áillohaš has consistently adapted Sámi experiential knowledge to the ecology of Sámi culture. Because the written tradition is such a new one for most indigenous peoples, an indigenous critical tradition is still largely inchoate.5 At the risk of presumption, I have sought comparative critical models as close to home as I know, in the New England tradition, especially that of Robert Frost.6 Having the object lesson of a subarctic environment at my doorstep and an alpine environment a short distance away, it seems less difficult for me as a scholar to embrace the realities of New England and of Sápmi, the homeland of the Sámi people. This seems to be true, as well, for my students; when they read poetry in the places that inspired the poems, they can dig deeper and think more clearly than if their experience is solely a readerly one, between themselves and the page. Taking poetry into the field brings alive its particulars. Robert Frost also “loved particulars and disliked abstract categories.”7 Frost’s groundedness in the things of this earth is evident in his art: “Metaphor is, for him, transformative but not a form of religious al-

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chemy holding out a transcendental promise of redemption. Earth is always ‘the right place for love.’ ”8 Frost’s poetry — like Sámi culture — lingers at the “juncture of ecu­ mene and anecumene or cultural landscape and wilderness.”9 Both Frost and Valkeapää are essentially poets of place, and their voices resonate clearly in those homeplaces, in New England for Frost and in Sápmi / Lapland for Valkeapää. For Frost, the crux of poetic meaning was found at the juncture between woods and home; his sources were a lapsing subsistence farming tradition, with which he was intimate if not especially expert. His home fields were those of rural New England. For Valkeapää, the crux of poetic meaning was found in the places he knew, articulated in birdsong and windsong; his sources were a lapsing nomadic tradition following the reindeer, with which he was intimate if not especially expert. While the birds are not quite the same birds in Frost’s poetry and in Valkeapää’s poetry, and the words are from different languages, the poets’ sense of cultural place and literary identity is firmly rooted in their respective homes. And, as a walk up Mount Mansfield beyond the treeline to the alpine meadows or down into Bear Swamp from northern forest to subarctic bog bears out, those distances are not so great, neither experientially nor intellectually.

Invitations to the Pasture and above the Treeline Both Robert Frost and Nils-Aslak Valkeapää open their first cycles of poetry with an invitation to the reader to participate in brief but compelling encounters with the natural world. The first cycle of Valkeapää’s poetry [Giđa ijat čuovgadat (White Spring Nights), n.p.] opens with an invitation to the reader to hear what the author has to say in the sounds of the wind. It is, in its beckoning intimacy, very much like the well-known poem, “The Pasture,” which opens Robert Frost’s collected poems. Both poems acknowledge the reader in a friendly, inviting way and invite them to join in a visit to a near, known place. In “The Pasture,” Frost invites the reader to help him clean the pasture spring and watch the waters clear, and maybe to help to fetch home a newborn calf. Frost never proclaims that there is poetry in these acts, but any perceptive reader knows that s/he can come along too to see the poetry of these natural wonders.

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I’m going out to clean the pasture spring; I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear, I may): I shan’t be gone long. — You come too. I’m going out to fetch the little calf That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young It totters when she licks it with her tongue. I shan’t be gone long. — You come too.10

In Frost’s poem, the reader is beckoned along to witness the natural wonders of the spring pasture; the reader, like the poet, is invited to be a participant-observer. In Áillohaš’s opening invitation, the reader and the hillsides also seem to be acquaintances of the poet, welcome to participate in his wanderings. The reader blends into the very hillsides, part of a mountain the poet clearly loves. The reader is reminded of voices in “the sound of the wind” that are similar to the poet’s: Do I have to say that I think about you and therefore write Do I also have to say that I like you But you have probably heard that already in the sound of the wind When darkness fell you became visible in the lines of the mountain Until I no longer knew was it you or did my eyes delude me11

In fact, Valkeapää compares his relationship with the reader to a blurring of his vision, merging both with the familiar lines of beloved mountains. In Frost’s poem, reader remains reader, poet remains poet, pasture remains pasture, while in Áillohaš’s poem reader, poet, and mountain meld into a single imaginative impression. In both poets, the friendly concern with the reader is evident at the outset. Both poets are eager to share their perceptions of nature and re-

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ality. And the nature they are looking at is comparable in fundamental ways. Frost’s northern New England is a familiar, sparsely populated, hardscrabble place where people get by, mostly through their knowledge of “country things.” Valkeapää’s grazing pastures and camping places are also familiar, sparsely populated, peripheral places, where traditional knowledge makes livelihoods at the treeline, the divide between taiga and tundra, possible. And yet, despite the similarities in voice and materials, there is a fundamental difference in how Frost and Valkeapää make their poetic meaning known. Frost’s poems exist on their own, part of a larger collection; Frost’s introductory poem is primarily textual, relying on words, on text, and on sound to create imagery. On the other hand, Valkeapää’s poems are only part of his creative endeavor. He extends his invitation to the visual realm as well, as his fine pencil drawings of grasses on the pages with the poems quickly become the long view across the highlands in the gathering dusk on the next page opening, and then evolve to dwarf birches casting long spring shadows across the melting snow on the next opening. Valkeapää was also the designer of his books, and the totality of his expression includes the visual as well as the poetic. Valkeapää’s reliance on the visual, as opposed to the textual, is also evident in his other work. Despite the similarities in tone and familiar setting between these two poems, despite the very real and fundamental connections between Robert Frost, the poet of New England, and Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, the poet of Sápmi, there are also perceptible differences in the ways in which they construct meaning.

Metaphors and Symbolic Distance I propose that Frost’s reliance on the Western tradition perceptibly enlarges the distance between an object and its meaning requiring a larger intellectual leap, despite the familiarity of a New England setting. And while the realities of reindeer herding on the tundra are far more remote for a Western reader, the distance between object and idea is less transcendental and more ontological, a subtlety that resides in the very ways that poetic language is constructed and used. A closer look at symbolic language, writ large, may yield further clues to these slight but essential differences. A metaphor is a trope “in which the meaning of a word or phrase is

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shifted to a new domain on the basis of a relation of similarity or analogy.” Conversely, “metonymy (from the Greek for change of name) is a figure in which the name of one thing is used for another to which it has a relation of contiguity, as the use of ‘crown’ to mean the king.”12 Thus, metaphor and metonymy, formal expressions of symbol, span human expression. In the case of metaphor, perceptual similarities between an object and its associated idea are stressed, while in the case of metonymy, physical connection is stressed. “Metonymy thus indicates relations among signs based on external contiguity; metaphor refers to relations of internal similarity.”13 In other words, language — and particularly literary language that strives for creative use of language and relationships — can be read as a kind of symbolic functioning, relying either on external or internal associations. However, Western symbols and indigenous symbols arise from a radically different “poetics of dwelling,” as Tim Ingold would put it in The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill.14 According to Ingold, the ontology of hunter-gatherer societies differs so from the ontology of consumer-information societies that fundamental perceptions of nature cannot be directly compared. In the same way that native “dwelling” is in a direct and intimate relationship with nature, native constructions of symbol are direct and intimate. The experience of reindeer herding on the tundra, like farming on the hills, is completely different from urban or suburban experience. For both herders and farmers, experience and knowledge arise from the work of the body and hands, as well as the mind. For consumers and traders in global economies, that experience and knowledge is virtual, not physical. Yet, the perceptual distance between a symbol and its meaning is much more immediate in native cultural traditions than even in an agrarian reality. This immediacy of symbol, its ecological connectedness, its intimate expression all deeply impact life and culture in native traditions, often making native systems of symbol very difficult for Westerners to grasp. Paula Gunn Allen confirms in The Sacred Hoop that symbols are constructed quite differently in Native American traditions than they are in Western traditions. She writes: Symbols in American Indian systems are not symbolic in the usual sense of the word. The words articulate reality — not “psychological” or imag-

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ined reality, not emotive reality captured metaphorically in an attempt to fuse thought and feeling, but that reality where thought and feeling are one, where objective and subjective are one, where speaker and listener are one, where sound and sense are one.15

In other words, the intellectual distance — some might say the intellectual disconnect — so evident in Western expression does not really pertain when discussing native symbol. While I hesitate to make such a broad and sweeping generalization of all native expression as fusing perception and expression or all Western literature as teasing about perception and expression, this distinction is useful as a way of discovering a viable approach to a critical analysis of native literature. Following Hugh Brody’s lead, I would add that in a native tradition with remembered or actual links to an oral culture, the “perceptual similarities between disparate objects” are much closer than in long-standing written cultures, fundamentally because the nature of perception and experience are much more closely related. Brody writes, “Oral culture blends fact and metaphor. The line between myth and information is not easy to draw.”16 While Brody stresses the central and active relevance of metaphor for meaning in hunter-gatherer societies, such as the Inuit, his theory also merits consideration for northern, reindeer-herding cultures, living on the margins of Western societies. Inuktitut grammar and word formation are governed by clear rules that allow almost no exceptions. Yet Inuktitut is also a language of extraordinary poetic and metaphorical potential. Perhaps this is a feature of all languages. The languages of hunter-gatherers, however, may have a special commitment to and reliance on metaphor. The logic and the poetry of words are, for many peoples, inseparable. Something essential to the human mind and human expression, and therefore human well-being, may well be clearer here than elsewhere. Hunter-gatherers accumulate immense bodies of knowledge and use this knowledge to make critical decisions — hence the importance of songs (to aid memory and create new insights) and dreams (to allow decisions that draw on a blend of facts and intuition).17 (emphasis mine)

I might add that the importance of image, metaphor, story, and dreams has had a coherent urgency in native traditions, while these liter-

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ary elements are more readily extracted as separate governing principles in Western traditions. What may appear to be a mishmash of literary elements in a native tradition is rather a coherent whole that refuses to yield readily to standard Western literary analysis.

A Poem at the Treeline Now let us take a look at a poem from the Sámi tradition and take this metaphorical/metonymical distinction into the field and above the treeline. In Poem 69 of his key work Beaivi, áhčážan [The Sun, My Father], Áillohaš invites his readers, in the simplest of language, to experience being on the high fells as the grass is greening and the reindeer are calving.18 The poet walks the reader through this experience “step by step” (“lávkkis lávkái”) through the plants at the treeline, starting with his observations of plants near at hand, the first spring green to show after the snows have left. The moment is in spring — June in Lapland — and we are following the calving herd up above the treeline to the tundra, where the summer grazing is at its best, away from the mosquitoes and bot flies. lávkkis lávkái ruonashádja rahttáhádja ruvdorásit boska juopmu

step by step smell of green, the first grass blue heather angelica wood sorrel

This is no idle walk in the highlands, seeking beauty, but an expression of traditional ecological knowledge of an experienced reindeer herder, who recognizes the value of this spring pasturage appropriate for calving. “The reindeer shifts pasturage just as the leaves come out on trees and the grass starts to grow. Grass starts growing first on lower places, and near the calving grounds there should be terrain where grass grows early. Reindeer do not go very far, before they have calved.”19 The plants are noted — not only for their beauty, but also for their practical usefulness. In the same way that the eye is drawn to the far horizon later in the poem, these plants also draw the gaze upward from low-growing blue heather to knee-high sorrel to towering angelica. Blue heather (ruvdorásit, Cassiope tetragonia, liekovarpio, in Finnish20) is a delicate little bell-like flower found in the high fells. Botanist Ste-

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ven B. Young suggests that Cassiope tetragonia is valuable because its woody, perennial stems can be used for firemaking above the treeline.21 Its heatherlike blossoms appear early in the summer, following the retreat of the snow. Angelica archangelica (boska) is “a tall, ostentatiously handsome plant, [with] large, bright green, irregularly toothed leaves on hollow stems which rise four to nine feet.22 Known for its juniper-like scent and its curative properties, angelica, with its hollow, ribbed stems, is also used by the Sámi to make a flutelike instrument, called a fátnu. This flute, with its several notes, can be made on the spot and sometimes accompanies yoiking, or Sámi singing, producing a “range of gentle, melancholy tones. This tone range can be used in a way reminiscent of yoiks. The pipe is serviceable as long as the stem is fresh; as soon as it dries out, it is useless and has to be thrown away.”23 Johan Turi describes some uses of angelica in Turi’s Book of Lappland, telling how traditional herding Sámi “. . . cooked fadno (one year old angelica) in water, and then they put it in a reindeer’s stomach, and mixed it with milk, and then they put it in blood-gruel, and it was very good in the winter. And they collected a lot of boska (two year old angelica), and salted it and ate it. And sorrel is much in use even to this day.”29 The ascorbic and oxalic acid in wood sorrel ( juopmu, Rumex acetosa, niittysuolaheinä in Finnish25) is used by the Sámi to sour milk in order to make their reindeer milk cheeses.26 It is one of the first spring plants to green, and its lemony-flavored leaves are tasty and purgative to children and adults alike. Taken together, these three plants symbolize beauty, music, and nurture, as the Sámi herdsman who sees them and uses them knows. After a look at what is at his feet, the poet’s sights sweep upwards to the sky and to the distant horizon. He repeats the grammatical construction (*-s *-i meaning from * to *) of the first line three more times, creating an insistent physical progression through the landscape that is much less evident in the English translation: 1. lávkkis lávkái (literally, “from step to step”) 2. čohkás čohkkii (“from peak to peak”) 3. lágus láhkui (“from highland to highland”) 4. vuomis vuopmái (“from river valley to river valley”)

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Then he completes the stanza with “vággái” (“to the coast”). The repetition of the “-i” postfix in this line mirrors the earlier constructions and emphasizes the progression along the migration routes toward the coast, where herding siida families would take their herds with their newborn calves to spend their summers, somewhat free of the pesky mosquitoes that plague the wooded places of the lowlands. The repetition of this simple construction adds a familiar urgency to the movement of this perennial migration.

allagasain duottarjávrrit almmivuostá

čohkás čohkkii dát eatnamat leagi lágus láhkui vuomis vuopmái vággái

toward the sky

upland waters

from peak to peak these lands the valleys the high mountain slopes over the forests toward the coast

At the last, his sight settles on the middle distance, on the familiar, on the places where the siida family will settle for the calving and grazing. čearpmatgiettit miesseguolbanat guottetbáikkit

meadows reindeer calf moors lands where calves are born

We readers have been privileged to join the poet’s invitation to see the calving grounds, as Áillohaš’s gaze sweeps the horizon and rejoices in the greening of spring that bodes well for the reindeer calves about to be born. Even a mature Western reader who first dips into Áillohaš’s poetry is like my freshman readers of Robert Frost who do not know the material culture of the lapsing New England farm tradition out of which Frost wrote with such perception. Without knowledge of the material, ritual culture of a poetry, a reader is apt to skip to the abstractions of the poems, thus diminishing the full experience. For a Westerner accustomed to the division of self and nature, it is easy to skip the facts of Áillohaš’s poetry, to miss the ecology of meaning, and to dwell on the abstractions of experience in Beaivi, áhčážan. Reading a Sámi poem

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within its ecological context will yield far more when the daily life, the ritual context, the contours of the landscape are known. And, as one comes to understand the fullness of Sámi ecology, the full experience of the poems becomes clearer. And as the poems become clearer, the ecological perceptions gain depth.

Conclusion In the fall of 2004, we took northern studies students to Lapland, where we lived in wilderness cabins and trekked, poems in hand, along the reindeer migration routes that Áillohaš describes for us in Poem 69. We practiced literary ecology in the places where the poems were born. As in many native traditions, metaphor is not a matter of dislocated meaning piled upon a symbol, but rather a matter of actual representation. Place is symbol. This mountain is in fact the metaphor for our beliefs, or this place is the history of our family. Nils-Aslak Valkeapää has wrought a transformation of how Westerners normally view books as a means of conveying text, as a contract between writer and reader. In the case of Beaivi, áhčážan, the book is a shamanic drum, the poet is the shaman, and the reader participates in a ritual that transports us beyond worlds and beyond time. For a non-Sámi reader to participate fully, s/he must suspend the division of self from nature, and partake of the native tradition where one is a part of nature. And, magically, shamanically, the text becomes context, the reading becomes ritual, and the reader is renewed. Taking poems into the field gives them a life beyond the page.

Acknowledgments My gratitude to my colleagues at Sterling College for their input on this essay: E. Perry Thomas, my dean and fellow woods walker; Douglas Haynes, director of the 2003–2004 writing program; Richard R. Morrill, a northern studies supporter and woodsman-in-the-making; Christina Erickson, lead teacher for “A Sense of Place”; and Steven B. Young, who started it all. And to two of my students in particular, Brooke Halsey and Luke Hardt, who seek the tangible experience of their hands to verify the abstract knowledge of their minds.

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Notes

1. See, for example, Jakobson and Halle. 2. Cook, 20. 3. Frost, 5. 4. Frost, 241–242. 5. See Gaski. 6. See my paper presented at the 1996 Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences Conference. 7. Parini, 264. 8. Parini, 265. 9. Müller-Wille, 73. 10. Frost, 1. 11. Valkeapää, Trekways, n.p. 12. Chaitin, 589–590. 13. Chaitin, 589. 14. Ingold, 26. 15. Allen, 71. 16. Brody, 205. 17. Brody, 220. 18. Hirvonen, 42–43. 19. Näkkäläjärvi, 149 (translation by Dana). 20. Lukkari and Lukkari, 97. 21. Personal communication, October 2000. 22. Dawson, 107. See also Lukkari and Lukkari, 93; Suomen terveyskasvit, 271. 23. Vorren and Manker, 113. 24. Turi, 69. 25. Lukkari and Lukkari, 37. 26. Manker, 65; Suomen terveyskasvit, 175.

References

Allen, Paula Gunn. The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Boston, 1986. Collection of Allen’s essays dealing with Native traditions and literature; many original and useful analyses. Brody, Hugh. The Other Side of Eden: Hunters and Farmers and the Shaping of the World. Vancouver and Toronto, 2000. Brody’s provocation and eloquent ideology pitting hunting traditions against farming traditions. In Brody’s opinion, farming has effectively marginalized hunting, which is the most natural human condition. Chaitin, Gilbert D. “Metonymy/metaphor.” In Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory: Approaches, Scholars, Terms, edited by Irena R. Makaryk, 589–591. Toronto, 1993. Cook, Reginald L. “Environment and the Poet: Robert Frost’s Concept of

robert frost a nd nil s-a sl a k va lk e a pä ä  •  75 Place.” In Vermont and the Environment, edited by Arthur H. Westing. n.p. Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences, Occasional Paper No. 4, 1969. Dana, Kathleen Osgood. “Place and Identity: A Comparison of Robert Frost and Nils-Aslak Valkeapää.” Paper presented at the Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences Conference, Robert Frost: Shaping the Image of New En­ gland. Green Mountain College, Poultney, Vermont, October 19, 1996. Dawson, Adele G. Herbs: Partners in Life (A Guide to Cooking, Gardening and Healing with Wild and Cultivated Plants). Illustrated by Robin Rothman. Rochester, VT, 1991. Good New England herbal handbook. Frost, Robert. The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. New York, 1969. Gaski, Harald Čálagovat: Sámi girjjáslašvuođahistorjá. (Hidden Pictures: A History of Sámi Literature). Karasjok, Norway, 1998. Hirvonen, Vuokko. “Aurinko, isäni — Nils-Aslak Valkeapään runoudesta.” In Sydämeni palava: Johdatus saamelaiseen joiku- ja kertomaperinteeseen, tai­ teeseen ja kirjallisuuteen (My Burning Heart: Introduction to the Sámi Yoik and Story Tradition, to Sámi Art, and to Sámi Literature), 37–47. Oulu, Finland, 1995 Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: 2000. A collection of essays arguing that environmental perceptions derive from skills, which are themselves derived through practice and training in an environment. Jakobson, Roman, and Morris Halle. Fundamentals of Language. The Hague, 1956. Linguistic explorations of language, suggesting that univeral “deep structures” exist in all languages, enabling comparative linguistics. Lukkari, Toivo, and Heikkiarmas Lukkari. Šattut Sámis. Karasjok, Norway, 1992. A handbook of plants in Sápmi. Manker, Ernst. People of the Eight Seasons. New York, 1972 by arrangement with Tre Tryckare Ab, Gothenburg. Richly illustrated, authoritative book on Sámi culture. Müller-Wille, Ludger. “Finnish Lapland Between South and North: Developments in Anthropology since the 1920 (sic).” Terra 101.1 (1989): 67–77. Review of scholarship in Sámi issues in this century. Näkkäläjärvi, Klemetti. “Porosaamelaisen luonnonympäristö” (“The Natural Environment of Reindeer-Herding Sámi”). In Beaivi Mánát: Saamelaisten juuret ja nykyaika (Children of the Sun: The Past and Present Days of Sámi), edited by Irja Seurujärvi-Kari, 143–165. Helsinki, 2000. A brief analysis of reindeer-herding Sámi treatment of seasons, terrain, and weather, including extensive wordlists. Parini, Jay. Robert Frost: A Life. New York, 1999. Sympathetic biographical and literary treatment of Frost. Suomen terveyskasvit: Luonnon parantavat yrtit ja niiden salaisuudet (Health Plants of Finland: Nature’s Healing Herbs and their Secrets). Helsinki, 1982.

76  •  te aching a nd l e a r ning A Reader’s Digest compendium of pharmaceutical herbs known in Finland. Richly illustrated. Turi, Johan. Turi’s Book of Lappland, edited and translated into Danish by Emilie Demant Hatt; translated from the Danish by E. Gee Nash. Oosterhout, The Netherlands, 1966. Arguably one of the first works of creative literature by a Sámi describing Lapp work and Lapp life; frequently issued as an ethnographic text. Valkeapää, Nils-Aslak. Beaivi, áhčážan (The Sun, My Father). Guovdageaidnu, Norway, 1988. ———. Giđa ijat čuovgadat (White Spring Nights), illustrated by the author. Oulu, Finland, 1974. Later collected with two other volumes in Ruoktu váimmus. ———. Trekways of the Winds. Translation of Ruoktu váimmus by Ralph Salisbury, Lars Nordström, and Harald Gaski. Guovdageaidnu, Norway, 1985. Distributed in North America by the University of Arizona Press. Lyrical, autobiographical poems, including Áillohaš’s meditations on his work with the World Council of Indigenous Peoples. No pagination, but I have numbered pages sequentially in my study copy of the book. Vorren, Ørnulv, and Ernst Manker. Lapp Life and Customs: A Survey, translated from the Norwegian by Kathleen McFarlane. London, 1962. Good basic survey of Lapp life and cutstoms. Young, Steven B., arctic botanist. Personal communication. Center for Northern Studies, Wolcott, Vermont. October 2000.

Interdisciplinary Teaching about the Adirondacks Er nest H. W illi a ms, Patr ick D. R ey nolds, a nd Onno Oer lem a ns

F

ew regions compare to the Adirondacks in terms of the wealth of material provided for study from many different perspectives. A logical place to start in a study of any region is its history, which for the Adirondacks may include tracing the influence of the early Iroquois through the arrival of the French and the Dutch, to the settlers who tried to wrest a living from the land, and eventually to the establishment of a state park with its complex issues of land ownership and management. An understanding of the Adirondacks is enriched by learning about the geological history of the mountains, the views of artists who illustrated their perceptions of the landscape and wildlife, the impressions of writers who told stories of the region, and issues about wilderness and its preservation. These and additional topics contribute to a very broad menu for study. A recently introduced interdisciplinary course on the Adirondacks at Hamilton College, entitled Forever Wild: The Cultural and Natural Histories of the Adirondack Park, attempts to merge these different threads in the search for a fuller understanding of the region. We are three faculty members, with different disciplinary specialties, who have taught this

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course several times each and who, along the way, have begun to discover solutions to the challenges of engaging students in interdisciplinary study. In this essay we present some of what we have learned in the process, with each of us focusing on what has struck us most strongly; we discuss ways of creating interdisciplinarity and provide examples of interdisciplinary connections, particularly through the use of literature. Our course is team taught, emphasizes oral and written communication, and culminates in an integrative project with a public presentation. The course is part of a sophomore seminar program intended to give students some synthesis to their studies during the first two years of college. The program has spurred the development of a number of courses, like ours, that not only are new to the curriculum but also add subjects that would not find an obvious home within traditional, departmentally based curricular structures. We have used two histories as the backbone of our course — Paul Schneider’s The Adirondacks: A History of America’s First Wilderness and Philip G. Terrie’s Contested Terrain: A New History of Nature and People in the Adirondacks — but many additional readings supplement these histories, on topics such as the formation of the mountains, the ecology of the Northern Forest, regional creative arts and literature, political controversies, the arrival of different ethnic groups, acid precipitation, and global warming. Because firsthand experience enhances an individual’s interest in a region, we take students for a midwinter snowshoe walk or for fall weekend trips to notable Adirondack locales, including a night at a great camp. In the first four years of offering this seminar, the instructors have included seven different faculty members representing four different departments (English, biology, chemistry, and government), teaching eighteen fully enrolled sections of approximately 220 students.

Interdisciplinarity in Teaching and Learning about the Adirondacks Ernest H. Williams

A significant curricular question for our course is where to place the boundary on investigation — what to include or exclude — because a single course can cover only so much ground. Our course emphasizes glaciation, forest succession, human settlement, resource industries, politi-

te aching a bou t the a dirondack s  •  79

cal organization and conflict, painting, and literature. At times we have included material on Iroquois culture, ethnic history, folk music, government regulations, sociological descriptions, and acid rain. We strive for integration of all materials we use because of the intellectual engagement and enhanced understanding that such a synthesis provides. An integrated approach to a large subject is not easy, of course. Surveying many topics in a short time is a challenge, illustrated by one student’s comment on the difficulty of transitioning from a discussion of Emerson’s transparent eyeball one day to the Grenville orogeny the next. That’s an abrupt change, to be sure. And there are difficulties for instructors. In the initial class one year, a student asked why he should come to a biologist or a chemist to study Emerson. Our reply was that as faculty we can read Emerson along with the students and see how the reading informs our view of the Adirondacks, although we recognize that, for a deeper understanding of Emerson, he would to have to go to a specialist in literature. The idea of intellectual exploration is primary in a course like this, and in addition to encouraging students along its path, the instructors must model the same approach: reading, thinking, discussing, and drawing on one’s own and each other’s experiences. Another limitation to such a wide-reaching course is that each instructor is naturally more comfortable with certain topics than with others, but we have refrained from the tendency to retreat into our specialties and simply explain the material we know well. We describe our course as both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, but these terms have different meanings. Multidisciplinarity implies studying a single subject from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Students in our course read and discuss works on numerous topics related to the Adirondacks, including geology, ecology, literature, art, history, philosophy, and public policy. Study of each of these components adds a layer of understanding of the region, but an individual could learn these separate layers by taking a series of courses in different disciplines. A deeper understanding is possible when the layers are added together. Interdisciplinarity, in contrast, requires integration of the different topics beyond simply studying them in succession; it is a bridging of disciplines. Integration may come about in any of three ways: use of the methodology of one discipline to study the material of a different discipline; improved understanding through study of a single topic from different perspectives; or a broadly enhanced understanding of the subject that, in the

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end, is more than the sum of its parts. Multidisciplinarity, then, suggests a series of mini-courses, whereas interdisciplinarity requires integration. Because we find value in coherence, we attempt to turn what begins as a multidisciplinary course into a fully interdisciplinary one. Rather than the two-part categorization of multi- and inter-disciplinarity, others have recognized several steps across a broader continuum. Lisa Lattuca describes four stages, which, when applied to teaching, range from a course within a discipline using methods from other disciplines to a course with no apparent disciplinary basis.1 Her middle two stages match what I have identified above: a course that combines material from different disciplines (multidisciplinarity, or, in her typology, “synthetic interdisciplinarity”) and a course that integrates differing material and approaches (interdisciplinarity or “transdisciplinarity” in her terms).2 The question is how to take ideas and material from different disciplines and blend them into a more integrated whole. Multi­ disciplinary courses may be team taught, which is an easily designed curricular structure, but weaving all the material into a single fabric of understanding remains a challenge. It is from looking at the details of interdisciplinary techniques that one finds what integration is possible. The first approach to interdisciplinarity, using a method from one discipline to study another, is difficult. It is something we may do professionally. Because many scientific advances have emerged from interdisciplinary collaborations, numerous colleges and universities have expanded interdisciplinary programs such as biochemistry and neuroscience, and the methods of the contributing disciplines are merged in the interdisciplinary program’s courses. But how well can one use this approach in a single lower-level undergraduate course on the Adirondacks? The answer is not well at all. Whenever we get to methods, we use them within rather than across disciplines. The descriptions of three disciplinary methodologies illustrate what may be incorporated into an undergraduate course. a. Glaciation is one of the few topics in which we actually use disciplinary procedures. Rather than simply assert that the Adirondack Mountains were once glaciated, we can point to evidence that lingers on the landscape: moraines, glacial striations, drumlins, eskers, erratics, and kettle ponds. From this kind of evidence, one can construct a convincing argument that the mountains were once glaciated, and then map

te aching a bou t the a dirondack s  •  81

the geographic reach of the ice sheets. This example illustrates the scientific methodology of using evidence and inference, but we apply it only to science topics. b. Historians start by asking a specific question and then searching for primary sources of evidence that help provide answers. The evidence must be understood in context, and historians may raise questions about what is or is not a fact. Histories are shaped by when they were written because the questions, which are culturally dependent, change over time. A historian is a detective who puts the facts together in a story, but this methodological approach is hard to pursue in an introductory course. As a result, we don’t do what historians do; we just read their stories. c. Art provides a third example. Art historians examine paintings both autonomously and contextually. Autonomous (compositional) consideration includes attention to the subject, design, techniques, use of color, style, brushwork, and overall quality. Contextual consideration includes what culture produced the painting, the ideas it represents, who commissioned it, and the audience that viewed it. It is hard to do much of the former when one has little experience evaluating artwork, but contextual evaluation is more accessible. Sophomores can, for example, evaluate the context that led to the difference in Adirondack painting from the early and late nineteenth century.

The above examples illustrate the opportunities and limitations of having students use the methods of different disciplines in a course with a subject as broad as the Adirondacks, and the examples also reveal how hard it is to use methods across disciplines. The first approach to interdisciplinarity does significantly contribute to our course. In contrast, we achieve the second form of interdisciplinarity, in which the understanding of a single topic is enhanced by examining it from the perspective of more than one discipline. Two examples illustrate this merging of ideas. Understanding the climate and glacial history of the Adirondack region informs an understanding of the history of human attempts to farm the Adirondacks and why farming here has always been such a difficult struggle. The region is cold, with storm tracks racing across it,3 and the glaciated landscape has left a thin cover of rocky soil. Another example of the merging of ideas comes from a consideration of Adirondack art painters such as Thomas Cole, Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait,

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Winslow Homer, and Rockwell Kent. In addition to seeing different artistic styles, a viewer begins to understand how people perceived the Adirondack wilderness, from the “sublime” views of the early landscape painters to illustrations of the sporting life in pursuit of fish and game, seen in the paintings of Tait, to the effects of logging and resource harvesting apparent in some of the paintings of Homer. We are successful in achieving this second form of interdisciplinarity; students recognize and respond to the merging of perspectives to inform a single topic. The third approach to interdisciplinarity is an extension of the second, in which the sum becomes more than its parts. Study of each topic, from art to ecology to social history, not only enhances one’s understanding of individual topics but also adds a more comprehensive understanding, layer by layer, of the region. Knowledge without a variety of perspectives is incomplete. What makes possible the full integration of different materials, the third approach to interdisciplinarity, is the consideration of place: the Adirondacks being understood as a distinct place. Mark Sagoff describes a place as a “cultural artifact,”4 the merging of a part of nature with human activities and desires. In Alan Gussow’s phrasing, “A place is a piece of the whole environment that has been claimed by feelings.”5 Such expressions are clearly applicable to the Adirondacks, whose story is interwoven with the ways people have tried to extract a living from the region and with differences of opinion about the definition and value of wilderness. Our students begin with little knowledge of the Adirondacks, but their study of the region converts it to a place: a landscape with people and a history. Consideration of a region as a place can be generalized: the same interdisciplinary approach can be used in studying other areas, pursued in other contexts, and taught in most any institution. A notable example of a region that lends itself to similar study is the Yellowstone ecosystem, with its human history of trappers such as John Colter, the geological underpinnings that create geothermal features, the roles of forest fire and successful wolf reintroduction, the art of Bierstadt and Remington, and the policy issues of managing an entity regulated by more than 30 state and federal agencies. The choice of a well-known region isn’t necessary, however; almost any area large or small can be examined in a similar way, with attention to its natural components and the ways people have interacted with them. The Adirondacks provide an excellent example, though, of the impor-

te aching a bou t the a dirondack s  •  83

tance of a sense of place. As historian Philip Terrie has written, “In the Adirondacks we have a landscape that could be a model for the world. It is a place where people live and where nature matters, where it is just this combination, this interrelationship between people and nature, that defines the place, provides its meaning, constructs its narrative.”6 When the topic is as complex and compelling as the Adirondack Park, with issues that are so pertinent now and for the future, the course material is bound to draw student interest. The Adirondacks have become a “place” in the minds of us all. This awareness yields the third kind of interdisciplinarity  — an integrated sense of place — and this is how a course on the Adirondacks achieves its greatest success and intellectual engagement.

Teaching Adirondack Science in an Interdisciplinary Context Patrick D. Reynolds

In offering scientific perspectives on the Adirondacks, we pay particular attention to the physical geology, climatology, and forest ecology of the region. While the goal of the course is to weave various perspectives together into a tapestry of comprehensive understanding of the region, of what today’s Park is and how it came to be, the nature of Adirondack science often lends itself to being taught in isolation. In some cases this is due to the limited scientific background or interest of students in our second-year nonmajors course, and in others to my own limitations, as a biologist, of understanding and knowledge of Adirondack cultural, social, and political history. Despite this, the learning environment of our class is one that privileges inter­disciplinary learning, as has been defined and discussed here by Ernest Williams, and we emphasize it when possible. Here I present opportunities through which we have tried to weave together science and nonscience areas of the study of the Adirondacks in the hope of developing a richer and reciprocally illuminating understanding of the region in our students. Teaching in an interdisciplinary way about the Adirondacks is different from reductionist approaches that characterize much of modern scientific study. In considering the forest ecology of the Adirondack Park, for example, adopting a narrow focus on the description of organismic diversity and processes is particularly limiting. The Adirondack “Park”

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is, after all, a human construct, and an abstract concept insofar as levels of ecological organization are concerned. I need not elaborate here on the individuals who planted the notional seed of a forest preserve, the unique set of political and environmental conditions that allowed it to germinate, and the difficult and extraordinary blooming of constitutional protection and the legislative entity that is the Park. But if one considers the developmental constraints that a marked but nuanced logging, mining, hunting, and wood-resourced industrial history has written on the Adirondack forest, one is left with a place where no aspect of forest ecology can be described, taught, or learned without reference to human influence. Hence there is a particular obligation to provide a sound understanding of aspects of Adirondack science in a way that reflects and illuminates human experience in the Park. While there are many opportunities to integrate biology or geology with the industrial exploitation of natural resources in the Adirondacks (examples include the economic fortunes of the logging industry as related to forest succession, the distribution of the tanning industry as related to hemlock stand and railway distributions, and the fortunes of mining industries as a function of mineral resource quality), the greater challenge has been in the integration — to whatever degree — of Adiron­ dack ecology, geology, climatology, or environmental chemistry with representational or creative human activities. While this includes the visual arts and music, I focus here on examples from poetry and fiction to illustrate different degrees of the integration for which we strive. First, Emerson’s poem “The Adirondacs” emphasizes the extent to which the history of science and scientific discovery in the Adirondacks penetrates even “the expression of the Imagination”; second, a passage from Russell Banks’s novel Cloudsplitter reveals a deeper richness and, I believe, significance when the relationship between abandoned farms and forest succession is examined. In 1858, Ralph Waldo Emerson led nine other intellectuals of the time  — “luminaries” as he referred to them7 — to spend a month at Follensby Pond in the western part of the Adirondacks. One of the members was the painter William James Stillman, who captured the party (the painting now resides in Massachusetts at the Concord Free Library); notably, on the left of Stillman’s painting, is Louis Agassiz, “without doubt the greatest and most influential naturalist of nineteenth-century America,”

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as described by Stephen Jay Gould,8 despite Agassiz’s persistent creationist viewpoint. As described in Paul Schneider’s The Adirondacks, Agassiz is purported to be leading a dissection of a fish in Stillman’s painting.9 It may be true; he was indeed an expert on fish systematics, as well as being a stellar geologist. Louis Agassiz was Swiss, recruited by Harvard from Neuchâtel, and was a practical, field-trained, natural historian. Emerson, in his poem “The Adirondacs,” describes Agassiz’s activities in the Philosophers’ Camp: Two Doctors in the camp Dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout’s brain, Captured the lizard, salamander, shrew, Crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow, and moth; Insatiate skill in water or in air Waved the scoop-net, and nothing came amiss; The while, one leaden pot of alcohol Gave an impartial tomb to all the kinds. Not less the ambitious botanist sought plants, Orchis and gentian, fern, and long whip-scirpus, Rosy polygonum, lake-margin’s pride, Hypnum and hydnum, mushroom, sponge, and moss, Or harebell nodding in the gorge of falls. Above, the eagle flew, the osprey screamed, The raven croacked, owls hooted, the woodpecker Loud hammered, and the heron rose in the swamp. As water poured through hollows of the hills To feed this wealth of lakes and rivulets, So nature shed all beauty lavishly From her redundant horn. . . . We flee away from cities, but we bring The best of cities with us, these learned classifiers, Men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of experts. We praise the guide, we praise the forest life; But will we sacrifice our dear-bought lore Of books and arts and trained experiment, Or count the Sioux a match for Agassiz? O no, not we!10

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The poem provides an opportunity to discuss the context of early tourism in the Adirondacks, and the developing constituencies interested in recreation in the Park, and the significance of these intellectual “luminaries” in this regard. But it also provides a point of departure for examining the context of scientific knowledge and discovery at this time, and particularly how it pertained to the Adirondacks. Emerson clearly places scientific knowledge above that of the “forest life,” reflecting the ascendancy of science in western intellectual society at the time. He also documents an impressive record of Agassiz’s (and the botanist’s) collections during their time in camp. Part of Agassiz’s legacy at Harvard was the fruit of his many collecting expeditions from around the globe, which contributed to the valuable holdings at the Museum of Comparative Zoology; it can be said that this period in the history of natural sciences was marked by the documentation of diversity of life: species among habitats and the comparative anatomy among species. That Agassiz would bring such collection efforts to the Philosophers’ Camp probably reflects the lack of knowledge of diversity in the Adirondack region up to this point. Agassiz provided another notable contribution to our scientific under­ standing of the Adirondacks, one that not only touches upon another scientific discipline but also provides students with an awareness of a strikingly visual characteristic of the region. This was his radical (at the time) interpretation that many Adirondack landscape features, such as eskers, drumlins, kettle ponds, and moraines, were created by glaciation. One of the most remarkable and commonly encountered features in the Adirondacks is erratics, large boulders seemingly placed at random across the countryside. Perhaps the most popular traditional view at the time held that the Great Flood lifted these mammoth rocks and deposited them when the waters receded; Agassiz challenged that in an 1840 publication, 18 years before the Philosophers’ Camp. Russell Banks’s historical novel Cloudsplitter is an ambitious one for our course and students, not only for its length but also for its long descriptive narratives, early 1800s setting of language and custom, and the extremist perspective it presents. Cloudsplitter serves our course in a number of ways; in addition to giving life to the story of John Brown and the abolitionist movement, there are elegant representations of life in the Adirondack High Peaks region, through all seasons, with vivid images of the rural struggle in the first half of the nineteenth century. The

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tanning industry and its use of hemlock bark, the progressive clearing of land for grazing and tillage, and organization of agricultural society all provide an historical view of mid- and post-settlement Adirondack society that is a uniquely valuable context for our students. Our reading of Cloudsplitter is necessarily truncated; we read several excerpts over a week of the course. It is a severely limited treatment, but how can we use it to promote an integrative understanding of the Adirondacks? The story spans the years that John Brown had a homestead in North Elba near Lake Placid, through to the raid on Harper’s Ferry; it is narrated by John Brown’s only surviving son, Owen. The novel opens with Owen recounting his return to North Elba for the reinterment of his brothers and other members of his father’s party, 30 years after the failed raid. The narrative context is his being drawn back, piqued by academic researchers, to consider his former life and the events leading to Kansas and Harper’s Ferry. His narrative sense of place might be similar to what many students and visitors imagine and experience in the High Peaks region: I had long believed . . . that I would arrive at North Elba from the east . . . that I would emerge from the broad shade of Mount Tahawas and McIntyre. At my back, long streaks of early morning sunlight would slide through familiar notches in the mighty Adirondacks Range and splash down the valleys and spread out at my feet before me like a golden sea washing across the tableland . . . with the snow covered peak of Whiteface beyond the house and a crisp Canada wind striking out of the Northwest.11

However, Owen is confronted with a very different image upon his actual return: I came walking alone out of the northwest, with Lake Placid and scarred old Whiteface Mountain at my back . . . I was not alone on the road . . . behind them, where the road emerged from an overhanging thatch of tall white pines, came a second group . . . There was a light wind soughing in the high branches of the pines. On my right, set up in the sugar maples, was the Thompson farm, gone to ruin now, with the barn half-fallen and the field on either side shifting back to chokecherry and scrub pine . . . Beyond the house, sheds, and barn . . . a grove of paper-white birches mingled with aspens on an

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uphill meadow . . . On the further slopes, dark maples and oak switches twitched leafless in the breeze.12

In the space of a few paragraphs and a short walk, Banks mentions eight species, seven of trees, over a fifth of the trees found in the High Peaks region. He provides a cast of characters for examination of forest succession, particularly that associated with abandoned farms, a model system of one type of succession in the Adirondacks. Farming in the Adirondacks was a marginal activity, economically. The weather patterns led to short growing seasons and caused limited decay and nutrient release in the soil, and with glacial deposition and erosion, the soils were rocky and infertile. By the mid-1800s, farms were being abandoned for a number of reasons: the industrial revolution provided an economically attractive urban alternative to this hardscrabble —  felsenmeer farming — agriculture; accessibility to the West, to prairie grass­lands and prospecting, was enhanced by improved rail networks; and the Civil War drew an upcoming generation of men away from the land.13 The image of abandoned farms that Owen describes is still a vivid one for the region 150 years later. Succession is the replacement of species in a community, over time or space, along an environmental gradient; that gradient can be elevation, moisture, nutrients, light, or other parameters. The exciting dynamic of succession is that species that appear first can change the environment, rendering conditions more suitable for other species and thereby leading to their own demise. With relatively limited diversity in the High Peaks, it is possible (even within the confines of this interdisciplinary course) to teach students recognition of species and understanding of successional stages that they may find while hiking or reading. Knowledge of the typical growth conditions for the species that Owen mentions reveals the process of reclamation of farmland by the forest that those species represent. The road Owen traveled upon is lined with Eastern white pines (Pinus strobus), which are abundant in the Adirondacks; they are the tallest and fastest growing of the soft woods or conifers, “the aristocrat” as described by Edwin Ketchledge.14 It is an early pioneer and aggressive invader of disturbed areas, especially abandoned fields, able to thrive in sandy and nutrient-poor soils. It is known as a “catastrophe species” by foresters for appearing in areas of drastic disturbance.15 The Thompson farm of Cloudsplitter is set among sugar maples (Acer sac-

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charum), the iconic tree species of the Adirondacks, a source of fall color and syrup. It is associated with mature, climax forest communities, in part because it is also the most tolerant hardwood, thriving in the open and surviving in shade, such as under faster-growing pioneering pines; seedlings in such conditions will grow faster to take advantage of breaks in the canopy through the death of taller, less tolerant, trees.16 The paper or “white” birch (Betula papyrifera) on the uphill meadow of the Thompson farm is another great pioneering aggressor; it is associated with the soils most severely depleted of organics. Its seed is prolific, disperses easily, and germinates rapidly, stabilizing sites and establishing stands quickly. It is intolerant of shade, and so cannot follow itself, but prepares the way for the next species in succession.17 Mixed with the birch are aspen, of which there are two species found in the High Peaks region, quaking (Populus tremuloides) and bigtooth (P. grandidentata); both are opportunist pioneers and commonly found with paper birch in disturbed areas. In addition to seeds that parachute away by tiny hairs, new trees sprout from roots to contribute to aspens’ excellence in dominating newly available areas.18 In contrast, Owen observes dark (red) maple (Acer rubrum) and oak (northern red, Quercus rubra, the only oak native to the High Peaks region) on more distant (uncleared) slopes. These species are less tolerant, associated with late stages of succession or more mature communities.19 Armed with this knowledge, what are students to do with it while reading Cloudsplitter? Ideally, we would like the students to begin to landscape the reading in their mind’s eye, infer ecology from what is being described to them in Owen’s descriptive narrative. Yes, Banks states the obvious, that the farms are long-abandoned. But the rich description of a mixed pioneer community — “catastrophe” species — that builds as Owen approaches the home of his youth, where he revisits the maturation of his father’s plans and the cause of his exile, and when he sees for the first time the graves of his family, brings a deeper sense of the passage of time and the distance of these tragic events. It belies abandonment not only of the farms in that community but also of an earlier life. There are, of course, considerable limitations in our attempts of inte­ grating science and literature in the teaching of the Adirondacks. We can’t go into any significant amount of detail; our treatment is no replacement for courses in forest ecology or environmental literature. So, what is the value of our efforts for students? We hope that the next time

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our students go into the Adirondacks, they can know the place from new perspectives that are mutually informative, a different way of knowing from that which they receive in their major or monodisciplinary courses. Ideally, we hope that when they visit or read about other, perhaps similar but not necessarily so, environments, their work in our course will prompt a recognition of the complexities of sense of place and of how breadth of perspective can contribute to a depth of knowledge in regional studies.

Literature of the Adirondacks in an Interdisciplinary Context Onno Oerlemans

An interdisciplinary course on the Adirondack Park poses particular problems for the teaching of literature, especially when literary texts occupy only about an eighth of our classtime. The predominance of history and the sciences in the course, combined with the fact that many of our students have lived, traveled through, vacationed, camped, paddled, and hiked in the region, leads to a general perception of the Park as a clearly physical place: mountains and lakes and forests, rocks and stones and trees. Like Murray, Emerson, Colvin, and Headley before them, our students are drawn to the Park because it is a place to test and heal the body. Students long to get out of the classroom and into some more primary and primal reality, and so they see our field trips in some ways as the essence of the course. Because the Park is wilderness, it is real, more or less unchanging. The Park boundary, the famous Blue Line, exists to mark a space (over 6 million acres) that has naturally revealed itself and has been more or less preserved by the wisdom of conservationist elders. As a literature professor and only partially regenerated deconstructionist, I am strongly inclined to undermine this easy conception of the material reality of the Park — to say with Alan Liu, William Cronon, and many others, that there is no “there” there — that the reality of the Park is the history of the ideas we have had of it. Most of all, I’m inclined to point to the Blue Line as a symbol of this: an arbitrary, entirely human construction. Its only reality is on maps, a clearly insipid attempt to frame and overlay an entirely imagined and necessarily fractured idea onto something itself inaccessible and probably unknowable. The func-

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tions of the Blue Line are historical and regulatory; its shifting shape and size are signs of the shiftiness of our conception of the Park and of the land and wilderness within it. One of the thrilling consequences of teaching this course is to see an easy poststructuralist irony undermined and complicated in all kinds of ways. The Blue Line is of course arbitrary in its specifics. It is a historical and political artifact. And yet it does vaguely outline a place that possesses a clearly distinct physical reality. The Adirondacks are special mountains — new mountains of old rock, a fist of subterranean pressure slowly punching up primordial rock, and thus not a part of the Appalachian chain. These facts lead to a series of other facts: that the Adirondacks’ climate and soils and waterways are different from those of the areas around it, which has had clearly tangible effects on its history. It has been extremely difficult to settle. It is like a piece of northern Quebec in upstate New York, except hillier and more densely forested, with no complete river throughways. Teaching the biology, ecology, and geology of the Park also shows that nature itself is shifting and changeable, that wilderness is never one thing, but a competing series of over- and underlying processes. This is complicated enough, and for many students, it is epiphany enough. But the teaching of literature, of the centrality or power of imagination in confronting nature, is still useful in this context. A fundamental reality of the Park is still what we make it in our imaginations, and indeed people have imagined — and continue to imagine it — in wildly conflicting ways. That this conflict is possible, that given the reality of rocks and lakes and trees, people can imagine wilderness, escape, wealth, home, otherness, sublimity, and the picturesque, to name only a few of dozens of categories, is one of several funda­mental insights our course offers. So while my colleagues in the natural sciences attempt to reveal some of the complexity of the physical reality of the landscape and ecology of the Park, with them I attempt to reveal some of the complexity and processes of the imagined reality, or the reality produced by the imagination. It’s obvious that many of the current conflicts in the Park, centered on issues of development and preservation, arise out of how the space of the Park is imagined as much as it actually is. Teaching literature about the region reveals not only that this place has been imagined in dramatically different ways but also that the imagination affects and in some ways reconfigures it.

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William Murray’s Adventures in the Wilderness (1869) provides a clear example of how imagining a place has directly affected what it becomes. It is also an unintentionally comic example of what happens when you blend a guide book with fiction. Murray celebrates the Adirondack region as rivaling Switzerland in scenery, for being easily accessible by virtually anyone, for great hunting and fishing, and for rapidly improving the mental and physical health of all who travel there. (Indeed, himself a minister, he urges that “every church make up a purse, and pack its worn and weary pastor off to the North Woods for a four weeks’ jaunt,” since “it is astonishing how much a loving, spiritually-minded people can bore their minister.”20) The success of the book, and as many inspired tourists discovered, its greatest scam, was to insist that travel to and within the Park was extraordinarily easy and cheap. The black fly, he insisted, is “a monster existing only in men’s feverish imaginations,”21 and the mosquito could be easily countered by making sure that all parts of one’s body were covered in clothing, netting, or tar. Most surprising, Murray insisted that visiting the Adirondack region required absolutely no “physical exertion”: “It is the laziest of all imaginable places, if you incline to indolence. Tramping is unknown in this region. Wherever you wish to go your guide paddles you.”22 Complete with detailed accounts of how to get to the wilderness, what to bring, and how much it would cost, this most famous guide to the Park is padded with highly dramatized accounts of Murray’s specific adventures, which include running his boats over nonexistent falls and shooting at a loon in revenge for the loon’s calls having spooked a deer he’d been hunting the evening before. Most of us would be hard pressed to classify Murray’s work as “literary,” and yet it is perhaps the most obvious example of how writing has affected people’s perceptions of the Adirondacks. Murray did not create the idea of wilderness as sublime, as a place where one might meet God, where body and soul could be healed and made strong, recuperating from the disease and weakness of cultured and citied life; he did, though, inextricably link the Adirondack region with these imagined realities. And he significantly helped to instigate the first major wave of tourism in the 1870s that began the development of communities, facilities, and homes that existed primarily to serve tourists, rather than loggers, trappers, miners, and farmers who had been the Park’s primary residents. As mentioned above, we also teach Emerson’s poem “The Adiron-

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dacs,” first published in 1867. Simply introducing Emerson in the course allows us to discuss the rise of Romanticism in the nineteenth century; we can then show too that ideas about what wilderness is, and how it should be valued, changed radically from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Asking students to remember Emerson’s essay “Nature,” we see the beginnings of the idea that wilderness can be understood as an imagined escape from culture, a setting within which we can, as Emerson says, “enjoy an original relation to the universe.”23 More interestingly, and perhaps more profoundly, we see in Emerson’s poem the introduction of wilderness as a place for recreation and vacation. Emerson describes how he recreates himself in the wilderness; he vacates his old city-self, indulging in explicitly boyish games of shooting, hunting, camping. The men play at being Indians, explorers, and boys, becoming, like their guides, “sinewy” and ultimately “Lords of this realm.” We trode on air, contemned the distant town, Its timorous ways, big trifles, and we planned That we should build, hard-by, a spacious lodge, And how we should come hither with our sons, Hereafter,— willing they, and more adroit.24

Emerson celebrates this place not just as ideal for physical exertion, as a way for men to become boys so that they can become men again; it’s also a place where the imagination is given free reign to recreate the self. Wilderness becomes a playground. Though the actual park has not yet been imagined, Emerson’s poem clearly reflects a fundamental conception of wilderness as park — where city folk go to transform themselves temporarily and to play at being something they are not. That this is ever to be only a temporary transformation is clearly signaled by the ending of the poem, in which Emerson is happily called back to the reality of culture and city by news of the successful laying of the transatlantic cable, which brings about a sudden series of celebrations of culture, learning, and the progress of the “free race with front sublime.” We flee away from cities, but we bring The best of cities with us, these learned classifiers, Men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of experts. We praise the guide, we praise the forest life; But will we sacrifice our dear-bought lore

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Of books and arts and trained experiment, Or count the Sioux a match for Agassiz? O no, not we! Witness the shout that shook Wild Tupper Lake; witness the mute all-hail The joyful traveler gives, when on the verge Of craggy Indian wilderness he hears From a log-cabin stream Beethoven’s notes On the piano, played with master’s hand.25

The wonderful or disturbing irony of this, of course, is that Emerson’s conception of wilderness as playground has become fundamental to the way the Park is now imagined and understood by a significant proportion of the people who visit rather than live in the Park. The most significant literary text we teach in the class is Russell Banks’s novel Cloudsplitter. One of the novel’s great ambitions is to reassert that John Brown is deeply emblematic of American culture. Crucial for our course, it also depicts the Adirondacks as crucial to John Brown’s imagination. The novel thus becomes a multilayered reimagining of the Adirondacks as a vital center of abolitionist activity; as a place where freed slaves attempted to establish themselves, in the actual town of Timbuctoo, near North Elba; controversially, as a part of the underground railroad; and ultimately, symbolic not just of John Brown’s violent imaginings of freedom but of freedom in general. The novel is explicit about the ability, and the need for, the literary imagination to continually reforge how wilderness is understood. The novel does all this by showing symbols being constructed out of wilderness through the self-conscious working of imagination. The most obvious symbol is the mountain we now know as Marcy, called in the novel (and historically) Tahawus or Cloudsplitter. Banks aims for the Whitmanesque effect of reinscribing the present with the past, so that the implied ideal reader can come to reenvision the mountain in the present as Owen Brown, the novel’s narrator, does: Off to my left and behind me looms the craggy granite peak whose very name I cannot let enter my mind without Father’s dark face also entering there, for I have come over the years to associate the two, as if each, mountain and man, were a portrait of the other and the two, reduced to their simplest outlines, were a single, runic inscription which I must, be-

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fore I die, decipher, or I will not know the meaning of my own existence of its own worth.26

This is an effect that is, like Brown himself, both violent and liberating. On the one hand, it is an act of naked arrogance, a strong claim by Owen/Banks for us to see the history of a heroic man as inscribed in nature itself. On the other hand, this act of imaginative inscribing is shown to be creative and endless, an essential part of encounters with wilderness. As Owen says at the beginning of the novel in a moment of lyric responsiveness as he returns to North Elba, and following a detailed description of the John Brown farm as we can still see it (more or less) today: I was situated at that moment in the turning of the northern year, when the end of winter and the start of spring overlap like shingles on a roof and the natural world seems doubled in thickness and density. A slight shift in the direction of the wind cools the air a single degree, and suddenly a puddle of standing water is covered with a skin of ice that, seconds later, as the same wind parts the clouds and opens the sky, melts in the sunlight. At this moment, all is change. Transformation seems permanent. I was trembling with a type of excitement that I had never felt before, a powerful mixture of anticipation and regret, as if I somehow knew that eternal gain and irretrievable loss were about to be parceled out equally — as if justice were about to be made a material thing.27

This is a vision of the natural world that any of us might have any time, a lyric evocation of the present, though it is set in the spring of 1889. The effect of this is for us to see the Adirondacks not as wilderness, untouched by culture, but as suffused with history. It has always been inhabited and altered, but it is also still vitally open to re-creation. It shows that wilderness is a physical reality that reveals and responds to our desires for it. We’ve tried to show at least two things in our discussions. First, that in developing an interdisciplinary course that leads to an understanding of a specific place, disciplinary specificity is necessary and useful. The knowledge and methodologies we bring as biology and literature professors are indispensable to the way we construct the course and teach individual classes. We make no effort to yield or soften our

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expertise. Second, the insights that spring from what is in some ways a forced and arbitrary yoking of these disciplines to each other exceed the sum of their parts. We feel the complex reality of the Park must first be broken into the components provided by disciplines, so that they can later be brought together in a deeper understanding of the relationships among them. We have offered a few concrete examples of such insights that we  hope stand for the larger sense of place our students develop throughout the course.

Acknowledgments We wish to acknowledge the help of our coinstructors at Hamilton College, Ian Rosenstein, Robin Kinnel, and Peter Cannavo. Ernest H. Williams benefited from discussion of disciplinary methods with Deborah Pokinski, Alfred Kelly, and Robert Simon. This material was presented as three separate papers in a panel entitled “Interdisciplinary Teaching on the Adirondacks” at the 2004 ASLE Symposium on “Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest”; we thank the symposium organizer, Pavel Cenkl, for his work, and our copanelists Michael Wilson (SUNY Potsdam) and Phil Terrie (Bowling Green State University) for their thought-provoking contributions.

Notes

1. Lattuca, 81. 2. Lattuca, 81. 3. Marchand, 8. 4. Sagoff, 252. 5. Gussow, 27. 6. Terrie, 183. 7. Schneider, 166. 8. Gould, 108. 9. Schneider, 191. 10. Emerson, Collected Poems, 152–153, 157. 11. Banks, 13. 12. Banks, 13. 13. Marchand, 16. 14. Ketchledge, 50. 15. Ketchledge, 50, 52. 16. Ketchledge, 135. 17. Ketchledge, 107, 108.

te aching a bou t the a dirondack s  •  97 18. Ketchledge, 96, 98, 99, 101. 19. Ketchledge, 118, 120, 121, 139, 141. 20. Murray, 23–24. 21. Murray, 56. 22. Murray, 51. 23. Emerson, Essays, 7. 24. Emerson, Collected Poems, 153. 25. Emerson, Collected Poems, 157. 26. Banks, 689. 27. Banks, 18.

References

Agassiz, Louis. Études sur Las Glaciers. Neuchâtel, France, 1840. Banks, Russell. Cloudsplitter. New York, 1998. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Collected Poems and Translations, edited by Harold Bloom and Paul Kane. New York, 1994. ———. Essays and Lectures, edited by Joel Porte. New York, 1983. Gould, Stephen Jay. Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes. New York, 1980. Gussow, Alan. A Sense of Place: The Artist and the American Land. San Francisco, 1972. Ketchledge, Edwin H. Forests & Trees of the Adirondacks High Peaks Region: A Hiker’s Guide. Adirondack Mountain Club, 1996. Lattuca, Lisa R. Creating Interdisciplinarity. Nashville, TN, 2001. Marchand, Peter J. North Woods: An Inside Look at the Nature of Forests in the Northeast. Boston, 1994. Murray, W.H.H. Adventures in the Wilderness, or Camp-Life in the Adirondacks. Boston, 1869. Sagoff, Mark. “Settling America: The Concept of Place in Environmental Politics.” In A Wolf in the Garden: The Land Rights Movement and the New Environmental Debate, edited by Philip D. Brick and R. McGregor Cawley, 249–260. Lanham, MD, 1996. Schneider, Paul. The Adirondacks: A History of America’s First Wilderness. New York, 1997. Terrie, Philip G. Contested Terrain: A New History of Nature and People in the Adirondacks. Syracuse, NY, 1997.

Youth, Refinement, and Environmental Knowledge in the Nineteenth-Century Rural North Jill Mudge t t

I

n his 1846 history of Vermont, minister and author Hosea Beckley lamented the depopulation of a Vermont hill town as growing industrial interests shifted the physical center of the town to the valley below. Beckley described the original hill settlement of Newfane in southern Vermont — one town away from his own hometown — as a place abandoned during the 1820s, even its buildings dismantled and reassembled in the flatter valley lands of the town. With the courthouse, churches, hotel, and town businesses gone from the hill, the few abandoned structures still extant represented “mere desolation and waste” in contrast to the earlier life on the hilltop.1 Distinguished from the new industrial village in the valley by the title Newfane Hill, the earlier hill settlement now rested off the well-traveled path, well removed from important places of business.2 Beckley was not alone in noting the downward trend, as some of the earliest settlements among the drier and sunnier hillsides of northern New England were relocated to valleys now cleared of their thick forests. By mid-century, valley lands had become increasingly populated as townspeople opted for flatter farmlands, easier

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access to water power for mills, and eventually, the commercial connections facilitated by the arrival of the railroad. In some towns in Vermont, original hilltop settlements were deserted entirely and left to return to wilderness. When the town center of Cabot shifted in the early nineteenth century from the geographic center on the hill to the valley along the Winooski River, the buildings moved, too. The last burial at the Center Cemetery took place in 1846; although the town itself survived, the old cemetery and a collection of cellar holes in the woods are all that remain today of that early town center. In other towns, early hilltop settlements lost their public function, as religious and civic structures were relocated to the valley, leaving the private houses behind.3 Fears about the disappearance of hill communities added to fears about the increasing pace of migration out of Vermont in a way that gave many Vermonters pause. The new western lands opening to white settlement during the early decades of the nineteenth century were promoted as flatter, cheaper, and easier to farm than the notoriously rocky soil of the typical Vermont hill farm, and young Vermonters, especially, responded to that promise of a more comfortable and lucrative life by packing up and heading West. Westward migration was underway by the 1820s and continued in earnest for several decades so that by 1860, 42 percent of native-born Vermonters resided outside the state. Others left Vermont for urban areas rather than western farming, but regardless of the destination, those who stayed behind in Vermont viewed the mass exodus as a clear rejection not only of the New England way of farming but of an entire lifestyle associated with the region. That sense of regional inferiority, of being perceived as a cultural backwater, resonated throughout much of the rural North, as the most “ambitious” residents of the northeast left behind what was familiar. By the 1840s, while other Vermonters were making much of out-migration to farm lands in the expanding West, Vermonters like Beckley saw the demise of the rural hill town as an equally pressing threat.4 Those who fretted over the downhill slide of New England hill towns feared that shifting settlement patterns within the region foreshadowed moral decline, and they expressed concern through language that revealed a strong sense of lost cultural values. Beckley worried that the abandonment of hill towns threatened the survival of the Vermont population and that the comparatively easy living in the valley would weaken the physical and moral character of Vermonters, making them

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“a puny race, afraid to ascend and overlook the summits of [their] mountains.”5 Concern over the abandonment of early mountain settlements had less to do with negative attitudes toward the changing marketplace and the industries located along waterways in low-lying sections of town than it did with fear that hilltop abandonment was symptomatic of moral abandonment. Like most of his fellow Vermonters, Beckley did not oppose industrial development and at times described that type of progress in glowing terms; his concern was that as the state grew increasingly industrialized and increasingly centered on village or even city life, Vermonters would adopt accompanying lifestyle changes that would threaten regional culture. In that way, Beckley’s problem was not with valley industry itself or with the material refinement made accessible through industrial development, but with the attitudes with which rural Vermonters approached those changes to their physical world.6 Regional literature popularized tales of death and human loss on the mountains at the same time that the New England hill town began its physical descent into the valley. In December 1821, Harrison Blake and his wife, Lucy, were traveling with their youngest child from their home in Salem, New York, to visit friends and family over the Vermont border in Newfane and Marlboro. When the deep snow became impassible in the mountains near Stratton, Vermont, Harrison Blake left his wife with the baby and horse and sleigh to travel on foot for assistance. According to a newspaper account published a few weeks after the incident, Lucy Blake became alarmed at her husband’s long absence and went in search of him, freezing to death in the process. When rescuers reached the scene, they found that Lucy “had wrapped her child in what clothes she had by which means its life was saved.” Harrison Blake survived save for frostbitten toes, and the baby was raised by her grandparents in Marlboro. Throughout much of Vermont, the unusual event became known as the Stratton Mountain Tragedy.7 Newspapers outside Vermont picked up the story, which likely was how Seba Smith, then the editor of the Eastern Argus in Portland, Maine, first heard it. His poem about the tragedy was published within the following year and later as a musical ballad titled “The Snow Storm.” Smith’s ballad succeeded as a sensationalized version of the actual tragedy by accentuating the romantic element of the story: the mother’s desperate and lonely attempt to save her baby from the awesome force of nature. In

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fact, Smith’s poem erased Harrison Blake entirely, making no mention of his search for assistance or, in turn, of his wife’s search for him. Instead, Smith described a mother and child wandering on a night when “the cold wind swept the mountain’s height / And pathless was the dreary wild.” As the night grew darker and colder and the snow deeper, the mother lost her strength to continue and cried out to God “in accents wild, ‘If I must perish, save my child.’ ” From that point, she “bared her bosom to the storm” so that she could wrap the baby in her mantle and vest, kissed the child, and “sunk upon a snowy bed.” In Smith’s rendition, the winter mountain was an isolated and, therefore, dangerous place, but it did not seek revenge on its human intruders or punish them for their travel. Instead, the mountain provided the setting for a cautionary tale about human interactions with the natural environment that was wrapped in a sentimental narrative of a vulnerable woman who froze in the snow. The young mother in “The Snow Storm” lost her life, but she did so in glory because she saved her baby. That the ballad had a pedagogical quality for children in the rural North is suggested by its inclusion in successive editions of a nineteenth-century child’s reader published in Vermont.8 In a later ballad, Smith again borrowed the image of the frozen woman but shifted it from the romantic tone of death in “The Snow Storm” to a morality tale by making the young woman accountable for her death through her actions. The folk ballad “Young Charlotte” (also known as “Fair Charlotte” or “Frozen Charlotte”) told another tale of death in the mountain environment of New England that served as a warning to young rural women drawn to the fashions and entertainment associated with a more urbane refinement. As with his earlier poem, Smith vouched for the historical authenticity of his work by claiming that the incident had occurred in the country “three or four years” before it first appeared as a poem in his New York literary paper the Rover in 1844. Originally titled “A Corpse Going to a Ball,” it told the story of a young woman named Charlotte and a New Year’s ball. Charlotte did not want to conceal or rumple her gown for the ball, so she refused her mother’s suggestion to wrap in a blanket, laughing, “to ride with blankets muffled up, I never would be seen.” Instead, Charlotte rode unprotected in the open sleigh the 15 miles to the ball, her only covering being her silken cloak and shawl, bonnet, and gloves. At first “exceeding cold,” Charlotte grew warmer and eventually silent in the sleigh until her young escort

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reached the ballroom in the village and found her a “stiffen’d corpse.” Clearly, fashion dominated Charlotte’s concerns, and her adherence to its dictates ultimately ended her young life. 9 It was not out of character for Seba Smith to pen a poem warning against the youthful rejection of rural living. Born and educated in rural Maine, Smith began his career in newspaper writing and publishing during the 1820s. Although he was affiliated with numerous publications in Maine and, later, in New York, Smith was best known as a humorist for the letters he wrote under the name of Major Jack Downing. Downing and the rest of his fictional family from the rural town of Downingville served as literary props through which Smith poked fun at the leveling quality of Jacksonian politics and culture. Rather than simply mocking the rural naïveté of Jack Downing as he made his way in the city, though, Smith’s letters consistently revealed a strong nostalgia for what he viewed as the rural traditions and people of the New England village. By the time he published “A Corpse Going to a Ball,” Smith was editing the Rover from New York, the Major Jack Downing letters had been in publication in book format for 10 years, and Smith himself enjoyed a certain level of literary recognition.10 After its initial publication in Smith’s periodical, “Young Charlotte” was set to music and soon transformed into a popular folk ballad that quickly spread throughout New England and westward. Ballad collectors of the early twentieth century found it surviving intact all over the country, but it was especially strong in New England or in regions with heavy concentrations of New England settlers. Folklorists debated the ballad’s authorship throughout much of the twentieth century, with William Lorenzo Carter of Benson, Vermont, credited as often as Smith.11 Carter was the blind son of a Vermont family who followed the early Mormon movement and its leaders out of Vermont toward western settlements, and he likely spread the song by performing it as he migrated westward.12 Ballads are folk artifacts whose easy transmission leads to stylistic variations, but although the lyrics of the song vary slightly from version to version, the story (and its moral) remains the same: Charlotte froze to death out of foolish vanity. Ballads that described extreme or unusual events were popular on both sides of the Atlantic during the nineteenth century, and, in a way, “Young Charlotte” was just one more example of that genre. But both Maine and Vermont claimed to be the

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locale of the actual incident on which the lyrics were based in a way that authenticated the tale while simultaneously rooting it (in either case) to the particular landscape of rural northern New England. Although Charlotte’s great sin had been that she allowed her love of fashion to control her behavior, and so to disrespect what should have been a harmonious relationship with her native environment, the village ball itself — a traditional event of rural sociability — was partially to blame. Along with various kinds of bees (or work parties), balls had long been part of rural social life, but now the meanings attached to them had begun to change. Rural balls grew in popularity, especially among rural youth, just as religious leaders and others began to question the morality of such social activities.13 The ball itself may have been a traditional event, but the material props accompanying it troubled many rural residents. Often involving printed invitations and formal clothing, balls were as much an opportunity for individual displays of finery as a time for wholesome community socializing.14 The 1849 New Year’s ball in Sudbury, Vermont, was a grand event, drawing an estimated 600 to 1,000 people from the nearby countryside as well as the cities of Burlington, Vermont, and Troy and White Hall in New York. Twenty-sevenyear-old Edward Selden decided to skip the ball that year although his guests from New York attended. In a letter, Selden recounted pre-ball preparations that included hair curling for the men and women and what his guests later described as a night of dancing that ended when they returned to his house sometime after 5 the next morning. Not personally lured by such events, he could only conclude, “it is strange how infatuated the ball going makes people.”15 Edward Selden was not commenting on a new phenomenon in New England — elegant and formal dances dated back at least several generations — but, rather, on the increased popularity of formal balls and on what he perceived as the powerful influence of those social events on his friends and neighbors throughout the countryside.16 Charlotte’s exposure to refinement was not limited to annual New Year’s balls, though, and in that Smith was making a statement about parental, and especially paternal, responsibility for modeling rural values. Smith’s original lyrics explained that although Charlotte lived “in a wild and lonely spot” removed from neighbors, her father’s home itself was a social center:

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And yet on many a winter’s eve Young swains were gather’d there For her father kept a social board And She was very fair. Her father loved to see her dress’d As prim as a city belle For she was all the child he had And he loved his daughter well.17

That opening description provided the context for the rest of the poem. Charlotte’s indulgent father modeled for her a rural sociability that privileged the attention of male suitors and city fashion above behavior that respected the mountains and the winter cold. It was little wonder, then, that she refused her mother’s plea to stay warm if it meant compromising her fashionable arrival at the ball. The values promoted inside Charlotte’s home were in conflict with the natural laws of the mountain, and the winter mountain in particular. Charlotte’s family home was a model of domestic refinement that did not respect the mountain surroundings. What might have seemed like innocuous sociability when isolated within Charlotte’s home was revealed to pose danger to rural mountain culture; attempts at refined sociability around the familial hearth were incompatible with the mountain environment surrounding that hearth. The indulgence of Charlotte’s father provided a context for her values and, so, a partial explanation for her death. Hosea Beckley worried over the growing interest in fashion and refinement among rural youth, in particular, and saw that sort of behavior both as a product of upbringing and as a direct threat to human survival on the region’s mountainous terrain. Arguing that one’s ability to tolerate the harsh winter weather was weakened by what he called “wrong training and nursing,” he concluded “through mistaken notions of gentility and exquisite appearance you may become too susceptible, and shiver before the keen winds of the north, which would only fan the early mothers and fathers of your state.”18 Beckley’s concern was a common one that touched on two popular notions of the northern environment: first, that the founding generation of white settlers had been hardy of body and mind to the point that the harsh weather had generally been invigorating and had at worst been only a minor inconvenience and, second, that the interest in fashion spreading among rural youth threatened not only

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to undermine the mental rigor required for life in the region’s harsh weather but also to affect the physical characteristics of those youth, as well — to essentially strip them of the biological traits of rugged endurance that should have been their inheritance as grandchildren of the state’s founders. If the effect of that lost fortitude would be the inability to survive the region’s weather, parental duty to prevent the extinction of rural culture through example and education became paramount. The perception that the young women of the rural North were adopting the urbane values spreading into the countryside was made more worrisome by a strong nostalgia for the old days when rural values had been guided by a practicality defined by nature itself. Traveling through rural Vermont in 1789, Congregational minister Nathan Perkins commented on the contentment of women in Vermont hill settlements. In contrast to the women he knew in Connecticut, Perkins found women in rural Vermont to be happy, contented, wanting no fancy clothes; seeing those Vermont women living peacefully in what he considered to be utter filth and poverty, he could only conclude, “woods make people love one another & kind & obliging and good natured.”19 Perkins’s old description of the founding generation would have been unfamiliar to nineteenth-century Vermonters concerned over cultural decline, but they would have appreciated and recognized the sentiment. Early role models for young Vermont women included the likes of the widow Ann Story, an early settler praised by nineteenth-century Vermonters for patriotically assisting the Green Mountain Boys and for exhibiting fearlessness and common sense in her wilderness home, at one point concealing her family in an earthen cave that she fashioned in the side of a hilly embankment.20 Other pioneer women worked quietly alongside their husbands to carve homes from the unsettled forests of the rural North. Hardworking and uncomplaining, those women seemed by the early decades of the nineteenth century to be vastly different from their antebellum progeny. Those who believed that such wholesome contentment had persisted for decades only to come under attack during their own generation through the behavior of young New Englanders like the fictional Charlotte shared the idea that nature ought to direct human behavior — that Americans who lived on cold hilltops or among dense and isolated woods should modify their actions to fit within the limitations of the environment — and they expressed concern over what they perceived as nature’s weakening hold on human activity. As with

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the example of Charlotte, those references to a lost aesthetic once guided by the common logic of the environment suggest that the perceived threat to the virtue of the mountain girl was located in the villages that neighbored the mountain settlements as well as in the larger urban areas whose sense of refinement rural villages were emulating.21 The young Vermont naturalist Zadock Thompson also criticized the interest in refinement among the state’s youth and drew a similar connection between fashion and climate. Writing in 1824, Thompson praised the founding generation for a collective character that “partook of the boldness and ruggedness of the mountains,” a condition he viewed in opposition to the interest of Vermont women, especially, of his own generation to “ape the rich.” It was Thompson’s opinion that “growing inequalities” were to blame for those attempts at social emulation; even Vermont women, accustomed to a strong tradition of agricultural industry and economy, were susceptible to the “false taste” of the wealthy, an outside influence reflected in rural women’s growing interest in “excessive ornament in dress.”22 But attempting to emulate the genteel sensibilities of the rich exhibited more than poor or misguided taste: it threatened the very health of the state’s population. Although the state’s air was “pure and wholesome,” it nevertheless was believed to be subject to rapid fluctuations in temperature that caused colds or more serious illnesses such as consumption. Thompson linked the rise in consumption rates on one hand to climatic changes brought about by widespread cultivation of the land, but he felt that the disease posed a particular danger to Vermonters due to the growing “propensity, which prevails to indulge the caprices of the fickle goddess, fashion.”23 Thompson’s concern there was not for the effects of agricultural cultivation on health but for the ways in which fashionable emulation exposed Vermonters to a disease that threatened the population. As with Young Charlotte, fashion was a temptation that flirted with death. Zadock Thompson hoped that natural history would provide an antidote to the problem of misdirected rural values by equipping Vermonters with tools for studying their environment that would nurture a stronger appreciation for nature. Speaking before the Boston Society of Natural History in 1850, Thompson criticized the poor state of scientific knowledge in rural areas: in contrast to cities like Boston, where students of natural history had access to mineral cabinets, public lectures, and library collections, rural students of natural history were often limited to what knowledge they could piece together on their own. Although

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the benefits of studying natural history in the countryside included the opportunity to observe species in their native habitat and to chart localized changes in nature over time, rural Vermonters were handicapped by a lack of resources and by inadequate education that left them unfamiliar with natural history in particular, and in general failed to train them to make sense in any helpful way of the environment around them. Thompson had helped organize the Burlington Natural History Society in 1826 and thought of himself as a naturalist trying to solve the environmental problems of his day.24 In his address before his Boston colleagues, Thompson lamented the introduction of nonnative fish species that decimated native fish populations and expressed awareness of the damage that came from altering the native order of things, but in his claim for the usefulness of natural history to average Vermonters, he was not exactly asking his neighbors to share in emerging scientific ideas about environmental conservation. Thompson implied that natural history would strengthen a weakening sense of place among rural Vermonters that, in turn, would cheer agricultural labor and in general foster a sense of contentment among the state’s population. Rather than becoming “expert scientific naturalists,” Vermonters steeped in natural history would understand the “order, and beauty, and harmony” of nature, and, by extension, the role of God in its creation. In that way, Vermonters awakening to the beauties of the natural world around them promised not so much to create a population of rural naturalists but to reshape human behavior, to hold forth an alternate way of behaving within the environment.25 Schooling Vermont children in natural history was the crucial first step in the project of instilling an environmental sense of place. In a direct reaction to the perceived national and global emphases of other school texts, Thompson and others of his generation designed school geographies that focused on the local landscape. Vermont education reformer Samuel Hall prefaced his 1827 child’s geography by quoting another author’s assertion that it was “more important to our children and youth, as rising members of towns and states, to learn something of their own town or state, than of any other, or all others put together.”26 Working from that philosophy, Hall’s texts began on the local level, offering descriptions and maps of towns and ending with descriptions of the broader world. Thompson’s own 1847 geography for Vermont children echoed that sentiment and presented the state’s landforms in a for-

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mat that narrowed from mountain ranges and rivers into specific townand village-scapes. Thompson explained that Vermont meant “Green Mountains” and otherwise reasoned that the term mountain itself called for little definition, as “all Vermont children may know what mountains are, for they all live where they can see mountains.”27 A review of Thompson’s 1849 geography text stressed the importance of its local emphasis for teachers and students alike, claiming, “the Teachers of our common schools have been, and still are, grossly deficient in a competent knowledge of our own State.”28 That antebellum version of the later “home geography” movement was based partially on the idea that local knowledge was already somewhat familiar to the young child and would better grasp the child’s attention than texts that emphasized distant and unfamiliar places and events. But some Vermont education reformers championed local knowledge as something more than an effective teaching tool. Both for Thompson and Hall, localized knowledge — whether natural or civil — would educate Vermont children in the importance of place.29 For his part, Thompson instructed children in the usefulness and variety of Vermont’s topography and consciously avoided placing Vermont in an inferior comparison to other regions by recasting arguable agricultural deficiencies as positive. Vermonters who had migrated westward constantly cited the superior wheat yields of non-Vermont soil; without denying the limitations of Vermont farming, Thompson reasoned, “if we cannot raise wheat, as much as we please, we can produce sugar, and butter and cheese.”30 Vermont children had no reason to feel that their state was second best. The regional focus of those New England geographies reflected the nineteenth-century narrowing of an earlier strategy intended to foster nationalism within the new republic. In his 1788 essay “On the Education of Youth,” Noah Webster asserted, “every child in America should be acquainted with his own country” in the hope that an education concentrated on what was particularly American about the new nation would result in citizens with firm national loyalties.31 Because geography was believed to be the best means of instilling a strong nationalism — and because the project of defining nationalism in the early republic was simultaneously caught up in unifying formerly separate colonies and in underscoring American difference from Europe — the proliferation of geography texts published during the late eighteenth century emphasized the new nation over either more global or local emphases. To that

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end, Jedidiah Morse’s important geographies from that period placed descriptions of the United States before those of Europe, and while Morse’s text privileged both the landscape and culture of his native New En­ gland over the South, it attempted to outline a unified definition of those different regions as one country.32 In concentrating first on their own state, Hall and Thompson refocused Webster’s earlier goal of forming national attachments to place onto the localized scale of Vermont and its environment, but with a similar desired outcome: to root human identity to a specific geographic place.33 In his narrative of the state’s founding, Hall’s pedagogical goal in underscoring the hardships of early settlement was to “excite the reflecting child; to prize higher, the privileges, he now enjoys.”34 Support both for natural history education and for localized geography echoed Lockean ideas about experiential knowledge. As a boy, Hall had read John Locke’s “Essay Concerning Human Understanding” (1690), and like others of his generation he was influenced by Locke’s theory on the importance of experience in gaining knowledge.35 Dismissing the idea of innate human knowledge, Locke had argued that the mind of the infant was a blank slate that only began to absorb understanding first through sensation of, and later reflection on, experience. Hall translated Locke’s emphasis on experiential knowledge into an educational theory that privileged individual firsthand experience as crucial to the learning process.36 Whether lecturing on proper school-keeping techniques or on ways to expose young students in common schools to the natural world, Hall and others similarly influenced by Lockean philosophy celebrated a common sense wisdom that was nurtured by hands-on practical experience. Indeed, Hall so valued that type of knowledge that he listed common sense as the most important qualification of the schoolteacher. By common sense, Hall meant “that faculty by which things are seen as they are,” a trait different from genius or talent but “better than either.”37 Not an inherent virtue, common sense was cultivated through experience, and, in Hall’s mind, equipped teachers of American common schools with logical problem-solving skills that set them above both more provincial teachers limited either by intellectual laziness or by their own inadequate schooling and teachers of the more elite liberal arts associated with village academies, who were so preoccupied with intellectual trends and with emulating European cultural productions that they disregarded the more useful real-world knowledge of experience. Within that defini-

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tion, natural intelligence that grew from firsthand experience was the mark of a good teacher.38 Authors and naturalists of the rural North who were teasing out their own definition of common sense narrowed the Lockean emphasis on experiential knowledge specifically to refer to experience of the regional environment. Within that more specific definition, common sense became not simply an acquired trait distinguished from earlier biological or universal definitions of the term but a regional trait that connoted a certain morality and connection to place. Unlike Young Charlotte, New Englanders possessed of common sense respected their natural surroundings, knew enough to dress for the cold, and busied themselves not with fashion but with the substantive concerns of education and knowledge. Although it involved some role-modeling and formal instruction at first, once acquired, common sense wisdom would appear wholly natural and untutored in contrast with the genteel intellectual concerns of those psychologically (if not physically) removed from the natural world. Common sense was acquired on an individual basis but only by those individuals whose sympathies lay within the broader human and natural communities. By celebrating individual common sense, then, regionalists were turning to a philosophy of liberal individualism to support a more democratic investment in community and the common good. The possession of individual common sense was revealed through the depth of one’s knowledge of the regional environment and contentment with the traditional preoccupations of place.39 Because few children (or adults) possessed curiosity strong enough to make them want to learn about the natural world on their own, the job of a good teacher was to model his own love of hands-on exploration as a way of inspiring students to develop their common sense skills. In his address before the Boston Society of Natural History, Zadock Thompson expressed frustration over the state of the field in Vermont. On one hand, ready access to the natural world gave Vermonters an advantage over urban naturalists, but minimal interest in natural science left rural Vermont an underutilized resource. In Thompson’s opinion, Vermonters failed to take advantage of the study opportunities before them due to deficiencies in their common school education. Thompson believed that the interest of small children in nature caused them to delight in pictures of animals and flowers, but that without cultivation and encouragement from adults, that interest was soon lost. Instead of fostering intellectual

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curiosity and reasoning skills, teachers in rural schools were focused on memorization and traditional learning by rote. Common school instruction taught students “to spell words without understanding their meaning, to read sentences with fluency, without understanding them” and to recite world geography without any context beyond the map on the wall in a way that “deprived them of the means and motivations for understanding” the “natural world around them.”40 In contrast, natural history would give students a needed tool for experiencing and, hence, appreciating both the rural environment and the outdoor chores that occupied so many rural Vermonters. Over time, natural history would forge new bonds between rural residents and the environment that promised to foster good health and “habits of cheerfulness and serenity of mind.”41 In short, natural history would bring contentment to the rural North and would help to strengthen the bonds of place.42 Strong support for self-taught culture and for the efficacy of hands-on experience as both a learning and a teaching technique ran through prescriptive texts on experiential learning. In a text aimed at boys, Samuel Hall stressed the potential boys had for directing their own education “with but little assistance from others.”43 In suggesting the various skills boys possessed and the topics they could explore (largely natural history and mathematics), Hall repeatedly invoked the name of Benjamin Franklin in an attempt to empower and encourage antebellum boys by situating their intellectual self-culture within a noble American tradition of inquisitive learning. Similarly, Massachusetts minister Jacob Abbott made a name for himself as the author of nearly 200 books that delivered simple moral lessons in stories about children: through the adventures of young protagonists like Rollo, Lucy, and Marco Paul, Abbott exposed his readers to characters whose travel and firsthand exploration taught them about science, cultural geography, and morality.44 As with the character Marco Paul, the young subjects of those texts tended to be from more urban areas, and in addition to being instructive, their time spent in various rural settings under the tutelage of kind and educated country people offered exciting travel adventures in strange locales. In those stories, Abbott presented a model youth, most often a boy, whose natural curiosity and ready acceptance of instruction and guidance made him a role model of morality and of the learning opportunities presented in the everyday life of the countryside.

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The protagonist of Vermont author Daniel Thompson’s novel Locke Amsden (1847) was just such a boy, and by detailing his rural natural smarts and inquisitive problem-solving skills, Thompson critiqued the pedagogical strategies both of the district school and the village academy. The opening scene of the novel was the Amsden family farm located in the valley just outside a Vermont town. As Locke’s father and brother busied themselves with farm chores, young Locke sat outside the sugar­house, ignoring his chores and thoroughly absorbed in a mathematics problem. A passing stranger who had stopped at the farm quickly noted with admiration the coincidental connection between Locke’s love of knowledge and the connotation of his name with learning. Locke’s father was less supportive: an “honest but simple-minded” man,45 he intended for his son to obtain a farmer’s education, meaning that he did not see the usefulness in scientific knowledge, including Locke’s interest in math. In contrast, Locke sorely felt the gaps in his education and lamented his inability to learn what he called the “reason of things” at the local district school.46 Out of that frustration, Locke increasingly turned to self-instruction as a means of gaining knowledge — by reading discarded science texts at home and back at the district school, where he turned to self-study after giving up hope of learning anything from the unqualified schoolmaster. Through the character of Locke, Thompson presented an antebellum interpretation of old Lockean philosophy that was shared by other Vermonters interested in regional culture: at once possessed of natural curiosity and common sense (or natural smarts) that drew him to books and enabled him to figure things out on his own, Locke nevertheless needed outside instruction to further develop his selftaught knowledge. Finally, after a year at the local academy, Locke was ready for his first teaching assignment, a district school in a nearby mountain town called Horn of the Moon, named for a curvature in the mountain “that partially enclosed the place.”47 The mindset of the locals in Horn of the Moon reflected their environment: closed off and isolated by the mountain, residents there were provincial and prone to superstition. But while Thompson’s depiction of Horn of the Moon was critical of provincial mountain thinking, it also introduced his strongest protagonist. Bill Bunker was the local storekeeper and “self-taught mountaineer” for whom “every thing depended on being able to think.”48 Bunker defined thinking as the ability to reason and learn through experience; while he

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acknowledged the benefits of book learning, he dismissed Locke’s academy certificate as a useless indicator of his ability to think for himself, “independent of books,” and to teach his students to do the same.49 More important to Bunker than book learning was the ability to read “the great book of nature open before us.”50 While not a native of the mountain (he had been born to a Canadian trapper), Bunker embodied an idealized mountain wisdom characterized by humor, independence, and common sense in a way that made him the true rural hero of the novel. With the support of Bunker and a formally educated doctor from a neighboring village, Locke reformed his mountain pupils from a “rough, wild, unthinking set of creatures” into “rational beings” hungry for knowledge and intellectual enjoyment.51 Thompson was a prolific local author who, in other works, made clear his association of antebellum Vermont with a tradition of mountain independence, and while Locke Amsden offered a more tempered depiction of mountain culture, its description of Horn of the Moon nonetheless offered the novel’s most positive portrayal of community life. By the end of his tenure at Horn of the Moon, Locke had reformed the locals both by his own example and by equipping them with reasoning skills. All that Horn of the Moon residents had lacked was a little common sense.52 Locke’s story picked up close to the end of his college career, when he again went in search of a term’s employment at school keeping. That time he applied for a position in an industrial town known as Mill Town Emporium. There the townsmen on the school committee fancied themselves highly cultured and learned, but their interview with Locke revealed the extent of their ignorance and misplaced pride. Instead of Locke, the committee selected an applicant as insincere as themselves, a “person of many airs,” who stroked their vanity and impressed them as much with his nonsensical take on pedagogy as with his “shabbygenteel” fashion.53 The striving gentility of Mill Town Emporium was offensive in part because the residents got their attempts at emulation all wrong: among the committee (who were all “below the middle age”) was a tailor who dressed in newly made clothes, oblivious that he was modeling “last year’s city fashions.”54 The false reaching of the townspeople robbed them of critical intellectual faculties, including the ability to gauge the relative success of their earnest efforts at refinement. Locke’s emerging realization that people in cities and villages tended to be “less thinking” and “less reading”55 than country residents was con-

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firmed in the final scenes of the novel, which took place in the much larger village of Cartersville. There, save for his friend the doctor, residents fussed over a genteel social structure headed by the exclusive village academy, and the most elite family in town aspired toward gentility by emulating the dandified interests of the academy instructor. The academy at Cartersville bred envy and social division, particularly among the “young society of the place,”56 who looked to the daughters of the Carter family in matters of taste. The family’s niece was the village youth least impressed by her cousins; plain and sensible where they were vain and flighty, she busied herself by darning stockings while they read novels and English poetry. In the end, of course, the Carter family fell into ruin and Locke married the sensible niece and settled in Cartersville, where (along with the doctor and his old friend Bunker) he turned the village around. Locke transformed Cartersville into a “reading and thinking community” that no longer valued ornamental education over solid and useful science.57 In addition to a treatise on educational reform, Locke Amsden offered Thompson’s commentary on the differing geographic human habitats bordering each other in central Vermont. That commentary on differing village-scapes served as his way of calling for reform of the New England village. Rather than advocating the preservation of mountain hamlets like Horn of the Moon, Thompson suggested that certain aspects of self-taught culture — namely the lingering tradition of common sense found in rural folk like Bunker — were most prevalent in people who lived in close proximity to the natural world. Despite their tendency toward superstition, then, hilltop Vermonters were more genuine than their peers in the newer villages, where exposure to urban ideas on education and refinement had filtered out any lingering mountain values. The character of Locke had been raised on an outlying farm in the borderland between the isolation of Horn of the Moon and the social posturing of Mill Town Emporium in a way that left him immune both to the superstitious beliefs of hill dwellers and to the shallow concerns of the village elite. With his natural curiosity and common sense, Locke embodied Thompson’s ideal vision of a young Vermonter. Saving the village from itself required transplanting the very best people from other geographic habitats (Bunker from the hill and Locke from the valley farm) to the village and transforming them into its most influential citizens.58 In local histories, Thompson, who had been reared

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on valley farmland on the outskirts of Montpelier (then a village), questioned the early decision to establish Vermont towns on remote hilltops, and in Locke Amsden he acknowledged that the state’s future lay in its growing villages. By joining his criticism of fashionable emulation to a critique of standard educational practices that were devoid of genuine thought, Thompson elevated the virtues of reason and common sense above all else; in locating those virtues in the characters of Locke and Bunker, he made clear the connection between the individual possession of natural smarts and one’s familiarity with the natural environment.59 While a close relationship with the natural world did not guarantee common sense, a healthy relationship with nature did serve as a kind of prerequisite for the acquisition of common sense. Vermonters like Zadock and Daniel Thompson viewed mountain smarts as a portable trait originating from the kind of environmental intimacy associated with the rural hills but perhaps most useful when applied to the problems of more populated Vermont communities. Zadock Thompson worried that the “false taste” of urban refinement was eroding the traditional agrarian values of Vermonters, but he viewed the rejection of fashion as more than an alternative expression of taste. Other rural New Englanders who rejected what they perceived as the pretensions and materialism of the city voiced their objections in language that highlighted their own superiority in matters of taste and style. In contrast to urban Americans, rural New Englanders, especially, viewed the relative material simplicity of their own lives as a conscious choice that was both more moral and more sincere than the ostentation of the city, and so could be understood simply as a reflection of good taste. For Vermonters concerned about preserving regional culture, opposition to urban refinement became an act of resistance, a moral stand against the strengthening force of refinement that threatened the very survival of regional culture. As it played out among regionalists, skepticism about fashion was tied to a larger vision of rural identity. More than an expression of rural bourgeois values, then, the rejection of refinement in the countryside was urged in the language of environmental survival. The rejection of popular fashion was posed as a strategy designed to preserve the virtues of youth and keep disease at bay: in short, to ensure the continuation of traditional rural communities.60 Young Charlotte served as a useful warning because antebellum Americans believed that women were more susceptible than men to the lure of

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material refinement. Women were more sentimental and emotional than men in a way that made them prone to the whims of fashion. It made sense, then, for Vermonters concerned over the moral health of the state’s youth to focus on the fashionability of women. While men, too, were vulnerable to the rules of fashion, they were less so than women, and the effects of their participation in the stuff of emotion and sentiment, generally the sphere of women, were not entirely negative. As Hosea Beckley defined it, while dandyism, or “the adorning of the male features in woman’s attire, and with female embellishments,” and the high sentimentalism associated with it were to be avoided, some degree of “an unaffected sympathy” in men was a positive trait that promised to “lighten the burdens of life.”61 Indeed, other critics believed that most Americans, men and women, would benefit from a stronger dose of such “unaffected sympathy;” by the second quarter of the nineteenth century, prescriptive literature was calling for a new emphasis on sincerity, whether in the form of women’s fashion or social interactions between people with aspirations of respectability. Attaining sincerity involved mastering a certain style of dress, and certain facial expressions and body posturing, all thought to be outward manifestations of an inner honesty of spirit.62 For someone like Zadock Thompson, sincerity of spirit had a strong environmental component, and Vermonters’ attitudes toward nature revealed much about the quality of their character. In that way, one’s position on the topic of fashion was an expression of one’s sense of place. Throughout his literary career, Daniel Thompson created young female heroines possessed of sincerity of spirit and, therefore, more interested in appreciating the natural environment than the material trappings of the fashionable world. Like the character of May Martin, Thompson’s fictionalized Vermont women were never oblivious to personal appearance but were literary figures meant to convey a fineness of the spirit more than a fineness of dress. May was one of the few people in her village (and perhaps the only woman) to explore the nearby mountainside. Had she been possessed of a stronger sense of place, the fictional Charlotte would have respected the seasonal weather and would naturally have been drawn to more sensible clothing. Other nineteenth-century Americans worried that the growing interest in fashion among rural women was a manifestation of a new disinterest in the traditional work of the farm, that embracing fashion meant embracing a new ethic of idleness that stood in sharp contrast to older rural values of hard work and in-

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dustriousness. While Vermonters engaged in defining a regional sense of place similarly praised the industrious spirit of the rural North, their primary concern was not for the idleness of Vermont women. Indeed, a heartfelt respect for the local environment suggested something about one’s thoughtfulness, about one’s likelihood to stop and observe the beauties of the natural world. In the case of Vermont women, those believed to be most likely to internalize a strong love of place were women who embodied a kind of wholesome refinement that was more simple and genuine than the extremes of urban fashion but that, nonetheless, suggested a greater thoughtfulness of spirit than was generally associated with the rustic and simple farm girl driven by the practical concerns of chores. Regionalists were not suggesting that youth could demonstrate a loyalty to place by dressing in simple homespun without any concessions to fashion. Instead, they called for a common sense balance between fashion and the limitations of the local environment. The hope was for youth of the rural North to acknowledge — as Charlotte had not — that the laws of nature were more powerful than the laws of fashion.63 On the topic of fashion and rural refinement, New England regionalists were neither consistent among themselves nor on an individual basis. Indeed, Thompson and other boosters of regional identity often condoned a family member’s engagement with refinement because they trusted that she possessed an inward sincerity of spirit that they believed was linked to regional pride. Even as he began to formulate his position as a champion of traditional culture, Thompson lamented that the poverty of his widowed father meant that his younger sister could not dress as she wished and in a style that he, too, felt was necessary for mingling with Montpelier society.64 Similarly, Henry Stevens was invested quite intensely in ensuring that his children possessed a love of and respect for their native state. Although Stevens admonished his daughter Sophia to exhibit the behavior and interests expected of a true “Green Mountain Girl” while traveling out of state, his suggestion for what constituted the idealized Vermont female failed to extend to the topic of fashion.65 In fact, Stevens and his wife wanted to provide their children with access to the latest styles and fads; Candace Stevens made what they often were unable to purchase, and as the children scattered across the country, they reported back descriptions of the latest fashions. Henry Stevens was a strong proponent of regional identity, but where his family was concerned, fashion was not necessarily a coded reflection of internal character. Stevens knew

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his daughter — trusted the character of her upbringing — and so did not worry that her participation in the world of fashion threatened her virtuous character. But perhaps he should not have been so trusting: Sophia Stevens grew up, moved away, and never came home to Vermont to live, leaving her father one less virtuous Vermonter to assist in the perpetuation of his understanding of place. Such examples suggest the double standard that existed among the most prominent voices of regional culture: they publicly opposed behavior that they condoned — or even promoted — in their private lives. Thompson, however, later tempered his earlier concern over his sister’s modest wardrobe: in a poem published 25 years later, he urged his growing daughter to “trust not” the deceptive lure of beauty, fashion, and wealth but to turn instead to “the angel band, Religion, Virtue, [and] Science.”66 Thompson believed that his daughter’s allegiance to those values would provide her lifelong immunity from the temptations of wealth and fashion. Although his daughter remained under his guidance and instruction, he nevertheless worried that she might fall victim to influences more powerful than his own; he could only hope that his daughter’s exposure to religion and, importantly, to science, would reinforce the values he had worked to instill in his children. Poet and author Elizabeth Allen was familiar with both the virtues and the limitations of life in a rural Vermont hill town, and like Daniel Thompson, she played with the usefulness of self-taught culture in the face of limited access to formal education. Born in the sparsely settled hill town of Craftsbury at the start of the nineteenth century,67 Allen turned to poetry and fiction after a fever during her adolescence robbed her of hearing. Although her work expressed a love of place, it also reflected the restrictions of the rural countryside on a single woman’s attempts at economic self-sufficiency and access to education. Her stories championed the environmental literacy that came both from a formal education in natural history and simply from the birthright of mountain folk, especially girls. In her fiction, environmental awareness was a prerequisite not for long-term contentment in primitive nature but for social advancement. Allen’s stories reflected the irony that where rural women were concerned, while their perceived emotional nature made them more susceptible to the influence of fashion and genteel emulation, that same emotion could provide them the kind of intimacy with place that made them good students of natural history.68

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One of Allen’s stories, “The Maid of the Mountain, or ‘The Lone Little Cot,’ ” told of the economic hardship of Colonel Lovell and his family. Distraught after falling victim to financial fraud, the Colonel retreated with his family from the banks of the Connecticut River Valley (Allen did not specify the state) to a “mountainous township, without inhabitants, save the wild beasts of the forest,” in northwestern Vermont.69 Lucilla Lovell, the only surviving daughter, was called away from boarding school to the new family home “upon the side of a mountain,” where, although she appreciated the romantic landscape, her former life of affluence left her unable to “assimilate herself to the manners of the peasant maid.”70 Lucilla’s surviving grade turned out to be the love of natural philosophy that she had acquired while at school. Natural history not only supplied Lucilla the tools for understanding the natural world around her, it also aided in “diverting her mind from gay and fashionable amusements.”71 Her mother was not so fortunate: without her own environmental awareness, Mrs. Lovell was unaccustomed to time spent outdoors and soon developed a “nervous affliction” from the mountain air.72 In that story, knowledge of natural history equipped Lucilla with an environmental literacy that allowed her to appreciate the mountainside around her. Lucilla’s literacy of the natural world was important not because it made her feel at home on the mountain but because both aware of and respectful toward her new environment, she made public the quality of her character. After two years on the mountain, Frederick Raft arrived in the middle of a thunderstorm. Frederick had been visiting Vermont for the restorative aspects of the North when he heard of the lonely little cottage among the mountain wilds and decided to visit for himself. Frederick was a good man — sincere and affectionate — but unfit for permanent residency in nature: although he enjoyed the scenery, it failed “to leave its deep and lasting impression upon his senses, but was succeeded by the opposite charm of the splendid ball, or the elegant pleasure party.”73 As Allen described it, Frederick’s hesitation about the natural world was not a character flaw and did not cool Lucilla’s attraction to him. She did not object (or even respond) when Frederick commented in the flower garden, “Miss Lovell, you will acknowledge that an intercourse with the literary, at least, not to say fashionable, world is indispensably necessary to qualify a mind for the enjoyment of rural nature like this.”74 Frederick left the mountain after his visit and much

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later, after the death of both her parents, Lucilla was able to reunite with him and settle into his New York mansion. While her mountain residency alone did not necessarily provide the ticket to her eventual return to genteel life, the ease with which she adjusted to her mountain poverty displayed her true virtue. Possessed of a wholesome spirit, Lucilla appreciated both the beauty and the simplicity of the mountain environment. Unlike Ann Story, the ideal rural woman as imagined by nineteenth-century regionalists had no interest in an isolated life in the forest or on the mountaintop. In another story by Allen, the moralizing influence of the mountain (or more specifically, of a girl from the mountain) was enough to help reform a bad man. Spoiled by an indulgent childhood along the banks of the Connecticut River in a Vermont village, Howard Coleman was driven by self-will and adored in “circles of fashion.”75 When the orphan Irena Sidney “came blushing from her concealment among the northern mountains”76 to live with a well-off cousin who was neighbor to the Colemans, Howard instantly liked her for herself, but also as a way to get back at his mother, who had attempted to arrange a match for him with an heiress. Although she acknowledged being “born in a forest and uneducated,”77 Irena stuck to her “principle” when Howard expressed his belief that she would “improve by a finished education.”78 The couple eventually became engaged (she meanwhile had agreed to boarding school), soon parted ways over Howard’s intemperance, and finally reunited after he reformed under the guidance of a kind stranger. Her mountain origin had supplied Irena with an innate sincerity and simplicity of character that set her above the surface vanities of the fashionable village, and even in his self-indulgence, Howard had been drawn to that difference in her character. The story implied that Irena would have lacked that powerful sincerity had she not come from the mountain. Perhaps most important, Irena’s sincerity gave her the self-confidence to speak out against Howard when he questioned her birthplace and her education and to critique his unkind treatment toward his parents. Howard, for his part, came from the valley in a way that assured his connection with the wider world. Like the affluent Lucilla Lovell, Irena, too, married and settled into a life of comfort off the mountain. Out of Irena’s mountain poverty had come the correct sentiment toward material possessions, and so, in the end, she was awarded with the material comforts

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of village life. Together, Howard and Irena could enjoy a life that would make sensible use of material comfort and refined culture. Allen’s female characters won in the end because they possessed the correct feelings of sentimental refinement, emotions that were traceable back to their mountain tenancy. Rather than being possessed of a strong sense of place that would have bonded them to their respective mountain homes, both Lucilla and Irena were sincere — we might even say natural — in a way made apparent by their association with the natural environment of the mountain. The social advancement and formal education she awarded her female characters eluded Allen in her own life, and her publications were prefaced with references to the monetary assistance the sale of her work would provide her. After Allen’s elderly parents left Craftsbury for the home of a married daughter, Allen, who never married, increasingly grew concerned over her personal finances. Given the realities of her own life, the short story titled “Love and Disappointment” seems her most autobiographical. In that story, although Albert, the son of a wealthy family living in an “elegant mansion” in a “mountainous part of the state of Vermont,”79 truly loved the servant girl Louisa, his sisters and mother conspired to keep them apart. The combination of a liberal education and natural “solid sense”80 allowed Albert to appreciate Louisa’s modest sincerity, while his sisters, “though naturally mild and amiable,”81 lacked that same formal education and so grew to value external definitions of social status that caused them to dislike the servant girl. Out of loyalty to his mother, Albert vowed never to marry and both young lovers remained alone. As in her other stories, Allen set the scenes of romance between the two protagonists in the mountain environment, while the misguided sisters never set foot beyond the mansion’s walls; still, by rooting the mother and sisters in a mountain home, Allen made clear that not everyone who resided so close to nature embodied its virtues. Without the individual possession of proper sentiment, the landscape itself could not ensure the human morality and kindness that the servant girl needed for her personal or financial security. Finally, by remaining in the family mansion on the mountain long after his siblings had left and his parents had died, Albert became a “human wreck,”82 a hermit prone to “melancholy” and mental “inaction.”83 His liberal education and love of nature

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meant nothing without the sentimental companionship of Louisa, and so the mountain became a place of gloomy solitude. On one hand, “Love and Disappointment” can be interpreted as Allen’s call for village life: had the sisters lived in a more populated village, they perhaps would have had greater access to a practical education with which to secure their moral character. However, in her own absence of material security and formal education, Allen took the effort to align herself on the side of genuine gentility that could only come from an early and intimate connection with nature. In the autobiographical introduction to her stories, Allen at first recounted with some bitterness a childhood during which she had been “denied all literary privileges — three months at a district school, taught in her own house, being all the advantage I ever enjoyed.”84 Instead of more structured schooling, Allen described an education largely supplied by her natural surroundings, and she credited the formative power of that environment, explaining how she had grown up “the child of nature, companied with the wild bird, the wild flower, and the wild mountain stream — which upon my vivid imagination left their deep impressions.”85 By publicly claiming a place for herself among those possessed of natural intelligence acquired through close proximity to the environment, Allen preemptively dismissed any implication of intellectual or literary inadequacy. Read in its entirety, Allen’s writing gives every impression that her love of place — and of the natural environment in particular — was genuinely felt. If we are to believe that Allen shared with her heroines a strong appreciation for the wilds of Vermont, it seems fair to reason that she perhaps wished for herself the same kind of conclusion that she wrote for those characters. That a happy ending characterized by financial success and companionship eluded her must have been a point of sincere regret for a woman who believed that her feelings toward her environment marked her as someone deserving of happiness. Elizabeth Allen was not the only woman in the small northern Vermont town of Craftsbury to consider the relationship between gender, refinement, and the local environment. Mary Sargeant Gove Nichols, born 15 years after Allen, moved from New Hampshire to Craftsbury with her family when she was 12. Nichols’s New England childhood was far from joyful, and as she claimed years later, she retained strong memories of her hometown of Goffstown, New Hampshire, not out of

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nostalgia for a happy childhood but from a desire to “daguerreotype my vision of it for a warning against the creation of another such” community.86 As a young girl, Nichols expressed a tempered appreciation for the natural environment that never extended to a wholehearted embrace of regional identity. To Nichols, the typical town father of her youth had been a simple-minded man motivated by convention and averse to book learning, and a man seeming “to have a spite against nature, which he wreaked on the trees.”87 While she decried the deforestation of her native New Hampshire town, she stopped well short of embracing either the local landscape or culture. Nichols was not much kinder in her assessment of Craftsbury, citing her early impression of that “dark, cold north of New England.”88 Although her parents had not encouraged book learning, Nichols was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of a town doctor who nurtured her natural curiosity both by supplying her with books and by engaging her in conversation. But Nichols’s exposure to books and to an adult possessed of common sense was not enough to shield her from the temptation of popular fashion. As her father put it, corsets had “come in fashion since, even here in the woods . . . and young ladies are ambitious to ape the wasp and the ant.”89 The tight lacing on her corset made the young Nichols ill and short of breath, and it was only after the beloved physician was called in and chided her for her irresponsible behavior that Nichols fully turned from the kind of fashionable emulation that threatened her health. In the end, Nichols also turned away from New England, leaving behind both an abusive first marriage and a life thus far filled with more disappointment than joy to remarry and make a new life for herself in New York City as a well-known nineteenth-century sex and marriage reformer.90 As Nichols saw things, she had been both fortunate and unusual in her ability to overcome the desire to participate in village refinement. Other girls were not so lucky, either failing to see the error of their actions or, worse, finding out too late that their embrace of fashion could have serious, or even fatal, consequences. Nichols’s elder sister, Emma, had been one of those girls, and Nichols presented her story in part as a cautionary tale about the folly of following fashions that were out of step with the natural environment. Twenty years old and quite beautiful, Emma could be self-centered and mean-spirited and felt little love either for book learning or for her awkward younger sister. What Emma loved was the social life of rural New Hampshire, especially the fashionable parties

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and the attention that came from being one of the more fashionably dressed on such occasions. Such refinement had no regard for the northern weather. When her mother pleaded with Emma to mind her cough by staying in, she appeased her by falsely promising to bundle up in her mother’s furs. Wearing, instead, a dress that left her “neck, shoulders, and arms exposed,” thin slippers on her feet and a corset in which “her waist was laced so tightly, that its hour-glass form proclaimed the sands of life fast ebbing,”91 Emma came away from that evening with an intensified cough that lingered and worsened until her young life was over. Much like the fictional Young Charlotte of Seba Smith’s poem, Emma displayed a carefree disregard for the weather, for parental authority, and importantly, for the kind of common sense expected of those who live in the region, and she paid for that disregard with her own life. For all their effort, antebellum commentators on regional culture were frustrated in their attempts to see natural history education foster a strong sense of place among rural youth and to curb what they perceived to be a growing rural interest in fashionable refinement. Like so many other young girls in rural New England villages, Mary Nichols had fallen victim to the folly of impractical and frivolous fashion. Nichols had felt little love for the environment and culture of the rural North to begin with, and New Englanders invested in keeping youth at home worried equally about the lack of attachment to place as they did about youthful participation in the material trappings of refined living. The sensible and sensitive Locke Amsden remained a fictional character, as regionalists proved unable to inspire their children and neighbors to mimic Locke’s privileging of localized knowledge and his high regard for common sense. Nichols’s highly social sister Emma, and even the more practical Sally Rice were much more typical of youth throughout the rural North. Rice was employed as a farm domestic in upstate New York in 1839 when she informed her parents that she would never return to their Vermont hill farm, explaining that she could “never be happy there in among so many mountains.” Rice was happy on the New York farm: she disliked the particular kind of farming performed on her parents’ Vermont hill farm rather than farm work itself. Rice found the hills of her hometown socially isolating and the lifestyle grim. As she explained to her parents, although she wanted to live with them, she would not return to Vermont: she had “worn out shoes and strength enough riding and walking over the mountains.”92 Rice rejected the hard work, material limitations,

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and isolation of the family farm — and in the process the mythic world of rural sociability — and the shorthand of the region’s geography was enough to make her point. The Reverend Nathan Perkins had espoused a kind of environmental determinism back in 1789 with his claim that the Vermont woods made women loving, contented, and disinterested in material finery, but he surely would have tempered that theory had he been able to visit Rice and other young Vermont women of her generation. Nevertheless, Vermonters had believed for a time that teaching local knowledge not only would help to keep the youth at home but would also instill in them the right kind of values about fashion, refinement, and their place within the natural environment. Although a growing interest in science and even a nascent interest in conservation would take hold in the following decades, the idea that education would anchor youth at home never succeeded. By the end of the century, Vermonters had largely forgotten that they had once held out hope for the ability of education to root youth happily and sensibly in place.93

Notes

1. Beckley, 122–123. 2. Robinson, 73–75. 3. For more information on the downhill slide of Vermont towns, see Bassett; and Wood, chapter 4. 4. Through the title of his 1984 study of Vermont out-migration, Hal Barron popularized the term “those who stayed behind” as a reference to Vermonters who did not participate in out-migration; see Barron. For more statistics on out-migration, see the classic study by Stilwell, 64; Holbrook; and Flaherty. 5. Beckley, 36. 6. Beckley, 35–39. 7. Spooner’s Vermont Journal, January 7, 1822 (excerpts typescript by Linda M. Welch, http://www.dartmouth.edu/~lmfwelch/Spooners/look1819.html, accessed June 2009). 8. See Smith, Snow Storm. Both the song’s provenance and the event that inspired it have been the topic of debate; see, for example, letter from C. C. Carpenter to H. G. Rugg [misc 1280], June 2, 1917, Vermont Historical Society, Barre. For an account that emphasizes the Vermonters who supposedly inspired the song, see Young. For popular dissemination of the song, see “The Snow-Storm.” 9. See Smith, “Corpse.” Charlotte was not the only frozen female character sentimentalized in story and song. For a discussion of what has been called the “trope of the frozen woman,” see Mergen, chapter 1.

126  •  te aching a nd l e a r ning 10. See Wyman; Rickels and Rickels. For information on Smith within the context of Yankee humor writing, see Nickels. 11. It could be that Seba Smith wrote the poem but that Carter wrote the tune, or that he was responsible for the most popular tune to which the poem was set. Of eight separate melodies for the ballad cited by one early twentieth-century folklorist, six were versions of the original air used by Carter. Beginning in the 1860s, small German bisque dolls that had previously been given another name were renamed Frozen Charlottes and increased in popularity. 12. On the Carter family and Mormonism in Vermont, see Barnouw. 13. For information on mid-nineteenth century religious opposition to dancing, see Larkin. 14. Landaver includes formal invitations from the late eighteenth through the nineteenth centuries that document the early presence of formal balls in Vermont. 15. Letter from Edward D. Selden to Gertrude Selden, January 1, 1849, Selden-Conant Papers [MS 81], Vermont Historical Society, Barre. 16. For a discussion of mid-century balls as reflections of the new formality of rural sociability, see Kelly, 166. 17. Smith, “Corpse.” 18. Beckley, 36. 19. Perkins, 27. 20. For a good example of the nineteenth-century celebration of Ann Story, see D. P. Thompson, Green Mountain Boys. 21. For more on the tensions over nineteenth-century refinement, see Bushman; Hansen; Halttunen; and Kelly. In her discussion of the religious and domestic imagery in Susan Fenimore Cooper’s Rural Hours (1856), Tina Gianquitto makes a similar distinction between nineteenth-century notions of woodland modesty and artificial vanity: at one point praising the modesty of a wildflower, Cooper later decried the behavior of young village girls “extravagant in their dress, and just as restless in following the fashions.” Quoted in Gianquitto, 172. 22. Zadock Thompson, Natural History, 38–39. 23. Zadock Thompson, Natural History, 16–17 (emphasis in original). Thompson’s comments were later reprinted in his History of the State of Vermont, 237–239. 24. See Dann. 25. Zadock Thompson, Natural History, 26, 24. 26. Journal of Education quoted in Hall, Child’s Assistant, iii. 27. For his definition of Green Mountains, see Zadock Thompson, Geography, 10. 28. Wheeler. 29. For a discussion of S. R. Hall’s interest in local geography and a claim for

you th, r ef inemen t, a nd k now l ed ge  •  127 his place as an early proponent of ideas in line with the later home geography movement, see Hall, Lectures, 25. 30. Zadock Thompson quoted an anonymous poet’s defense of Vermont’s varied crops in Geography, 70. 31. Quoted in Bruckner, 318. 32. On the cultural project of nationalism in the early geographies of Morse and others, see Bruckner. For an interpretation of Morse’s geography as a regional rather than a national text, see Conforti, chapter 3. 33. For examples of the effort to instruct Vermont children in local geography and history, see Zadock Thompson, Geography; Zadock Thompson, Vermont, from Its Earliest Settlement. 34. Hall, Child’s Assistant, 82. 35. On Hall’s early education, see Hall, Lectures, introduction. 36. On the influence of Locke on early America, see Brown. 37. Hall, Lectures, 31. 38. Richard Judd makes a similar case for the emphasis that Americans placed on the practical and experiential aspects of natural history. Unlike their European counterparts, who were more content with straight book knowledge, American naturalists beginning in the late eighteenth century stressed that the study of nature should have a practical end goal and should heed the findings of field naturalists. Natural history in the United States, then, became a much more popular and democratic field than it was in Europe. See Judd. 39. On the idea that liberalism can compliment rather than compete with republicanism, see Brown. For the differing meanings of the term “common sense,” see Oxford English Dictionary, http://www.oed.com. 40. Zadock Thompson, Natural History, 25. 41. Zadock Thompson, Natural History, 32. 42. See Dann; Graffagnino; and Andrews. See also True, “History”; True, “Schools.” 43. Hall, Child’s Friend, 26. 4 4. For one example of Jacob Abbott’s take on childhood exploration, see Abbott. Although most of Abbott’s stories explored rural life, a few focused on American cities or European countries. 45. D. P. Thompson, Locke Amsden, 29. 46. D. P. Thompson, Locke Amsden, 24. 47. D. P. Thompson, Locke Amsden, 49. 48. D. P. Thompson, Locke Amsden, 73. The character of Bunker was, as Thompson explained it, “drawn from a prototype yet alive in the northern part of Vermont — a raw character.” See letter from Daniel Pierce Thompson to Josiah Pierce, July 6, 1847, Montpelier Letters [MS 127], Vermont Historical Society, Barre. 49. D. P. Thompson, Locke Amsden, 60.

128  •  te aching a nd l e a r ning 50. D. P. Thompson, Locke Amsden, 61. 51. D. P. Thompson, Locke Amsden, 121. 52. In his own life, Thompson shared Locke’s ambivalence about privileging book learning above other means of acquiring knowledge. As a young man enrolled at Middlebury College, Thompson claimed to be wary of books as the sole source of knowledge. Letter from Daniel Pierce Thompson to Josiah Pierce, October 12, 1819, Montpelier Letters [MS 127], Vermont Historical Society, Barre. 53. D. P. Thompson, Locke Amsden, 135. 54. D. P. Thompson, Locke Amsden, 133. 55. D. P. Thompson, Locke Amsden, 144. 56. D. P. Thompson, Locke Amsden, 150. 57. D. P. Thompson, Locke Amsden, 231. 58. On the idea of differing “human habitats” in the varying hills, valleys, and villages in one section of Vermont, see Gilmore. 59. For a discussion of rural village emulation of refined education, in particular, see Opal. 60. For more on the village ideal, see Wood. The idea of the competing notions of fashion in rural and urban communities is drawn from Kelly. 61. Beckley, 362. 62. See Halttunen. 63. D. P. Thompson, May Martin, 23–160. 64. Letter from Daniel Pierce Thompson to Josiah Pierce, September 24, 1825, Montpelier Letters [MS 127], Vermont Historical Society, Barre. 65. Letter from Henry Stevens to Henry and Sophia Stevens, December 23, 1844, Henry Stevens Family Correspondence, 1844–1862 [Doc 30], Vermont Historical Society, Barre. 66. D. P. Thompson, “To My Daughter.” A week earlier, in his first edition as sole editor of the Freeman, Thompson had restated another’s advice that “the best cough-drops for young ladies are, to drop the practice of dressing thin, when they go out in the night air,” a clear endorsement of common sense over fashion. See Green Mountain Freeman April 25, 1850. 67. On Allen’s life — including a trip West during which time her parents moved — see “Autobiography” in Sketches, 7–17. For a biography of Allen, see Hemenway, 175–176. 68. See Allen, Sketches; and Allen, Silent Harp. For examples of Allen’s poetic ambivalence about the rural North, compare the celebration of rural nature in “My Native Mountains” with the anxiety over geographic separation from family and friends expressed in multiple poems titled “Lines,” particularly one “Addressed to a kinswoman whom I had never seen.” (Poems included in Silent Harp.) 69. Allen, “The Maid of the Mountain, or ‘The Lone Little Cot,’ ” Sketches, 23. 70. Allen, Sketches, 22.

you th, r ef inemen t, a nd k now l ed ge  •  129 71. Allen, Sketches, 24. 72. Allen, Sketches, 25. 73. Allen, Sketches, 30. 74. Allen, Sketches, 29. 75. Allen, “Effects of Indulgence,” Sketches, 40. 76. Allen, Sketches, 43. 77. Allen, Sketches, 44. 78. Allen, Sketches, 43. 79. Allen, “Love and Disappointment,” Sketches, 104. 80. Allen, Sketches, 105. 81. Allen, Sketches, 106. 82. Allen, Sketches, 112. 83. Allen, Sketches, 111. 84. Allen, “Autobiography,” Sketches, 8. 85. Allen, “Autobiography,” Sketches, 8. 86. Nichols, 6. 87. Nichols, 6. 88. Nichols, 49. 89. Nichols, 59. 90. Historians remain interested in Nichols’s work as a reformer. See, for example, Silver-Isenstadt. I am indebted to David Linck of the Craftsbury Historical Society for sharing an email written by historian Patricia Cline Cohen on the topic of Nichols as a reformer. 91. Nichols, 34. 92. For Sally Rice’s letters to her parents, see Hazelton Rice Papers, 1810–1858 [MSA 69], Vermont Historical Society, Barre. 93. See Dublin.

References

Abbott, Jacob. Marco Paul’s Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge: State of Vermont. Boston, 1848. Allen, Elizabeth. The Silent Harp; or, Fugitive Poems. Burlington, VT, 1832. ———. Sketches of Green Mountain Life. Lowell, MA, 1846. Andrews, Edward Deming. “The County Grammar Schools and Acade­mies of Vermont.” Proceedings of the Vermont Historical Society 4:3 (1936): 117–211. Barnouw, Erik. House with a Past. Montpelier, VT, 1992. Barron, Hal S. Those Who Stayed Behind: Rural Society in Nineteenth-Century New England. Cambridge, UK, 1984. Bassett, T. D. Seymour. The Growing Edge: Vermont Villages, 1840–1880. Montpelier, VT, 1992. Beckley, Hosea. The History of Vermont; with Descriptions, Physical and Topographical. Brattleboro, VT, 1846.

130  •  te aching a nd l e a r ning Brown, Gillian. The Consent of the Governed: The Lockean Legacy in Early American Culture. Cambridge, MA, 2001. Bruckner, Martin. “Lessons in Geography: Maps, Spellers, and Other Grammars of Nationalism in the Early Republic.” American Quarterly 51.2 (1999): 311–343. Bushman, Richard L. The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities. New York, 1993. Conforti, Joseph A. Imagining New England: Explorations of Regional Iden-­ tity from the Pilgrims to the Mid-Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill, NC, 2001. Dann, Kevin T. “The College of Natural History at the University of Vermont, 1826–1850.” Vermont History 53:2 (Spring 1985): 77–94. Dublin, Thomas, ed. Farm to Factory: Women’s Letters, 1830–1860. New York, 1981. Flaherty, Jeremy. “A Multivariate Look at Migration from Vermont.” Vermont History 74 (Summer/Fall 2006): 127–155. Gianquitto, Tina. “The Noble Designs of Nature: God, Science, and the Picturesque in Susan Fenimore Cooper’s Rural Hours.” In Susan Fenimore Cooper: New Essays on “Rural Hours” and Other Works, edited by Rochelle Johnson and Daniel Patterson, 169–190. Athens, GA, 2001. Gilmore, William J. Reading Becomes a Necessity of Life: Material and Cultural Life in Rural New England, 1780–1835. Knoxville, TN, 1989. Graffagnino, J. Kevin. “Zadock Thompson and the Story of Vermont.” Vermont History 47:4 (Fall 1979): 237–257. Hall, S. R. The Child’s Assistant to a Knowledge of the Geography and History of Vermont. Montpelier, VT, 1827. ———. The Child’s Friend, or Things Which Every Boy Can Do. Boston, 1833. ———. Hall’s Lectures on School-keeping (1829), edited by Arthur Dwight and George E. Gardner. Reprint Hanover, NH, 1929. Halttunen, Karen. Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of MiddleClass Culture in America, 1830–1870. New Haven, CT, 1982. Hansen, Karen V. A Very Social Time: Crafting Community in Antebellum New England. Berkeley, CA, 1994. Hemenway, Abby Maria, ed. The Vermont Historical Gazetteer, vol. 3. Various locations, 1867–1891. Holbrook, Stewart H. The Yankee Exodus: An Account of Migration from New England (1950). Reprint Seattle, 1968. Judd, Richard W. “A ‘Wonderfull Order and Ballance’: Natural History and the Beginnings of Forest Conservation in America, 1730–1830.” Environmental History 11 (January 2006): 8–36. Kelly, Catherine. In the New England Fashion: Reshaping Women’s Lives in the Nineteenth Century. Ithaca, NY, 1997. Landaver, Bella C. Some Early Vermont Invitations. New York, 1930.

you th, r ef inemen t, a nd k now l ed ge  •  131 Larkin, Jack. The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790–1840. New York, 1988. Mergen, Bernard. Snow in America. Washington, DC, 1997. Nichols, Mary Sargeant. Mary Lyndon or, Revelations of a Life. New York, 1855. Nickels, Cameron C. New England Humor from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War. Knoxville, TN, 1993. Opal, J. M. “Exciting Emulation: Academies and the Transformation of the Rural North, 1780s–1820s.” Journal of American History 91:2 (September 2004): 445–470. Perkins, Nathan. A Narrative of a Tour through the State of Vermont, from April 27 to June 12, 1789. Rutland, VT, 1969. Rickels, Milton, and Patricia Rickels. Seba Smith. Boston, 1977. Robinson, William F. Mountain New England: Life Past and Present. Boston, 1988. Silver-Isenstadt, Jean L. Shameless: The Visionary Life of Mary Gove Nichols. Baltimore, 2002. Smith, Seba. “A Corpse Going to a Ball.” Rover 2:16 (1844): 225. ———. The Snow Storm, a Ballad. Boston, 1843. “The Snow-Storm.” In Town’s Second Reader, or the Speller’s Companion, edited by Salem Town, 147–148. Brattleborough, VT, 1845. Stilwell, Lewis D. “Emigration from Vermont, 1760–1860.” Proceedings of the Vermont Historical Society 5:2, 63–246. Montpelier, VT, 1937. Thompson, D. P. The Green Mountain Boys: A Historical Tale of the Early Settlement of Vermont (1839). Reprint New York, 1927. ———. Locke Amsden, or the Schoolmaster: A Tale. Boston, 1852. ———. May Martin, and other Tales of the Green Mountains (revised edition). Boston, 1860. ———. “To My Daughter,” (By the author of Lock [sic] Amsden). Green Mountain Freeman, May 2, 1850. Thompson, Zadock. First Book of Geography for Vermont Children. Burlington, VT, 1849. ———. History of the State of Vermont, for the Use of Families and Schools. Burlington, VT, 1858. ———. History of the State of Vermont, from Its Earliest Settlement to the Close of the Year 1832. Burlington, VT, 1833. ———. Natural History of Vermont. An Address Delivered at Boston, Before the Boston Society of Natural History, June, 1850. Burlington, VT, 1850. True, Marshall M. “The History of Education in Vermont: 1791–1969. An Overview and Some Suggestions.” In Growth and Development of Government in Vermont, edited by Reginald L. Cook, 25–33. Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences, occasional paper 5, 1970. ———. “Schools and Society in the Nineteenth Century.” Vermont History 40:2 (Spring 1972): 85–96.

132  •  te aching a nd l e a r ning Wheeler, F. B. “Thompson’s Geography and Geology.” Daily Burlington Free Press, June 22, 1849. Wood, Joseph S. The New England Village. Baltimore, 1997. Wyman, Mary Alice. Two American Pioneers: Seba Smith and Elizabeth Oakes Smith. New York, 1927. Young, D. K. The History of Stratton, Vermont: to the End of the Twentieth Century. Stratton, VT, 2001.

Place as a Catalyst for Engaged Learning at Franklin Pierce University Cather ine Ow en Koning, Robert G. G oodby, a nd John R. H arr is

T

he mission of the Monadnock Institute of Nature, Place and Culture at Franklin Pierce University is the study and cultivation of place, a complex and layered concept that includes both physical landscape features and human attachments and emotions. Locations, after all, are not fully places until we are able to reconcile and unify their natural and cultural features into a single coherent narrative. For the faculty and staff involved in the Monadnock Institute, that narrative expands from observations and sensory impressions to scientific research in wetlands and forests, and ultimately beyond to include community recollections and archaeological survey data about past and current inhabitants. This essay attempts to summarize the study of place in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire from three distinct perspectives: Catherine Owen Koning describes her pedagogical approach as a wetland ecologist, Robert G. Goodby applies the study of place to his archaeological fieldwork, and John R. Harris explores the nexus between local natural and cultural history from the perspective of American studies.

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Land and Community as Learning Laboratory Catherine Owen Koning

When I joined the executive committee of the Monadnock Institute in 1996, I envisioned a regional resource that would shed light on the importance of local places by educating people about the ecological and cultural history of the buildings, forests, fields, and farms of their home towns. My thinking was focused on how the Institute might serve the local community in the broadest sense of the word — the community of Aldo Leopold’s definition, meaning the land community of earth and all of its living inhabitants. From the outset I hoped that these connections would change people’s behavior so that careful stewardship and a deeper land ethic might emerge. In fact, my involvement with the Monadnock Institute has transformed my academic perspective and my pedagogy. Creating the personal links I was hoping to foster in others has changed my teaching, research, and understanding of community. As a result, I have been able to enrich my students’ appreciation of their locale, deepen their intellectual understanding of the relationships between humans and nature, and strengthen their personal connections to the community. Franklin Pierce University’s Rindge campus sits on 1,200 acres of forest, wetlands, fields, and streams, which provides ample opportunities for students to learn the ecology of the area. This outdoor classroom is diverse, and faculty in environmental science, biology, and geology are able to illustrate the idea that every acre of forest is not the same as every other acre. Through repeated field trips to different research sites, students come to understand that the plants and animals that are found are distinct and that their presence is based not only on subtle physical site characteristics such as soil, topography, and sunlight but also on complex historical factors  — human impacts and the effects of nonhuman species as well. My pedagogical approach in our outdoor “learning laboratory” is multi­ disciplinary. I often begin by asking students to observe and record specific data, species, or phenomena, through journals and sketches. They in turn ask questions about the structure and function of the area they are observing, questions that can only be answered by relying on both the scientific method and detailed historical research. This multi­disciplinary approach spirals through all of the environmental science classes, building on knowledge from previous classes.

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Places off the university property also provide fertile ground for teaching about the interactions between nature and culture. For example, in the Introduction to Environmental Science course, which includes a “Population Growth and the Local Landscape” lab, students take a tour of the town, visiting places that illustrate a certain era in history, from pre-European settlement to today. At each stop, I provide information on how inhabitants lived on the land at that time, and I ask students to consider what kinds of impacts these people likely had on the landscape. This exercise incorporates basic information about population growth and allows students to consider the factors that influenced birth rates and death rates in the town of Rindge throughout its history. Although our location in rural New England makes this an ideal activity, it could be modified to apply almost anywhere. There are stops that represent the native Abenaki period, the first European settlers, the agricultural and industrial eras, the “vacationland” period, and modern globally connected times. During this activity, students observe the variety of ecosystems in the local area and witness firsthand specific impacts from hunting, impounding water, intensive farming, retail development, and evolving networks of transportation. Students’ positive reaction to this lab underscores the benefits of a place-based pedagogy. The Franklin Pierce campus is quite rural and isolated, and many students express surprise at seeing so many houses “hidden in the forest.” They are intrigued to explore the remains of old mills and to discover that the lake next to campus originally served as an industrial reservoir. The tour expands their understanding of community by illustrating how different ethnic groups came to the area and summarizing the economic, political, and social forces that lay behind the rise and fall of agriculture in New England. The tour requires students to confront how local, national, and international events are often entwined and how actions in the distant past directly affect wildlife populations and the structure and function of ecosystems today.

Community Outreach The commitment to developing an understanding of place through experiential teaching would be hollow without involvement in the campus community and nearby local towns. In my experience, Franklin Pierce students, building on their preliminary understanding of the local com-

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munity gained in environmental science and American studies classes, have the confidence to actively promote good land stewardship on and off campus. Stewardship of the land is at the core of the land protection and sustainability efforts of the Ecological Conscience Initiative, the “green campus” program at Franklin Pierce. Students frequently conduct research and make presentations on campus and in town to promote ideas for ecological sustainability. Current and past projects have included analysis of the campus ecological footprint, a campaign to reduce the impact of food services operations, efforts to secure permanent protection for undeveloped wildlands on and off campus, a comparison of alternatives for tertiary wastewater treatment, plans for reduction of solid waste and energy use, and a major new plan to achieve climate neutrality by decreasing greenhouse gas production and managing forests for greenhouse gas sequestration. By far the largest project involving the campus and the local communities was the Rindge 2020 project, conducted from 2000 to 2003. Students provided background research on sustainable growth and the local resource base, as well as assisting and participating in the discussions about the future of the town. Based on input from residents and students, the Rindge 2020 project outlined four possible approaches, which were not considered mutually exclusive, that the town could consider: sustain and manage natural resources; maintain and improve quality public services, including education; develop community centers to preserve a small town identity and discourage sprawl; and nurture economic growth to ensure a healthy future for the town and university. Research was conducted on all of these topics, and presented to all townspeople in a booklet. Several opportunities for a moderated discussion followed, allowing residents and college students to air their opinions, identify needed actions, and form action groups. Among the successful outcomes of this project were a land protection campaign that raised over half a million dollars, half from private donors and half from local taxes; an economic development commission; the hiring of a town planner; renewal of the local newspaper; and concrete ideas to enhance the traditional town centers. This community outreach project, as well as the smaller efforts that followed it, allowed Franklin Pierce students, staff, and faculty to put their “place-based” education to work, helping townspeople deepen their

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understanding of their town, build social capital, and foster a greater commitment to resource stewardship.

Research The place-based emphasis of the Monadnock Institute has begun to permeate the ecological scholarship of several members of the Franklin Pierce faculty. Our first topic examined the effects of past land use on invasive plant species in forested areas, focusing on glossy buckthorn, Rhamnus frangula. Using historical data and landscape clues, each forest area was catalogued as cultivated, pastured, or lacking agriculture and was classified into forest type. In each combination of land use and forest type, nine 20m x 20m plots were established, in sets of three. In each set, we removed all of the buckthorn from one plot, left a second plot as a control, and established a third plot in an area where no buckthorn was present, to see if it would move in there. Vegetation was monitored before and after removal, and plots will be assessed again 5 years after removal. Preliminary results show some profound effects based on past land use, with cultivated, lowland sites having markedly higher buckthorn densities. Another ongoing project focuses on the dynamics of wetland communities around the campus. Freshwater marsh, scrub-shrub swamps, and several types of forested wetlands all lie within walking distance of the main campus and provide an excellent laboratory for students. These communities are quite vulnerable to the impacts of land use in the upland areas of their watershed. Starting in 1997, we collected data on water levels and vegetation in the wetlands, and, using historic photographs and records of farming in these areas, we were able to describe the structure and function of the wetland areas as it changed over the last 50 years, largely as a result of the return of beaver populations and the decline in agriculture. Our newest scholarly venture will be an exciting blend of several fields: local history, anthropology, forestry, environmental policy, and ecosystem management, as we work with Keene State College and Antioch New England Graduate School to study the ecology and management of Pisgah State Park, a 13,000 acre park in southwest New Hampshire. The park has a number of old-growth forest stands in its interior and

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contains large areas of land that were never farmed, which is unusual in this region. The park has been identified by a number of conservation groups and government agencies as one of the largest blocks of forest in this part of New England. The state of New Hampshire currently has plans to begin the first timber harvests in the park in 60 years, and a consortium of faculty have stepped forward to assist in the inventory and research needed for a comprehensive management plan for the park. Without such a plan, managers are unable to predict how the timber harvest activity will affect the archaeological, ecological, historic, and recreational resources in the park. The Pisgah State Park project integrates all facets of the Monadnock Institute’s work: research, teaching, and community outreach. Through this project, students and local citizens will discover firsthand the historical and ecological beauty of this land and will see how natural and cultural resources in their own region are valued and managed. Like many of the projects I have described, the Pisgah State Park project demonstrates the challenges and rewards of connecting land and community as a laboratory for place-based learning.

The Monadnock Archaeological Project: Rewriting History in an Outdoor Laboratory Robert G. Goodby

[The area was] a wilderness, inhabited only occasionally by roving bands of Indians [who] prowled these forests for game, or threaded through them . . . on habitual trails to and from their more permanent abodes. (Simon Griffin, A History of the Town of Keene, 1904:29)

The Monadnock Archaeological Project began in the spring of 2001 as part of the Monadnock Institute of Nature, Place and Culture at Franklin Pierce University, which promotes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of place in the Monadnock region. The initial goals of the Monadnock Archaeological Project were to evaluate the presence and history of native people in the region by compiling an inventory of all known native sites and by canvassing local historical societies and town histories for information on native sites, artifacts, or the continuing pres-

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ence of native people in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Research would also include archaeological surveys intended to locate sites, to verify the existence of previously reported sites, and to learn more about their size, age, and nature. As Griffin’s history of the town of Keene indicates, the common belief for the better part of two centuries has been that Native Americans had no significant presence in the Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire. The invisibility of Native Americans in the history of this region has been the focus of an ongoing program of archaeological research by students from Franklin Pierce since 2001. Griffin’s claim that Indians had no permanent presence in the Monadnock region was, initially, mirrored by the results of our research. Archaeological site files maintained by the state of New Hampshire documented only a score of native sites in all of Cheshire County, only a handful of which had artifacts of known age and only one of which, the 10,000-year-old Whipple Paleo-Indian site in Swanzey, had been the subject of professional investigation. Only a few of the local historical societies had native artifacts in their collections, and these typically lacked reliable provenience and were sometimes intermixed with artifacts from elsewhere in the United States, including, in one instance, poorly made arrows with aluminum tips whose identifying label claimed they had been removed from the body of General Custer on the battlefield at Little Bighorn. The lack of artifacts in historical society collections was mirrored by a lack of information on native people in their exhibits and publications, documented in a senior thesis by Franklin Pierce student Angelique Bottomley. This invisibility is particularly odd in that almost every town in the Monadnock region had its origins in a period of history in which native people played a central role. First granted and settled by small groups of English colonists in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, these communities were subsequently subject to attack and typically abandoned during the French and Indian Wars between 1740 and 1760. The attackers, in almost all instances, were the indigenous inhabitants, Abenaki people allied with the French who attacked English settlements both as proxies in the struggle between France and England for the colonial domination of North America, and in an effort to free their homeland from increasingly numerous and aggressive English settlers. That the Abenaki should then be so thoroughly removed from the

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history of this region has its obvious ideological utility, denying any competing claims to the land and freeing English settlers and their descendants from the morally problematic status of invaders and occupiers. Despite this imposed invisibility, other information in the historic and archaeological record suggested the reality was more complex. Much of this information seemed to lead to Sawyer’s Crossing, an area in the town of Swanzey where the Ashuelot River meandered through high, level terraces of sandy glacial outwash soil. It was here in the late 1970s that avocational archaeologist Arthur Whipple discovered a site dating to over 10,000 years before present, which would be excavated and studied by archaeologists from the University of Massachusetts.1 It was also at this location that five Indian trails met, suggesting it was a central place in the cultural geography of the Abenaki.2 Griffin’s history also mentions that this was a location where artifacts were routinely turned up by the plow, along with the occasional skeleton. Also interesting was his description of an earthen wall marking the location of a pallisaded fort, presumably built by the Abenaki during the French and Indian Wars, the location of which is still remembered by a few of the older residents of Swanzey. One final piece of evidence suggested that Sawyer’s Crossing was more than a temporary stopover for habitually wandering native people. The Swanzey Fish Dam, a large V-shaped alignment of boulders spanning the Ashuelot River, was described by the first European settlers of Swanzey as an “Indian dam” presumably used to capture large numbers of the anadromous fish (shad, herring, and alewives) that would come up the Ashuelot every spring. Remarkably, this dam, which would have required extensive labor to construct and which indicates a clear attachment to this place, is discussed in Griffin’s history immediately after his claim that Indians didn’t reside in the Keene area, with no notice of the contradiction. There is some note of the seeming incompatibility of this feature with prevailing stereotypes of Native Americans; Griffin states that “Indians were lazy, and this work of theirs is the more surprising on this account; perhaps there is nothing like it in the state.”3 This was the last detailed account of the dam; it was increasingly obscured by silt from the impoundment of a downstream woolen mill dam, fading slowly from sight and from the consciousness of Swanzey’s Euroamerican inhabitants. The dam site was never subjected to archaeological investigation, and most professional archaeologists came to question its native origins,

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based on a lack of firm evidence and the absence of comparable structures elsewhere in New England. In the summer of 2002, the Monadnock Archaeological Project set out to address the question of the dam’s origin. Starting from just south of the Whipple Paleo-Indian site, 13 Franklin Pierce students under my direction excavated transects of 50cm square test pits placed at 8m intervals along the banks of the Ashuelot. The placement of these test pits was designed to identify sites along the river, to determine their extent, and to see if they were correlated with the fish dam. Our research design assumed that if the dam was used by native people for the intensive harvesting of fish, there would be increasing evidence of native activity as we got closer to the dam, and that there would also be evidence of fires near the dam that would have been used to smoke and dry the large quantities of fish that such a substantial structure was designed to yield. Students gathered this data through careful excavation, screening all soils through ¼-inch mesh screens and recording the depth and associated soil stratum of each artifact. They learned a variety of skills during this project, ranging from mapping using a transit to artifact recognition to the identification of soil types and their relationship to glacial history. They were also encouraged to incorporate their understanding, as anthropology students, of the attributes of hunter-gatherer societies, which tend to be small-scale and egalitarian with seasonal migrations, with the patterns they were identifying in the archaeological record. Finally, they were encouraged to humanize their results, to move beyond the mute samples of stone and pottery they had amassed to an imagining of the sights, sounds, and smells of a community of people: children at play, babies crying, dogs barking, the hum of mosquitoes, the acrid smoke from a dying campfire, and the all-pervasive smell of cooking fish. By doing so, they were encouraged to break down the barrier that exists between scientist and subject and to see the ties that connected them to these ancient inhabitants arising from their shared place and their common humanity. Four weeks of excavation produced a wealth of information about the dam and the native occupation of the Sawyer’s Crossing area, and clearly established the native origin of the dam. As predicted, the number and variety of native artifacts increased in the vicinity of the dam, with the greatest number found immediately adjacent to the dam itself. Native American artifacts found by the dam included stone tools stylistically

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dated to between 2,000 and 5,000 years before the present and ornately decorated ceramic shards dating to the sixteenth or seventeenth century ad. The remains of stone-lined campfires were also uncovered adjacent to the dam, and burned wood fragments from these were radiocarbon dated to between 3,300 and 3,800 years before the present. Further away from the dam, ceramic shards dated between 1,500 and 2,000 years before the present and fragments of spear points dated stylistically to between 7,000 and 8,000 years before the present marked additional times the area had been occupied. When all the data from Sawyer’s Crossing were assembled, it revealed a nearly unbroken human presence stretching back over 10,000 years, destroying forever the contention that Native Americans did not live or have deep roots in the Monadnock region. Following the 2002 excavations, study of the Swanzey Fish Dam site continued. Students produced two senior theses, one summarizing the data from the excavations and the other documenting over 40 analogous stone fish dams reported from elsewhere in the eastern United States. The data from these theses were incorporated into presentations at professional meetings.4 The students from the 2002 field school helped conduct additional excavations in the Monadnock region, working with and mentoring first-year students in introductory archaeology classes. In keeping with the mission of the Monadnock Institute, the results of these excavations were brought to a larger public audience in a series of presentations to local school groups and historical societies. The data were also presented in a conference organized by the Monadnock Institute in the fall of 2002 entitled “Deep Presence: Abenaki History and Culture in the Monadnock Region.” At this conference, presentations by Abenaki elders, activists, and scholars underlined the point that while invisibility may have been sought by some Abenaki people to escape persecution or to shield their children from racism, Abenaki people had never forgotten or completely abandoned this region.5 The knowledge of the Abenaki people received reinforcement from the results of our archaeological research, providing scientific data to bolster the case for deep presence for those in the dominant culture who might put little stock in oral traditions and remembered histories.

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Laboratory at Our Doorstep: Place as a Catalyst for Engaged Learning John R. Harris

Originally trained in nineteenth-century British and American literature, I began to explore the themes of place and community history by taking long walks through the woods of New Hampshire more than two decades ago. Motivated by works like Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, Ceremonial Time by John Hanson Mitchell, and From Laurel Hill to Siler’s Bog by John K. Terres, I set out to learn something about the plants and animals in my own back yard. I followed stone walls up and over the hillside behind our home in Westmoreland, New Hampshire, and retraced old logging roads that disappeared into woods and wetlands. I learned to slow my pace, listen for the voices of the crow and jay, anticipate where the beaver would break the water’s surface, and piece together stories from footprints in soft mud or scat along the trail. Gradually, over a 20-year period, my knowledge of local history and my interest in regional stories deepened. In response, my colleagues in the Monadnock Institute of Nature, Place and Culture at Franklin Pierce University initiated a long-term project to collect, enhance, and publish the region’s most significant stories of place. The culmination of this 6-year effort was the publication of Where the Mountain Stands Alone: Stories of Place in the Monadnock Region, an anthology of essays and recollections published by University Press of New England in 2006. This 380-page volume, organized around the historical themes of first encounters, making land, emptying out, returning, and here and now in the global marketplace, featured unpublished work by 15 of New En­ gland’s finest writers, together with community recollections, historical photographs, maps, and pen and ink illustrations. Every region of this country is distinguished by a set of stories that help explain and characterize how its inhabitants interact with the land. The Monadnock region is known for its preservation of rural character and artistic, cultural, and land-conservationist heritage. The area’s roots can be traced to the diverse communities of individuals who were first attracted to the region: sheep farmers, the Dublin Art Colony, mill and granite quarry owners and workers, and a well-heeled summer population, among others. In Where the Mountain Stands Alone we set out to

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chronicle and celebrate these people and special places. According to author and editor Howard Mansfield, “Where the Mountain Stands Alone mixes history, memoir, geology, and geography. We do not present a straight history, a recitation of dates and facts, but rather the stories that capture the life of a place, the habits and hopes of a community.”6 From the earliest native inhabitants to the recent Monadnock Marketplace shopping mall, the book attempts to capture the elusive feel of one place by documenting the intersection between political and family history, landscape, destiny, expectations, weather, and time. The members of the Monadnock Institute envisioned Where the Mountain Stands Alone as a national model illustrating how the study and celebration of place can give readers a deeper sense of where they live and an understanding of the complex interactions between inhabitants and their homeland. Self-discovery, humility, and making room for mystery are important themes that help unify the essays in this book. As I set about interviewing local elders and researching community archives, I also began to envision an American studies offering focused on local history at Franklin Pierce University. Franklin Pierce, a four-year liberal arts institution serving 1,700 undergraduates in rural Rindge, New Hampshire, is situated on 1,200 acres of woods and wetlands. Four hiking trails offer access to most of these woods, although the majority of students tend to remain clumped near classroom buildings and manicured lawns nestled beside Pearly Pond, a kidney-shaped body of water that once functioned as a reservoir for a nearby gristmill. The university, which opened in 1964, is organized around a central quadrangle that features a restored inn and barn as well as modern classroom buildings and a library. The course I designed, “Place, Community and American Culture,” relies on a laboratory science format where students meet once a week for one hour to discuss ideas, and then, in a second class meeting, spend two hours observing and interpreting entirely out-of-doors. I sought the advice of my colleagues in environmental science to develop a structure for these outdoor excursions that would ensure student learning. Catherine Owen Koning suggested that I devise a list of questions to help students focus, that I impose a class size cap of 15, and, because the emphasis of the course is experiential and because we need to interpret subtle landscape clues, that I schedule this 300-level course as a fall semester offering. We began our investigation in front of the oldest building on cam-

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pus, a timber-frame farm house built by Joshua Walker around 1800. Over the next six classes we undertook a comprehensive study of a single wooded site nearby which includes cellar holes, stone walls, stumps, and pasture trees. To make sense of these features and to instruct students in environmental history, I relied on Reading the Forested Landscape, a remarkable field guide by Tom Wessels, an ecologist at Antioch New England Graduate School. Organized around different disturbance patterns, such as cultivation and pasturage, fire, wind, and logging, the text offers specific and detailed clues for reading these events, as well as a concise history summarizing their significance to central New England. Most class members, even those who have had little exposure to the natural world, enjoyed Wessels’s sequential and detective-like analysis of landscape clues. For two hours on three consecutive weeks we explored this 10-acre parcel of mixed hardwoods bounded by stone walls and a dry creek bed. Each week I gave students a different set of guiding questions, questions that reinforced the lessons Wessels introduced. Students counted limb whorls, interpreted stone walls, checked for the presence of barbed wire, and distinguished between hardwood and softwood tree stumps. After each student had made sense of his observations, I distributed some relevant cultural history. In week four we studied and discussed a detailed 1858 map of Rindge and a genealogy of the Symonds family who occupied this site before 1900. We learned to read and interpret maps and discussed why it is important to construct a visual record of the sites one studies. The following week I distributed copies of the agricultural census records for this farm from 1850 through 1880,7 and we worked together to interpret the data and explain the changes in crop selection and production values. During week five we studied an essay from Where the Mountain Stands Alone that makes use of landscape clues, agricultural records, and oral history to tell the story of several similar sites in Jaffrey, Rindge, and Chesterfield. Over the next three weeks we became familiar with three additional sites on campus. One, a forested parcel that was likely never plowed, required students to grapple with Wessels’s chapter on “Pillows and Cradles” in order to read the complicated history of wind events and winter storms in the area. A second site, which included one of the oldest cellar holes in the town of Rindge, inspired students to ask questions about the motivations and challenges of the earliest European settlers to populate

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the region. The final research site, located adjacent to a newly constructed athletic field, required students to read the history of logging on campus and to reflect on current as well as past land use practices. To illustrate the range of possible approaches for synthesizing landscape features and historical records at sites like these, I assigned several additional selections by Robert Finch, one of New England’s finest writers.8 As well as researching natural and cultural clues, the students who enrolled in “Place, Community and American Culture” were encouraged to interact with members of the local community. The first community member I introduced to the class was Amy Raymond, the former director of the Rindge historical society, a lifelong inhabitant of town, and the last resident to occupy the oldest house on the Franklin Pierce campus. She is an active and generous individual, and students came to rely on her expertise for the remainder of the semester. Although Mrs. Raymond, like so many New Englanders, is unimpressed by ceremony, students were quite deferential to her, and to other community members they came to know during the semester. I believe this is because young people have so few opportunities to engage their elders as resources, while at the same time, both groups recognize at some level the importance of transmitting wisdom from one generation to the next. As one student noted, “This class was a fantastic way to learn the foundation of the land. Having contact with resources like Amy Raymond is the best way to learn about a community.” Our exploration of place also modeled a number of skills and values that are essential for community participation. Students not only tested their individual composition skills by articulating what they discovered about one of the sites we studied, they also worked in groups of two to four to expand on their individual observations and designed a Power Point presentation that synthesized and summarized the research they had undertaken.9 Learning to work cooperatively to research and present on various sites formed an integral component of the research process, for what one student discovered in the historical archives directly affected how another read and interpreted the land. Thus, the study of place using this approach created a community of learners who began to recognize the importance of sharing hypotheses and synthesizing data with others to arrive at a broader understanding of a site they together had elected to research. Or as one student wrote, “the presentations on five different sites created a little town of its own, complete with a his-

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tory of local work and a record of how people supported one another.” In their interactions with local residents, students also gained a better understanding of community cohesion and civic commitment, and a better appreciation for the reciprocal relationship of nurture and need that exists between a small university and its surrounding community. Once students presented their research focused on a campus site, we expanded our inquiry beyond campus to include parcels scattered throughout the nearby towns. One week we explored Converse Meadows, the site of an important pre-Revolutionary gristmill and sawmill in Rindge. Students read additional essays from Where the Mountain Stands Alone that reflected on the importance of water power in shaping community design across the Monadnock region. The following week we walked the rail bed in Jaffrey and discussed how this mode of transportation had transformed the manufacturing and recreational components of the region’s economy following the Civil War. In week three we visited Cheshire Place, a magnificent and short-lived economic utopia constructed in the 1890s by eccentric entrepreneur Jones Warren Wilder, the marketing genius behind the Butterick Dress Pattern Company. The focus of week four became Cathedral of the Pines, a non-denominational religious site in Rindge dedicated as a memorial to Sanderson Sloane, a World War II pilot shot down and killed behind enemy German lines. At each of these sites students sketched, took notes, answered questions, and attempted to integrate details of the place with larger social and cultural trends that shaped New England’s past. Instructing students in the study of place at Franklin Pierce University has become a deeply rewarding endeavor for each member of the Monadnock Institute’s executive committee. We have witnessed how our attempts to inhabit our place, rather than merely residing here, have served as a model for our students and our colleagues, and have provided an alternative to the forces of homogenization that are continually eroding our individuality and diminishing the distinctive attributes of our communities. We have learned that like any other set of skills, the lessons of place require continual practice and are achieved only through a process of slow accretion. To maintain our stores of patience, we meet frequently, spend time together observing and listening, and interact as often as we can with diverse and unfamiliar points of view. We have come to trust that the complement of skills that ground one in a specific locale is at least in part portable and capable of being applied and nurtured in any

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region of the country where one makes the decision to put down roots. Ultimately, all of us who remain involved with the work of the Monadnock Institute hope that experiential, interdisciplinary courses like those we have described will foster a change in outlook among young adults, a deepening of communal values, and a corresponding lessening of ecological impacts on our planet.

Notes

1. Mary Lou Curran has written two lengthy articles reporting the findings of these excavations. 2. Price, centerfold. 3. Griffin, 140. 4. See Goodby, et al. 5. See Bruchac. 6. Mansfield, 5. 7. Detailed agricultural and manufacturing census records were collected for each town in New Hampshire from 1850 through 1880. Students learn to read and interpret records like these and property deeds for each site they explore during the semester. 8. Finch essays I have had particular success with as models include “The Tactile Land” in Outlands; “God’s Acre” and “Punkhorn” in Primal Place; and “The Once and Future Cape,” “A Town Ghost,” and “A Day of Roads” from Death of a Hornet. 9. Power Point, with its ability to display images and text on the same slide, provides an ideal presentation medium. I encourage students to include slides that highlight the primary materials and sources they have utilized.

References

Bruchac, Marge. “Sokoki Homeland from Monadnock: K’namitobena Sokwaki.” In Where the Mountain Stands Alone: Stories of Place in the Monadnock Region, edited by Howard Mansfield, 15–27. Hanover, NH, 2006. Curran, Mary Lou. “New Hampshire Paleo-Indian Research and the Whipple Site.” New Hampshire Archeologist 33/34 (1994): 29–52. ———. “The Whipple Site and Paleo-Indian Tool Assemblage Variation: A Comparison of Intrasite Structuring.” Archaeology of Eastern North America 12 (1984): 5–40. Finch, Robert. Death of a Hornet, and Other Cape Cod Essays. Washington, DC, 2000. ———. Outlands: Journeys to the Outer Edges of Cape Cod. Boston, 1986. ———. The Primal Place. New York, 1983. Goodby, Robert, Brooke Shunning, and Quinn-Monique Ogden. “A Native American Stone Fish Dam in Southwestern New Hampshire.” Paper

pl ace a s a c ata ly st f or eng aged l e a r ning  •  149 presented at the 44th annual meeting of the Northeastern Anthropological Association, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 2004. Griffin, Simon. A History of the Town of Keene. Keene, NH, 1904. Mansfield, Howard, ed. Where the Mountain Stands Alone: Stories of Place in the Monadnock Region. Hanover, NH, 2006. Price, Chester. “Historic Indian Trails of New Hampshire.” New Hampshire Archeologist 14 (1967): 1–20. Wessels, Tom. Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New En­ gland. Woodstock, VT, 1997.

Rethinking Place

Benton MacKaye’s 1904 White Mountains Hike Exploring a Landscape of Logging, “Camp Ethics,” and Patriotism L arry Anderson

A

century ago this summer,1 Benton MacKaye led a group of 8 boys on a 10-day hike across the White Mountains of New Hampshire, from Camp Moosilauke in Orford to the Appalachia railroad station in Randolph. For part of their trip the hikers followed paths that would one day be incorporated into the Appalachian Trail, the long-distance hiking path MacKaye proposed in a 1921 article in the Journal of the American Institute of Architects.2 That 1904 mountain trek inspired MacKaye to articulate a social mission for outdoor recreation — “camp ethics,” as he called it — that remains compelling a century later. “Camp ethics,” for MacKaye, evolved into an all-encompassing philosophy of life — a philosophy which for him always possessed a political dimension. “The lure of the [camp and] scouting life can be made the most formidable enemy of the lure of militarism (a thing with which this country is menaced along with all others),” he wrote in his 1921 article. “It comes the nearest perhaps, of things thus far projected, to supplying

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what Professor [William] James once called a ‘moral equivalent of war.’ It appeals to the primal instincts of a fighting heroism, of volunteer service and of work in a common cause. . . . The care of the country side, which the scouting life instills, is vital in any real protection of ‘home and country.’ ”3 MacKaye wrote his article proposing the Appalachian Trail in the immediate aftermath of World War I, which he had vigorously but futilely opposed along with many other liberals, socialists, and activists who were his friends and associates. Indeed, his original plan for the Appalachian Trail project was a scheme for social reform far more ambitious than a mere wilderness hiking trail. He promoted the trail as “a project in housing and community architecture,” which would include more than the trail and the shelters that are the key elements of today’s Appalachian Trail. In addition, he proposed the creation of “community camps,” which would be used “for recreation, for recuperation, and for study,” as well as “food and farm camps,” offering the “opportunity for permanent, steady, healthy employment in the open.” A “camp community” of volunteer trailbuilders, the Appalachian Trail would represent a “sanctuary and a refuge from the scramble of every-day worldly commercial life,” as MacKaye conceived the project. “It is in essence a retreat from profit.”4 The boys of Camp Moosilauke who followed Benton MacKaye through the White Mountains in 1904 certainly did not imagine that they were engaged in the “moral equivalent of war.” And while they may have absorbed some of the lessons in “camp ethics” MacKaye attempted to teach that summer, neither did the young campers have any way of knowing that they were conscripts in an informal, open-air experiment to test MacKaye’s incipient notions about the social utility of hiking, trailmaking, wilderness preservation, and outdoor recreation. As it happened, their summer adventure had important consequences. In the seven decades between that 1904 White Mountains trip and MacKaye’s death in 1975 at the age of 96, his ideas, writings, and activism would significantly influence the transformation of a variety of American cultural and physical landscapes. A year after his White Mountains hike, MacKaye joined the United States Forest Service in the first year of the agency’s existence. In 1912, on temporary assignment to the United States Geological Survey, he returned to the White Mountains to carry out a hydrographical study,

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linking forest cover to water runoff and downstream flood control. The connection between forestry and flood control provided the legal linchpin of the Weeks Act (1911), the law that authorized the acquisition of land for the creation of the White Mountain National Forest and other eastern national forests. MacKaye also advocated a greater forest service commitment to recreational uses of national forests, as the agency’s leaders, in an effort to protect their political and geographical turf, resisted the creation of the National Park Service in 1916. Frustrated with the increasingly pro-industry trend of forest service policies, MacKaye transferred to the Department of Labor in 1918 to study and promote the creation of government-owned forestry and farm communities. But he left the federal government in 1920, in search of a new career as a journalist and writer. When his wife, suffragist and peace activist Jessie Hardy Stubbs MacKaye, took her own life the next year, the distraught, unemployed MacKaye found refuge and solace in the ideas about hiking trails and outdoor recreation that he had been contemplating since his adventures in the mountains and forests of northern New England several decades earlier. His 1921 article proposing the Appalachian Trail, besides including an ambitious social dimension, launched him into a new role as a conservation leader. He was a principal organizer in 1925 of the Appalachian Trail Conference, the federation of trail clubs that succeeded in creating and sustaining the Appalachian Trail. A decade later, in 1935, partly as the result of a dispute with other leaders of the Appalachian Trail Conference about the organization’s response to the construction of scenic mountain parkways during the 1930s, MacKaye was a cofounder of the Wilderness Society, along with such fellow conservation luminaries as Aldo Leopold, Robert Marshall, and Robert Sterling Yard.5 Sometimes dismissed as an impractical dreamer and visionary, MacKaye lived long enough to observe ideas that he had been promoting for decades accepted as mainstream social causes and enacted into federal law. The Wilderness Act (1964), the National Trails System Act (1968), the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act (1968), and the Endangered Species Act (1973) were among the environmental laws that reflected elements of the “camp ethics” MacKaye had first explored in the 1904 journal of a New Hampshire boys’ camp. The prospective connections between citizenship, patriotism, and conservation he suggested then still echo a century later.

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In his later years, MacKaye recalled that he first began thinking about a long-distance hiking trail along the Appalachian skyline during his hikes in New Hampshire and Vermont at the turn of the last century. That summer of 1904, between his two years of graduate study in forestry at Harvard University, the 25-year-old MacKaye was working as a counselor at Camp Moosilauke, recently established on Upper Baker Pond, south of Mount Moosilauke. He and another counselor, Knowlton “Cub” Durham, led their young charges over 4,800-foot Moosilauke, into the heart of the White Mountain range. Their route traversed a White Mountain landscape in the midst of dramatic ecological, economic, political, and social change. Melanie Simo, in Forest and Garden: Traces of Wildness in a Modernizing Land, has written with insight about MacKaye’s first great adventure as an explorer of the mountains, forests, and landscape of northern New England. In the summer of 1897, as an 18-year-old who had just finished his freshman year at Harvard, MacKaye joined several college friends for a rigorous, almost month-long expedition by bicycle, boat, and shoe leather from his home in Shirley, Massachusetts, to and through the White Mountains. That trip represented the time, as he put it, that “I first saw the true wilderness. . . . It was a journey of Ulysses. I graduated from dung to spruce — from the tang of the barnyard to the aroma of the virgin smoke amid the far night roar of Bolles Brook tumbling from Passaconaway.”6 MacKaye chronicled that 1897 trip — an excursion that became a sort of mythic experience for him — in a vivid diary, photographs, and lively letters to friends and family members. His detailed account of that expedition, Simo writes, “suggest[s] a region in transition, from an agricultural and small-scale industrial economy to one that was beginning to depend on a blend of logging, tourism, and some accommodation of the old and the new, the civilized and the wild.”7 In this essay, I want to consider that “region in transition” as it was experienced and described by MacKaye during his 1904 hike with the boys of Camp Moosilauke. MacKaye was not just an observer of that transition. He also became a significant agent of change on this and other American landscapes. That 1904 hike provided the subject for what was, as best I can determine, MacKaye’s first published article, which appeared in Log of Camp Moosilauke, the yearbook of the camp during its first year of operation. “Our party consisted of ten members, two masters and eight boys,”

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began the article, which was titled “Our White Mountain Trip: Its Organization and Methods.” The structure and tone of his essay mirrored the systematic scientific and technical methods in which he was being trained at Harvard. Under 16 headings, he treated such practical matters as food, equipment, campsite selection, “tramping” (“try to spend the same amount of energy for every given unit of time”), shelter-building, campfire entertainment, and “breaking camp” (“a process very simple though surprisingly long”).8 As we shall see, though, his conclusion, under the heading “Camp Ethics,” departed into the philosophical terrain that would set MacKaye apart throughout his career from many of his fellow working foresters and conservation activists. The hikers, carrying 30-pound packs, referred to themselves as the “Tattered Ten.” Each assumed a nickname, a trailname, just as Appalachian Trail through-hikers do today: “Beer,” “Pretzel,” “Babe,” “Shanks,” “Feet,” “Jack,” and “Jill.” The campers dubbed MacKaye “Farmer,” a comment, I believe, on the rustic persona that was partly authentic, partly a pose.9 The Tattered Ten were figures of the New Hampshire forest who represented a particular social and economic class. The Log of Camp Moosilauke made sure to include the Ivy League credentials of the camp’s 7-man staff. Camp director Virgil Prettyman was also headmaster of New York’s Horace Mann School, where he could recruit young campers from well-off urban families. The mission of such camps, Prettyman said, was to promote “a straightforward, manly spirit [for] gentlemanly, well-bred boys.”10 In those years of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency, the “strenuous life,” as Roosevelt called it, had become fashionable, and it was during this era around the turn of the last century that “private camps began to dot the landscape of northern New England.”11 Thus, MacKaye, Durham, and the 8 young men of leisure in their charge set off from Camp Moosilauke at 2:05 pm on a sweltering August 9, headed north in the direction of Mount Moosilauke. It’s not clear exactly what path they followed, but during some of their earlier trial runs for the big hike, campers had been at work blazing a trail to Mount Moosilauke. Appalachian Trail hikers will know that the trail crosses Route 25A immediately across from Camp Moosilauke. Whatever specific route the 1904 hikers followed toward Mount Moosilauke, they were walking a path very close to the route of today’s Appalachian Trail. That first hot day they covered about 10 miles in just under 4 hours.12 “Welcome indeed was the first sight of the old deserted barn, which

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was to be our first camp,” wrote Cub Durham in his own narrative of the trip. “Rest and food soon brightened spirits, where natural beauty had failed,” he added.13 The “old deserted barn” in which they camped is a fitting symbol and artifact of the landscape through which the hikers walked. It was, in a sense, a semi-deserted landscape. The agricultural economy of northern New England had been declining for decades. Abandoned farms included unused buildings that could serve as free shelters for roving trampers. They were hiking across thinly populated private property whose owners, whoever and wherever they were, worried little about trespassers on their land. The White Mountain National Forest did not yet exist in 1904, nor was their trail route owned and protected by the federal government, as the Appalachian Trail would eventually be.14 There was as yet no organized network of shelters and huts in these mountains for long-distance hikers. They were improvising a new style of long-distance recreational walking.15 However, during the later nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries, the “agricultural and small-scale industrial economy” of the White Mountains, as Melanie Simo described it,16 coexisted with a growing recreational and tourist economy. During their climb up Mount Moosiluake the next day, August 10, the trampers intersected with that landscape of pleasure and leisure. The boys were climbing the first real mountain of their trip, but it was, in some respects, a domesticated mountain. The trampers’ route up Moosilauke may have been today’s Glencliff Trail, which was first blazed in the 1840s as a bridle trail then widened into a carriage road. In 1860, a hotel, the Prospect House, was built on Moosilauke; it was operating as the Tip-Top House in 1904 and survived for several more decades. “Moosilauke also had two purely foot paths,” write trail historians Laura and Guy Waterman, “probably a reflection of this gentle giant’s perennial popularity as a friendly neighborhood mountain for Sunday excursions by locals.”17 MacKaye’s troop descended Moosilauke on one of those footpaths, which he carefully mapped in his own pocket journal. The trail, he noted, had been opened by one R. C. Jackman in 1895 under subscriptions raised by a Miss C. E. Cummings. This route, as far as I can tell, is the Beaver Brook Trail, the current route of the Appalachian Trail as it descends into Kinsman Notch at Route 112. The trail was the work of the lively trailbuilding community that had developed in the North Woodstock area since the 1890s. Like the founders and early leaders of the Ap-

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palachian Mountain Club, these trail activists were led by teachers and professors who summered in the area. The Miss Cummings noted by MacKaye was one of several Wesleyan College faculty members who in 1897 had created the North Woodstock Improvement Association “with the specific purpose of rendering more accessible the many points of interest in this part of the Pemigewasset Valley,” according to one of the group’s trail guides.18 But in these years their trailbuilding efforts were often quickly erased by the intense logging operations then taking place in the Pemigewasset watershed. In fact, as the hikers followed the road into North Woodstock and Lincoln, they reached the epicenter of a New Hampshire logging industry at the very climax of its rapacious logging practices. Lincoln was the headquarters of J. E. Henry & Sons, among the largest and probably the most notorious of New Hampshire’s lumber barons during that era. The Henrys, it was reported, owned everything in Lincoln “but the Catholic church and a little flagman’s shanty of a public library.” “Lincoln is an abbatoir, a slaughter-house of the spruce forests of the White Mountains,” in the words of the muckraking magazine Collier’s, the tribune of the Progressive-era conservation movement. The Henry clan were “wood butchers” and “forest wreckers,” according to the magazine. “ ‘Wherever we can lay a track,’ say the Henrys, ‘we can bring out the timber,’ ” recorded Collier’s reporter Ernest Russell, who found the family members to be disarmingly frank about the nature of their trade. “There’s no secret about this business of ours,” he was told by one of the sons of family patriarch James Henry. “We own the land and the timber and we’re making every dollar out of it we can.”19 Even as MacKaye walked into North Woodstock, lumbering in New Hampshire was approaching its historical peak, which would be reached in 1907 at 650 million board feet per year. Alfred Chittenden, a forester for the United States Bureau of Forestry (precursor of the United States Forest Service), in the year of MacKaye’s hike reported that New Hampshire was then the nation’s “most intensively lumbered state, per acre of wooded area.”20 The young hikers nonetheless found that the infrastructure created by the logging industry facilitated their journey. Their refuge in North Woodstock was Johnson’s lumber camp, a few miles north of town on the bank of the Pemigewasset River. When they squatted in another abandoned barn there, the camp boss ordered them out, “because of

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a fear of fire in the neighborhood,” as Cub Durham noted.21 Fire was no small concern. The previous dry year, 1903, had been one the worst forest fire seasons in New Hampshire’s history, as over 84,000 acres had burned in the White Mountains. During that era of intense fire activity conflagrations were sometimes ignited by the cinder-spewing logging locomotives that wended through the mountains.22 But the hikers were given free accommodations instead in an unused logging camp building nearby, complete with bunks, mattresses, and a cookstove — where they stayed two nights. The tourist and logging businesses were locked in an uncomfortable embrace in Lincoln and the surrounding area. The Henrys, even while they stripped the hills bare, ran a sort of logging theme park. MacKaye bought his group a ticket for a tour of the Henrys’ sawmill, pulp mill, and paper mill. On weekends, the Henrys equipped some of their trains with sofas on flatbed cars, so that tourists, at 50 cents a head, could view and experience the mountain scenery, including the stripped slopes. The excursion train traveled about 12 miles into the mountains to the Henrys’ Camp 10, along Franconia Brook west of Mount Bond in what is now the very heart of the Pemigewasset Wilderness. There the sightseers could enjoy vicariously at least one aspect of the logger’s life, when they were served pies, cookies, and doughnuts at the camp’s “big cook house.”23 Such tourist and summer folk, including trailbuilders like those of North Woodstock and the Appalachian Mountain Club, observed the devastating effects of the lumbering industry with their own eyes. Urged on by influential academics and authors like Francis Parkman and Charles S. Sargent, a growing constituency, which also included hotel owners and downstream mill owners, had already begun to clamor for some form of public regulation and protection of the region’s scenic forest terrain. Woodstock summer resident and one of MacKaye’s Harvard professors, historian Albert Bushnell Hart, was typical of these literary conservation warriors. “The glory of the mountains is departing,” Hart lamented in the Nation in 1896, “and the mountain lover mourns.”24 Creation of the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests in 1901 represented an effort to reconcile the interests of the lumber industry with those of the tourist and recreation business. Soon that organization would help to shape and lead the effort to create a national forest in the White Mountains. By December 1903, the first bill to achieve that end was introduced

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in Congress, but the effort would not succeed until passage of the Weeks Act in 1911.25 The political agitation to constrain the effects of lumbering businesses like the Henrys’ only motivated the company to accelerate what Collier’s reporter Russell described as their “desperately clean work” along the East Branch.26 The Henrys were impelled to cut and sell their lumber before the government clamped down on their activities or moved to acquire their land. The MacKaye expedition on the morning of August 12 rode the Henrys’ railroad about four miles to Camp 4, the junction of the line that led north along the East Branch and a line already abandoned along roughly the route of today’s Kancamagus Highway, following the Hancock Branch toward the divide of the Swift River watershed. For MacKaye, this divide represented a paradoxical landscape, both geographically and intellectually. He tried, somewhat awkwardly, to capture that paradox in his journal: “Henry has ‘got through there’ as he said. He has stripped the Mts. on each side of timber leaving waste patches of tangled slashes. Black Mt. is very noticeable. The scenery is affected seriously. This is about the wildest place in the White Mts.” American wilderness, as generations of activists, politicians, and writers have learned over the years, is not a place or a concept that allows for simple definition. For MacKaye, a founder of the Wilderness Society in 1935 who would live long enough to be invited to the White House signing ceremony for the Wilderness Act in 1964, a landscape that had only recently been stripped clean of its forests could still, at least in 1904, represent “the wildest place” in the White Mountains. The hikers walked along the railroad bed from which the rails had been stripped. When they crossed into the watershed of the Swift River from that of the Pemigewasset, they entered a landscape MacKaye knew well. In fact, they were following a trail he had helped blaze the year before, working with his friend and hiking mentor James Sturgis Pray. Pray was a landscape architect who worked in the Olmsted landscape architecture office in Brookline, Massachusetts, and was just beginning his career as a leader of the landscape architecture program at Harvard. Pray’s Swift River Trail was created under the auspices of the Appalachian Mountain Club, for which he was then the Councillor of  Improvements. The path was an unsung landmark in the history of the White Mountains recre-

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ational landscape: it linked for the first time the trails of the Sandwich Range with those of the East Branch of the Pemigewasset River and the Franconia Range. The Swift River Trail was a harbinger of a new era of hiking activity, which emphasized connecting local trail networks  — previously radiating from resort hotels and railroad stops — into one grand network.27 Pray had elaborated on his ideas about trailmaking in Appalachia, the journal of the Appalachian Mountain Club, a year before MacKaye’s hike. There he proposed that the club construct and maintain major “trunk” trails, as he called them,28 like his new Swift River Trail, “connecting one centre of interest with another. . . . Such paths should always lead from one settlement or quasi-highway to another, and if properly chosen these lines will effectively cover the whole White Mountain region.”29 But he worried about the challenge of building and maintaining new hiking trails in the face of the logging industry’s activities. That problem, he accurately predicted, would only be solved by “the adoption of more far-seeing forestry methods” or “inauguration of national control.”30 MacKaye, in later years, often credited his friend Sturgis Pray, whom he called “a pioneer in keeping improvements out of the wilderness,” for inspiring some of his own ideas about trailmaking and trail design.31 In crossing from one local trail network to another, the hikers had also crossed into another logging domain, defined by the route of the Sawyer River Railroad. They followed the rail line along what is now the Sawyer River Trail, making camp near the logging village of Livermore. With satisfaction, MacKaye recorded that they had traveled 22 ½ miles that day, 4 by railroad, 18 ½ on foot. From their “Sawyer’s River Camp,” as they dubbed it, most of the hikers the next day climbed Mount Carrigain on an “A.M.C. Path” which MacKaye, already a student of good trail design, described as “very good.” This peak at the heart of the White Mountains had for decades been a popular destination for pioneering hikers. The Signal Ridge route that MacKaye followed had been built in 1879, only a few years after the Appalachian Mountain Club’s creation in 1876. The club’s formation had initiated a new era of regionwide consciousness and activity among a growing community of conservationminded hikers. During the hike up Carrigain, they met a member of the club, a “Mr. Nichols,” and his son. At that time the odds of meeting an Appalachian Mountain Club member on a White Mountain trail were

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considerably lower than they are today. Just over 1,000 members belonged to the club in 1900. Now it claims more than 90,000 members.32 The next day, August 14, their departure from camp was delayed as they dealt with the consequences of their own camping practices. Their campfire, it turned out, had started a “bad ground fire.” Mac­Kaye, Durham, and three of the campers dug out two feet of “vegetable mould,” as he described it, while the other boys relayed water and sand from the river in their hats. It took an hour and a half to douse the fire and repair the terrain they had disturbed. No doubt the experience provided the budding young forester an opportunity to lecture the campers about the dangers of fire. They were not so many miles south of the Zealand basin country where the fires of the previous year had been most destructive, claiming at least 10,000 acres by federal forester Alfred Chittenden’s estimate.33 They hiked along the Sawyer River Railroad to the railroad line and road that led to Crawford Notch. Then they walked up that line to Willey Station and the Willey barn nearby, which provided that night’s camp. Among the three other travelers staying at the barn was an “old duck,” as MacKaye called him, who “said that he helped cut the trail over Mts. Bond + Guyot, + the Twins some yrs. ago. . . . He told me of the slide that hit on a big rock + saved the old Willie House, altho’ burying several persons who fled to a shelter outside, s.[outh] of [the] House. Hawthorne’s story of the ‘Ambitious Guest’ is about this,” MacKaye noted. As a member of a literary family himself, MacKaye could well appreciate the romantic reverberations echoing along the valley slopes. These mountains were an inspiring but also an unpredictably dangerous place. A day later the party climbed Mount Willey, again following an Appalachian Mountain Club path created by the club in the late 1870s, hiking without their heavy packs on a clear day. “Boys very appreciative of Mt. Willey view which was very good of the whole White Mts.,” MacKaye recorded. “They said nothing about Crawford Notch.” The next day, August 16, represented the climactic ascent of the trip. MacKaye and Durham rousted the boys at 5 am. They started up Crawford Path before 8, headed for Mount Washington. Cut in 1819 by Abel and Ethan Allen Crawford, the path is “the oldest continuously used hiking trail in the Northeast.”34 MacKaye, for his part, was retracing part of his own first 1897 White Mountains hike. During that trip, his

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party had been stalled by rain and fog for more than a day in a sodden campsite below treeline, finally turning back. Now, 6 years later, he noted that “Smoky Camp,” as he called it, was “grown over with currents + raspberries. Spruce growth is stunted.” The forest landscape, MacKaye was learning, was not static; rather, it possessed a capacity for renewal. They made steady progress above treeline. “Arrived Curtis-Ormsbee Shelter 2.00,” MacKaye recorded. “Arrived Curtis monument 2.13. Near Lakes of the Clouds met 2 men + 2 women. One of the women took our photo. . . . Arrived A.M.C. Refuge 2.30.” In noting the landmarks along this stretch of the path near the summit of the mountain, Mac­ Kaye was also documenting a significant change in the recreational use, perception, and management of this terrain since his 1897 hike. The catalyst for that change had been the dramatic, much-publicized deaths in 1900 of two Appalachian Mountain Club members, William Curtis and Allen Ormsbee, in a sudden ice storm on a late June day. As it happened, Curtis and Ormsbee, both accomplished athletes and hikers, were on their way to the Appalachian Mountain Club’s annual meeting, which was being held at Mount Washington’s Summit House even as the fatal storm raged. The sites MacKaye noted — the Curtis-Ormsbee shelter, the Curtis monument, and the Appalachian Mountain Club Refuge — demarcated the deadly landscape of that day in 1900. Curtis and Ormsbee had tried to protect themselves from the weather in an improvised shelter among the spruce scrub. Curtis’s body had been found along the trail, in a notch between two small pieces of ledge. The modest emergency shelter had been built by the Appalachian Mountain Club in 1901, not far from today’s Lakes of the Clouds Hut.35 Soon, MacKaye’s group reached the top of Mount Washington, settling comfortably into five double rooms at the Summit House. The room rate included meals, and the hungry hikers made sure to get their money’s worth. Reporting for supper at 7 pm, they ate steadily for an hour and a half. “I had 18 orders — the average number,” MacKaye reported. “Von — (one of the campers) — had 29.” MacKaye himself noted that the pretty young waitresses were a new feature at the hotel since his visit two years earlier, when only men waiters worked in the dining room. The hotel’s creature comforts did not end with the food. “First time this summer slept in sheets,” he noted in his journal before turning in that night. The hikers entered the home stretch of their trip the next day, August 17,

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as they set off through the fog, searching for cairns along the northern Presidentials as they headed toward the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Madison Spring Hut. The first of the club’s high-mountain huts was, of course, not the same Madison Spring Hut that exists today. Rather, in the Watermans’ words, it was a “simple, one-room stone dungeon, dank and dark.” Not until 1906, two years after the hike of the Tattered Ten, did the Appalachian Mountain Club provide a caretaker at the facility. But already the small hut, built in 1889, was showing signs of abuse and overuse.36 In a scene familiar to many hikers who have arrived at a full shelter, MacKaye and his troop found other parties of four and six already at the hut, and they all engaged in a testy hour-long waiting game until the sixmember party decided to move along. Their four companions that night included two recent Mt. Holyoke graduates, and Durham reported that “the evening passed amid great hilarity, with singing and story-telling.” The excitement kept up through the night when a porcupine had to be chased from the hut with stones and an electric flashlight. The next morning, after Durham encountered and killed another porcupine at the door of the hut, the hikers made a brisk descent north from Mount Madison to the Appalachia railroad station. They probably followed the Valley Way, a path built by the renowned trailbuilder and Appalachian Mountain Club leader J. Rayner Edmands between 1895 and 1897. MacKaye kept count of the hikers headed up to the Madison Hut for the night. His observations of the hikers’ impact on the mountain environment imprinted in his consciousness an understanding that such activity was not always benign. Hikers, he already understood, could wreak their own kind of harm on the wild habitat and peaceful atmosphere to which they were retreating for pleasure and solitude. “The hut has all it can hold,” he noted. “Trail a boulevard. Too good. Absurd. Good signs.” By 12:30 pm on August 18, the hikers boarded a train at Appalachia station, headed back to Camp Moosilauke. They changed trains first at Whitefield Junction, then at Woodsville on the Connecticut River, before riding the final leg to Wentworth, where they were greeted by most of the rest of the camp. The entire party tramped the few miles on the road back to Camp Moosilauke. “All in good condition after trip,” MacKaye concluded his terse journal. “Von ate too much at Madison Hut.” The final section of MacKaye’s article about his trip carried the heading “Camp Ethics.” There the young forester-to-be summarized in highminded prose his own growing sense of responsibility for the environ-

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ment he had come to enjoy and to know so well since his first White Mountain adventure in the summer of 1897. He addressed the fundamental question about the appropriate balance between the civilized and the wild — a question that would occupy him for the rest of his long life and career. “The simplest rule of conduct for a camper is to leave a place as he would like to find it,” he began his sermon about “camp ethics,” adding that “such conduct is becoming more and more the tradition, and hence camping as an institution is giving greater enjoyment every year.” But he was less approving of the behavior of the “picknicker,” to use his word, who leaves his litter everywhere and “improves the rocky summit of every mountain with his initials.”37 MacKaye was especially distressed about the condition of the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Madison Spring Hut, where the grounds and the woodbox were the repository of “hundreds of tin cans and broken glass jars” despite the presence at the hut of a clearly identified dumping spot. “The pernicious principle illustrated here,” he continued, “is one of disdain for those who are to come after.” And he drew a telling parallel between the carelessness of campers and “picknickers” and the predacious lumbering of “wood butchers” like the Henrys. “The contempt shown by the unconscientious guest at Madison Hut for those who are to come afterward and that shown by the lumberman in the East Branch are identical in principle,” he wrote.38 “Camping thus serves to teach a lesson in patriotism which few other opportunities afford,” he concluded. “There is no other sport or mode of living which so clearly exemplifies the need of each to do his share and the dependence of all upon the resources of nature. If we are to have these resources, whether lumber or other; if things are to be used and not dissipated; if we are to have a camping ground and not a desert, we must work and fight for these ends. The duty of the camper, as one with greater opportunities in this respect than the average citizen, is to preserve the resources which nature has bestowed and to cherish the land as he would his home.”39 When Benton MacKaye charged the camper with the duty “to cherish the land as he would his home,” he was talking about patriotism in a quite literal sense — that is, as a form of love and respect for the land and the country, perhaps not necessarily for the government. During his own long lifetime, he witnessed his country’s engagement in numerous wars,

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including the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Cold War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Over the years, he continued to insist that the Appalachian Trail, and the sense of wilderness it represented, provided an essential spiritual and natural resource for a nation at war. As America entered World War II in 1941, an army private described to MacKaye his plans to hike the Appalachian Trail after his discharge. “WAR won’t always be the trail this country will follow,” the soldier wrote, “so I’m looking to the AT for escape.”40 That year, in an article titled “War and Wilderness” in Living Wilderness, MacKaye counseled the Wilderness Society’s members that wilderness embodied the freedoms Americans cherished. “Our basic fight today, in 1941, is the fight for the right to explore,” he wrote. “To explore and grow in the realm of understanding as a way of life all its own.”41 MacKaye’s confidence in the inspirational and recuperative possibilities of the trail experience was vindicated a few years later when a World War II veteran, Earl V. Shaffer, in 1948 became the first person to complete an uninterrupted “thru-hike” of the Appalachian Trail.42 Today, as America pursues another military campaign, Benton MacKaye’s youthful and idealistic linkage of camping, patriotism, citizenship, and the protection of natural resources and landscapes still resonates with meaning. MacKaye’s “camp ethics,” as introduced in the pages of a summer camp journal, were rooted in on-the-ground experience, within a specific New England landscape. The ethical foundation of his personal philosophy, which simply asked that each person “cherish the land as he would his home,” significantly influenced the growth and evolution of the American conservation and environmental movements during the first three quarters of the twentieth century. The creation of the Appalachian Trail, the establishment of a 106-million-acre National Wilderness Preservation System, and the development of a constructive, down-to-earth conception of conservation, connecting humans closely with the land — all these are legacies of the “camp ethics” that originated somewhere along the trail of the Tattered Ten in the White Mountains of New Hampshire that summer a century ago.

Notes

1. An earlier version of this article was presented on June 4, 2004, at an Association for the Study of Literature and Environment symposium, “Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest,” which took place at the

168  •  r e think ing pl ace Appalachian Mountain Club’s Highland Center, Crawford Notch, New Hampshire. 2. See MacKaye, “Appalachian Trail”. 3. MacKaye, “Appalachian Trail,” 330. 4. MacKaye, “Appalachian Trail,” 328–329. For the background of Mac­ Kaye’s original conception of the Appalachian Trail, see Anderson, Benton MacKaye, 143–153; Sutter, “’Retreat’ ”; and Anderson, “First Steps.” 5. For a thorough examination of the development of the American wilderness movement in the early twentieth century in response to the forces of recreational tourism, see Sutter, Driven. Sutter organizes his book around extensive profiles of four of the eight Wilderness Society founders: Mac­ Kaye, Marshall, Leopold, and Yard. 6. Benton MacKaye letter to Harvey Broome, September 5, 1932, MacKaye Family Papers (MFP), Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. 7. Simo, 80–89. I have written about MacKaye’s 1897 hike in “Roving” and in Benton MacKaye, 34–38. 8. See MacKaye, “White Mountain.” 9. Durham, 12–14. 10. Camp Pennacook (1903), brochure, Appalachian Trail Conservancy Archives, Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. 11. Waterman and Waterman, 309. 12. Benton MacKaye, Journal of 1904 White Mountains trip, MFP. Unless otherwise cited, subsequent quoted passages in this essay are from this journal. 13. Durham, 12. 14. With the passage of the National Trails System Act in 1968, the federal government began acquiring the land encompassing the entire Appalachian Trail corridor. As of early 2005, according to the Appalachian Trail Conference, all but 8.2 miles of the trail’s 2,175-mile route were in public ownership; see “Trail Grows,” 11. Foster describes the history and implementation of the National Trails Systems Act. 15. See Waterman and Waterman, 199–208, 231, 255–260, 343–350. 16. Simo, 81. 17. Waterman and Waterman, 84. 18. A Little Pathfinder to Places of Interest in or near North Woodstock, New Hampshire, 4th edition (North Woodstock Improvement Association, 1921), quoted in Waterman and Waterman, 231. 19. See Russell. 20. Belcher, 6, 8. 21. Durham, 12. 22. Belcher, 98–106. 23. Belcher, 116–117. 24. See Hart.

l o g ging, “c a mp e thics,” a nd Patr io t ism  •  169 25. For the history and background of the Weeks Act and the creation of the White Mountain National Forest, see Smith, “Mountain Lover”; and Smith, “Movement.” 26. Russell, 20. 27. For the trailmaking role of Sturgis Pray and the connection of trail networks in the White Mountains, see Waterman and Waterman, 280, 376; and Anderson, Benton MacKaye, 43–44. 28. Pray, 174. 29. Pray, 175. 30. Pray, 178. 31. Quoted in Martin. 32. For the origins of the Appalachian Mountain Club, see Waterman and Waterman, 189–191. 33. Belcher, 103. 34. Waterman and Waterman, 41. 35. For details of the Curtis-Ormsbee catastrophe, see Howe, 53–74; and Waterman and Waterman, 275–277. 36. Waterman and Waterman, 382–383. 37. MacKaye, “White Mountain,” 10. 38. MacKaye, “White Mountain,” 11. 39. MacKaye, “White Mountain,” 11. 40. Avery Means letter to Benton MacKaye, October 25, 1941, MFP. 41. MacKaye, “War,” 7–8. 42. Earl V. Shaffer recounted his 1948 hike in Walking with Spring.

References

Anderson, Larry. Benton MacKaye: Conservationist, Planner, and Creator of the Appalachian Trail. Baltimore, 2002. ———. “First Steps Along the Appalachian Trail: Benton MacKaye’s Progressive Vision.” Wild Earth 12 (Fall 2002): 56–61. ———. “Benton MacKaye and the Art of Roving: An 1897 Excursion in the White Mountains.” Appalachia (December 1987): 85–102. Belcher, C. Francis. Logging Railroads of the White Mountains (revised edition). Boston, 1980. Durham, Knowlton. “The Tramp of the Tattered Ten.” In Log of Camp Moosilauke 1904, 12–14. N.p., c. 1905. Foster, Charles H. W. The Appalachian National Scenic Trail: A Time to Be Bold. Harpers Ferry, WV, 1987. Hart, Albert Bushnell. “The Protest of the Mountain Lover.” Nation 62 (June 4, 1896): 430–431. Howe, Nicholas. Not Without Peril: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Misadventure on the Presidential Range of New Hampshire. Boston, 2000. MacKaye, Benton. “An Appalachian Trail: A Project in Regional Planning.” Journal of the American Institute of Architects 9 (October 1921): 325–330.

170  •  r e think ing pl ace ———. “Our White Mountain Trip: Its Organization and Methods.” In Log of Camp Moosilauke 1904, 4–11. N.p., c.1905. ———. “War and Wilderness.” Living Wilderness 6 (July 1941): 7–8. Martin, Dorothy M. “Interview with Benton MacKaye.” Potomac Appalachian Trail Club Bulletin 22 (January–March 1953): 12–13. Pray, James Sturgis. “The New Swift River Trail and Its Bearing on Club Policy.” Appalachia 10 (May 1903): 173–179. Russell, Ernest. “The Wood-Butchers.” Collier’s 43 (May 8, 1909): 19–20. Shaffer, Earl V. Walking with Spring: The First Thru-Hike of the Appalachian Trail. Harpers Ferry, WV, 1983. Simo, Melanie L. Forest and Garden: Traces of Wildness in a Modernizing Land, 1897–1949. Charlottesville, VA, 2003. Smith, Charles D. “The Mountain Lover Mourns: Origins of the Movement for a White Mountain National Forest, 1880–1903.” New England Quarterly 33 (January 1960): 37–56. ———. “The Movement for Eastern National Forests — 1899–1911” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1956). Sutter, Paul S. Driven Wild: How the Fight Against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement. Seattle, 2002. ———. “ ‘A Retreat from Profit’: Colonization, the Appalachian Trail, and the Social Roots of Benton MacKaye’s Wilderness Advocacy.” Environmental History 4 (October 1999): 553–557. “Trail Grows 4,200 Feet; 8.2 Miles Unprotected.” Appalachian Trailway News, January/February 2005, 11. Waterman, Laura, and Guy Waterman. Forest and Crag: A History of Hiking, Trail Blazing, and Adventure in the Northeast Mountains. Boston, 1989.

William James at Chocorua A Northern Forest Philosopher Da niel S. M a l achuk

I

s William James the Northern Forest’s forgotten philosopher? His first and still most important biographer suggested as much. Of the Adirondacks, Ralph Barton Perry noted, James wrote late in life that “I love it like a peasant, and if Calais was engraved on the heart of Mary Tudor, surely Keene Valley will be engraved on mine when I die.” James’s other retreat in the region we now call the Northern Forest — the one at Chocorua, New Hampshire — was engraved there, too, Perry added, and he proceeded to speculate that James’s many seasons outdoors significantly influenced his philosophy of “naturalistic pantheism.”1 In the massive literature on William James, Perry’s suggestion seems never to have been pursued, but this is not surprising, for two reasons in particular. First, unlike such near-contemporaries as John Muir (1838– 1914), Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), or even the lesser-known naturalist and fellow Chocoruan Frank Bolles (1856–1894), James (1842–1910) does not seem to have significantly contributed in word or deed to the creation of the modern American environmental movement. Second, and more important, the predominant reading of James’s philosophy essentially disqualifies it from consideration as environmentalist. I begin this essay, which explores the role of the Northern Forest in the forma-

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tion of James’s philosophy and the potential value of that philosophy to contemporary environmentalists, by challenging this predominant reading, mainly by describing James (as Perry long ago suggested) as a pantheist more than an pragmatist. Once James’s aims as a philosopher are properly understood, his contribution to environmentalism, while still modest by the remarkable standard set by his generation, is provocative and worthy of further investigation. In one of his best-known books, Pragmatism (1906), James describes pragmatists as asking, “What difference would it practically make to any one if this notion rather than that notion were true?”2 The answer for pragmatists, James writes, is that “an idea is ‘true’ so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives.”3 This is a strictly instrumental understanding of truth, James explains, “the view that truth in our ideas means their power to ‘work.’ ”4 But this, of course, only begs the question of what is “profitable,” and, with no definition of its own to offer here, pragmatism ends up serving the version of “profitable” held by the strongest. This was Bertrand Russell’s accusation in a critique that remains as devastating today as it was in 1938. Pragmatism is nothing more than a “power philosophy,” he wrote. Pragmatism merely confirms what the powerful do. Indeed, in upholding the idea that “a belief is ‘true’ if its consequences are pleasant” (how Russell chose to translate “works”), pragmatists can easily become apologists for dictators. After all, Russell reasoned, “Belief in the moral superiority of a dictator has pleasanter consequences than disbelief, if you live under his government.”5 Key moments in James’s writings seem to support Russell’s conclusion that pragmatists not only serve but also flatter the powers that be: i.e., that they provide (as Russell put it) “those in power a metaphysical omnipotence.” In the 1910 address “The Moral Equivalent of War,” for example, where James argues for a war against nature rather than humanity, he may have challenged the militarists of his day but only by worshipping the (equally powerful) industrialists all the more fervently. “Martial virtues” clearly are profitable, James argues, but we need a new “pacifist” way to cultivate those virtues. Warring against nature —  exploiting the environment — is the answer. If . . . there were, instead of military conscription a conscription of the whole youthful population to form for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted against Nature, . . . numerous . . . goods to the com-

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monwealth would follow. The military ideals of hardihood and discipline would be wrought into the growing fibre of the people; no one would remain blind as the luxurious classes now are blind, to man’s real relations to the globe he lives on. . . . [These new warriors] would have paid their blood-tax, done their own part in the immemorial human warfare against nature, they would tread the earth more proudly, the women would value them more highly, they would be better fathers and teachers of the following generation.6

Now, before going any further, let me be clear here about what is philosophically problematic about James’s pragmatism from an environmentalist perspective. It is not, actually, that James here advocates a war against nature. It is that James, as a pragmatist, seems willing to advocate anything so long as it is “profitable.” Consider this. Suppose for the sake of argument that James the pragmatist shifted to a new and appealing environmentalist position, because (miraculously) the environmentalists and not the industrialists or militarists were the power that defined what is profitable. James’s pragmatist method would still be unappealing to the environmentalist, because pragmatism — as a method — is, by definition, a mere fair-weather friend, only serving environmentalists so long as they are in power. Pragmatism seems to operate without what philosophers call foundations; its major premise, after all, is (to quote James again) “truth in our ideas means their power to ‘work’,” nothing more. Such an “antifoundationalist” philosophy would seem to be at odds with any robust environmentalist program, which must involve (I would think) the pursuit of final truths about nature and our place within it, truths that may in fact not “work” or be “pleasant” right now but that instead require a fundamental and lasting adjustment of the relationship between humans and nature. Perhaps I can illustrate the philosophical odiousness of antifoundationalist pragmatism to environmentalism with a different example from James’s writings. James opens his 1899 lecture “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” with this scenario. Traveling past poor mountain farms in North Carolina, he observes that “the forest had been destroyed and what had ‘improved’ it out of existence was hideous, a sort of ulcer.”7 James’s perspective at this point seems fairly environmentalist if also somewhat patrician. “What sort of people are they who have to make these new clearings?” James haughtily demands of his driver. “ ‘All of us,’

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[the driver] replied; ‘why, we ain’t happy here unless we are getting one of these coves under cultivation.’ ” James then reflects: Because to me the clearings spoke of naught but denudation, I thought that to those whose sturdy arms and obedient axes had made them they could tell no other story. But when they looked on the hideous stumps, what they thought of was personal victory. The chips, the girdled trees and the vile split rails spoke of honest sweat, persistent toil and final reward. The cabin was a warrant of safety for self and wife and babes. In short, the clearing, which to me was a mere ugly picture on the retina, was to them a symbol redolent with moral memories and sang a very pæan of duty, struggle, and success.8 (emphasis in original)

The lessons drawn apparently are that truth about this devastated ecosystem is not universal or permanent (i.e., foundational) but merely a function of perspective, and that we should not hesitate to drop one truth (or “story”) for another in the pursuit of what works: in this case, out with the truth of preservation, in with the truth of (albeit heroic) exploitation. In short, from an environmentalist perspective, it is really pragmatism’s antifoundationalism (and not its occasional dalliance with the exploitative cult of manliness as some might argue) that is the most troubling. But was James’s philosophy really antifoundationalist? Thanks to the work of contemporary neopragmatists like Richard Rorty, an antifoundationalist pragmatism is the best if not the only version known today, and an incomplete reading of James could lead one to see him as an important precursor. For example, in Pragmatism, James writes that, “like a corridor in a hotel,” pragmatism is used by anyone — atheists, theists, chemists, idealists — on the way to whatever room they like.9 The anti­ foundationalist pragmatist who pursues an environmentalist program, one might argue, must do so with the understanding that his program is relative, provisional — merely what works now.10 A more complete account of James’s philosophy, however, must conclude that his own version of pragmatism was in fact deeply foundationalist. This understanding of James’s pragmatism is crucial, I believe, to understanding his potential appeal to environmentalists. In another section from Pragmatism, less often cited than the corridor section, James reveals that our passage through the corridor cannot lead to just any room.

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The individual has a stock of old opinions already, but he meets a new experience that puts them to a strain. . . . The result is an inward trouble . . . from which he seeks to escape by modifying his previous mass of opinions. He saves as much of it as he can, for in this matter of belief we are all extreme conservatives. So he tries to change first this opinion, and then that . . . until at last some new idea comes up which he can graft upon the ancient stock with a minimum of disturbance. . . . This new idea is then adopted as the true one.11

James’s major purpose here is to contrast his pragmatist’s ultimate willingness to change truths to the pigheaded unwillingness of (James’s archenemy) the “rationalist,” but we should not lose sight of the fact that both the pragmatist and the rationalist — according to James — make their decisions based upon competing metaphysical accounts of (that is, final and comprehensive visions of) the universe. “The essential contrast,” James writes with emphasis, “is that for rationalism reality is readymade and complete from all eternity, while for pragmatism it is still in the making, and awaits part of its completion from the future. On the one side the universe is absolutely secure, on the other side it is still pursuing its adventures.”12 As James elaborates upon this distinction between pragmatists and rationalists, it becomes clear that this vision of an unfinished universe still pursuing its adventures is as sacred to his pragmatists as the vision of a ready-made universe is to the rationalists. As James explains, again with emphasis, “the alternative between pragmatism and rationalism in the shape in which we now have it before us, is no longer a question in the theory of knowledge, it concerns the structure of the universe itself.” “On the pragmatist side,” he concludes, “we have only one edition of the universe, unfinished, growing in all sorts of places, especially in the places where thinking beings are at work.”13 James’s philosophy is thus a foundationalist one in that it offers a final account of what is true both metaphysically and ethically: metaphysically, the universe is unfinished and in flux; ethically, we must appropriately arrange our lives within such a universe.14 With this foundationalist version of James’s philosophy in mind, we can now proceed to a fairer consideration of the relationship between James’s experience in the Northern Forest, particularly at Chocorua, and his philosophy. James purchased an old farm in Keene Valley in the Adirondacks in 1875, when he was 33 years old, but 11 years later, James (now established

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at Harvard) and his wife, Alice, determined they needed a place closer to their Cambridge home. James found it in the summer of 1886: a 90acre farm on Chocorua Lake about four hours by rail from Cambridge.15 The James’s investment in this new property was undeniably part of the then new and still continuing conversion of the Northern Forest into a vacationland for the northeast United States’s growing urban population. James himself understood his property as an investment, and there are moments in his letters when James allows possession to be the keynote of his relationship to this environment, as when he (in Cambridge) wrote to his wife (in Chocorua) that “you can’t tell how I admire to find you still enjoying to stay on. It gives me a sort of sense of solid possession of the country which else I should not have. And from this distance I can’t help confessing that I long to round off our possessions by the Moulton place — even though . . . it be a poor investment to make.”16 James and his wife understood the purchase of the property as a financial risk from the start, and James often in his correspondence details various schemes for exploiting the natural resources on his property in order to make the investment pay. Such crassly materialistic passages throughout his correspondence make one think twice about other more poetic and seemingly innocent passages, too, such as when James explains to a young friend in 1907 that “the rapture of the connexion with these [Adirondack] hills is partly made of the sense of future power over them and their like.”17 Still, as bad as all of this sounds, one can make distinctions, and James really does not deserve to be lumped with (to take a classic example) the man who spat into Niagara Falls “with an air as if thinking how he could best appropriate it for his own use,” as Margaret Fuller described in her Summer on the Lakes, in 1843: Once, just as I had seated myself there, a man came to take his first look. He walked close up to the fall, and, after looking at it a moment, with an air as if thinking how he could best appropriate it for his own use, he spat into it. This trait seemed wholly worthy of any age whose love of utility is such that the Prince Puckler Muskau suggests the probability of men coming to put the bodies of their dead parents in the fields to fertilize them.18

In contrast to Fuller’s crass utilitarian, James, for all his eagerness to invest in this new leisure economy, was also able to stand critically apart from it. In his very first publication, for example, an 1873 essay “Vaca-

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tions” for the magazine the Nation, James presents vacations in the great outdoors as preeminently about the pursuit not of private property but of mental health. First, James coyly recounts the proposal of an unnamed “pleasant gentleman,” “who is so enthusiastic on this subject of vacations, that he professes himself ready for a form of communism in which the government shall guarantee to every citizen one month of freedom in the year. . . .This, of course, is,” James adds, “hardly serious.” But James goes on to make his own privatized version of the same. But is not a step in the direction of it [the gentleman’s proposal] feasible? Why should not rich men desirous of doing good with their money, instead of endowing more schools or churches with it, bequeath a portion of it in some such way as this? Let the interest be assigned to a number of the doctors, clergymen, and men of affairs in the town, who come into relations with most human beings, and let these persons allot every season to a sufficient number of individuals who otherwise would have to stay at home, enough money to enable them to pass three or four weeks in the country. If care were taken that none but the needy and deserving got the award, there could hardly be a more profoundly beneficial form of charity. . . . There are hundreds of persons of both sexes in every town whom a month of idleness in the year, far from the scene of their cares, would suffice to keep on the right side of the boundary-line between invalidism and health, and who without it would soon drift over to the wrong side, and thence speedily further.19

James’s belief in the democratization of green leisure revealed itself in other ways. In 1886, for example, 13 years after the “Vacations” essay, when James himself was shopping for the new White Mountains property, he conceded to his wife that they had really to thank the tacky but “successful and enterprising business classes and nouveaux riches” for opening up this territory for them.20 In other words, James was quite aware of the kind of material investment that the democratization of leisure would require. As he established himself in the community at Chocorua, James grew more and more disturbed to find that this new economy still did little to enrich the locals. Returning in 1901 almost directly to Chocorua from the spa at Nauheim in Germany, for example, James wrote a friend that “everything here looks pathetically sweet, but ultra poverty-stricken and simple. I feel like shedding tears and want never to go abroad again.”21 In sum, while none of this says much about James’s

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environmentalism, it does suggest that James’s experience at Chocorua and in the Northern Forest generally does not seem best categorized as just another example of thoughtless Gilded Age consumerism. Rather, as I will now argue, James developed a complex understanding of humans and the environment that engaged two currents of thought, both of which informed earlier and better-known versions of environmentalism, and both of which continue to be worth thinking about today: mainly, environmentalism as the pursuit of the sublime and environmentalism as a kind of pastoral. In his Critique of Judgment (1790), Immanuel Kant described the experience of the sublime as one of both attraction and repulsion, and James was preceded by many other nineteenth-century authors in locating that experience particularly in the mountains. Like many Americans, James often added a nationalistic accent to the experience, as when, in Europe in 1901, he represented his White Mountain retreat to be much closer to the sublime than any European locale: When we return I shall go straight up to Chocorua. . . . What I crave most is some wild American country. It is a curious organic-feeling need. One’s social relations with European landscape are entirely different, everything being so fenced or planted that you can’t lie down and sprawl. Kipling, alluding to the “bleeding raw” appearance of some of our outskirt settlements says “Americans don’t mix much with their landscape as yet.” But we mix a darned sight more than Europeans, so far as our individual organisms go, with our camping and general wild animal person relations.22

James did really live up to all this bluster once he got outside, such as during the night he famously described to his wife as his Walpurgis Nacht (or “witches night,” referring to a scene of revelry with dark powers in Goethe’s Faust). James and his party had made camp on the side of Mount Marcy, when he entered a “state of spiritual alertness of the most vital description.” The influences of nature, the wholesomeness of the people around me, . . . the thought of you and the children, . . . the problem of the Edinburgh lectures, all fermented within me till it became a regular Walpurgis Nacht. I spent a good deal of it in the woods; where the streaming moonlight lit up things in a magical checkered play, and it seemed as if

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the Gods of all the nature-mythologies were holding an indescribable meeting in my breast with the moral Gods of the inner life. . . . It was one of the happiest lonesome nights of my existence, and I understand now what a poet is.23

James found this “wild animal personal relation” to nature in his experiences not only of mountains but also of forest fires and of the Grand Canyon.24 Best known, though, is his eyewitness account of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, recorded in the essay “On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake” that James wrote for the Youth’s Companion, the preeminent children’s magazine at the time. Wrapped up in the thesis developed more fully in “The Moral Equivalent of War”— that “at the place of action, where all are concerned together, healthy animal insensibility and heartiness” emerge as civic virtues25 — is James’s sublime experience of the earthquake: The emotion consisted wholly of glee and admiration; glee at the vividness which such an abstract idea or verbal term as “earthquake” could put on when translated into sensible reality and verified concretely; and admiration at the way in which the frail little wooden house could hold itself together in spite of such a shaking. I felt no trace whatever of fear; it was pure delight and welcome. “Go it,” I almost cried aloud, “and go it stronger!”26

Of course, from an environmentalist perspective, James’s pursuit of the sublime has its limitations. For one, James’s adventures in the Northern Forest were, no matter how thoughtful, still tainted by an emerging ideology of landscape consumerism that hijacked the concept of the sublime to tame the very wilderness that drew tourists in the first place, burying it beneath the dross — gift shops, postcards, tours, resorts — that we know so well today.27 Second, James himself had a tendency to reduce a sublime experience into a therapeutic one. Often in his correspondence, James discusses the Northern Forest as little more than an American version of the European spa, a place to soothe one’s shattered nerves. For several years after first purchasing the Chocorua property, James often criticized it specifically for its failings in this regard. At Chocorua in February 1887, for example, he wrote that “wood fires and pure snow, however dazzling, are a lean diet for the soul for 4 months without a break, and I believe the countries where the earth is bare and

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wet, with occasional snows in winter, are the richest environment for a human being.”28 By June 1903, James had made his peace with Chocorua’s limitations as a vacation retreat, but that, for him, was still its primary function. The fact is that the change from town life to a flannel shirt & soft collar and suspenderless “breeks,” and a house on the ground, and a day with no interruptions and your time all your own, and a horse and wagon, & woods to go into, and brook to bathe in etc. brings such a sense of bodily luxury that no amount of money can possibly buy under city conditions, that one abandons oneself unreservedly to the mere pleasure of living. Of course after a sufficient number of weeks it grows stale again, and then the change back to town is good.29

Still, even with these obvious limitations, James’s appreciation of the sublime should speak to contemporary environmentalists more than it has. We know that the preservationist ethic of John Muir, a better known turn-of-the-century connoisseur of the environmental sublime, met its match in the conservationists at the Hetch Hetchy Dam in 1913. However, the contemporary environmental movement really draws upon both the preservationist and conservationist traditions, and an aesthetic appreciation of the environment remains very important to many green activists.30 Like Muir, James has something to offer here, I think. Additionally, James was also generally attuned to the elitism of a strictly preservationist ethic, and one might reconsider that passage about the North Carolina mountain farmers as an example not of James’s hopeless relativism but of his willingness to consider a wider range of potentially environmentalist relationships. Particularly instructive in this regard might be what James called the Zwiespalt, or “double pull,” he experienced between the European city and the American wild, which preoccupies him in much of his correspondence and generates interesting reflections on the role of the sublime in our modern urban and suburban lives.31 Even more than the sublime, the pastoral seems a useful category for understanding James’s Northern Forest experiences, and for elaborating upon the value to contemporary environmentalists of his work. From the moment he purchased the property, James may have made fun of his “farmlet” and his “play[ing] the yeoman,”32 but there was always a serious

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side to it all. Again and again in his correspondence, James emphasizes the “simplicity” and “solidity” of his life at Chocorua, often enumerating the traditional virtues associated with a rural as against a city existence. “I pity those poor city fellows,” James typically wrote to his wife in 1887, “who have never sweat a drop in their lives over the soil. They don’t know what life is — we farmers have more of the stock of Adam in us — the others are but half-human.”33 Again, there’s plenty of fun in this language, but it also recalls James’s serious proposal in “Moral Equivalent” for American young people to return to the more rural places, if only for a summer, to cultivate their civic virtue. Of course, the pastoral involves contradictory messages, from an environmentalist perspective, involving (as Lawrence Buell writes of Thoreau’s move to Walden) “both a frontal assault on mainstream values like the protestant work ethic [as well as] a ritual reenactment of the [exploitative] pioneer experience.”34 And, as historians show, the nostalgia for farm life that dominated vacation ideology in this period helped renew the northern New England agricultural economy only in fantasy, and the late-century alliance forged between farmer and vacationer duly fell apart: as Dona Brown puts it, “hay fields and scenery cannot always be preserved by the same policies.”35 Still, James took his “earth-hunger”36 very seriously, and we should too. One approach would be to examine James’s pastoral through the lens of virtue theory. Virtue and the pastoral are closely tied, after all, in the very agrarian version of the republican tradition that still continues in this country, from Jefferson to Thoreau to Wendell Berry. William James should be read within this tradition. In it, there is the conviction that civic virtue is best cultivated in a nation that not only preserves its rural places but finds ways to bring its young people into hearty contact with those places. So one might think not only of Notes on the State of Virginia and Walden but also the “Moral Equivalent” proposal, as well as James’s belief as a father that life at Chocorua, “green and orderly,”37 was a valuable education in virtue for his two sons,38 an education which culminated in a summer’s stint with the United States Forestry Commission that he arranged for them both in 1899. James described his sons’ summer in a letter to a friend: They are to go on the US Forestry Commission to the Olympic Mountains, off Puget sound, where they will be in the woods all summer, engaged rather monotonously, it is true, in taking a census of the trees,

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and estimating their cubic feet. But it will be great for their health, and souls, and it will make patriots of them; and altogether start them in life on a much higher level than their father started.39

That the word “patriotism” makes its way into this passage (as it does into other descriptions of nature in the Letters) ceases to surprise once one begins to think about James’s interest in the environment as enmeshed with his interest in virtue.40 Additionally, and intriguingly, the White Mountains specifically had interesting associations in nineteenthcentury American culture with a kind of Swiss mountain republicanism once described by Romantic writers like Rousseau and Wordsworth,41 associations that also crop up here and there in James’s writing. In closing, I think it fair to say that James’s formal vision of the unfinished universe — the foundationalist philosophy I sketched earlier —  takes on a becoming shade of green when read in relation to his Northern Forest experiences. Consider again, for example, that oft-considered and infamous corridor passage from Pragmatism. Rather than continue to read this passage as affirming pragmatism as strictly a methodology —  the hallway that leads to (and justifies, as Russell charged) any kind of philosophical program — we might instead (with some interpretive imagination) read James’s metaphor as but a bland lecture-hall version of the more pungent description he later made of his own Chocorua house, “[having] fourteen doors, all opening outwards.”42 Taking James’s Chocorua house to be the pragmatist’s hallway, we can see much more clearly how the “rooms” to which the doors open are not at all arbitrary or unlimited (as the indoor version suggests) but in fact mere aspects of a larger unfinished outdoors, that unfinished universe that in its changeableness stands as a perpetual invitation (and challenge) to us to remember the puniness — though not the relativism — of the various programs we might choose as we shuffle within our house-corridor. These outer “rooms,” as in fact a part of the natural environment, cannot take any shape we want; as foundationalist pragmatists — pragmatists working within a universe that is always in flux — we cannot serve just any master as Russell once charged. We can only develop philosophies that recognize that flux (our metaphysics) and respect it (our ethics). Or, consider finally this description of the foundational human relationship to nature from the 1909 A Pluralistic Universe, which (with some typically late Victorian prejudices) communicates, as in the book

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Pragmatism, the temporariness of our programs before the great flux of nature: the difference being that James in 1909 emphasizes the mystical sublimity of that flux rather than (as in 1906) the instrumentality of our programs in dealing with that flux. Nature can have little unity for savages. It is a Walpurgis-nacht procession, a checkered play of light and shadow, a medley of impish and elfish friendly and inimical powers. “Close to nature” though they live, they are anything but Wordsworthians. . . . The eeriness of the world, the mischief and the manyness, the littleness of the forces, the magical surprises, the unaccountability of every agent, these surely are the characters most impressive at that stage of culture. . . . Tempests and conflagrations, pestilences and earthquakes, reveal supramundane powers, and instigate religious terror rather than philosophy. Nature, more demonic than divine, is above all things multifarious.43

James goes on to describe and endorse the progressive creation of new programs (specifically, conceptual tools) to assist us in organizing as best we can this flux, but it is the flux that we still and always face and must deeply respect. And, it was in the Northern Forest, arguably, that James came to understand and respect the universal flux — in the Northern Forest where James was continually reminded that a good “philosophy,” as he put it elsewhere, “must keep the door and windows open.”44

Notes

1. Perry, 377. 2. James, Pragmatism, 506. 3. James, Pragmatism, 520. 4. James, Pragmatism, 512. 5. Russell excerpt. 6. James, “Moral Equivalent,” 1291. 7. James, “Blindness,” 842–843. 8. James, “Blindness,” 843. 9. James, Pragmatism, 510. 10. That James’s philosophy was antifoundationalist and therefore should be useful to environmentalists today is in fact the conclusion reached by Sheppard in the only work explicitly about James and environmentalism that I could find. In an argument diametrically opposed to my own, Sheppard contends that the well-known antifoundationalist version of James’s pragmatism could be employed to reconcile competing “truths” about

184  •  r e think ing pl ace the environment. On James’s association with the cult of manliness, see Townsend, 31–43. On the cult of manliness as antienvironmentalist, see Merchant, 132–133. 11. James, Pragmatism, 512–513. 12. James, Pragmatism, 599. 13. James, Pragmatism, 600. 14. I develop this distinction between contemporary antifoundationalist pragmatism and James’s foundationalist pragmatism in more detail in my Journal of American Studies article (see Malachuk). 15. Taking advantage of the White Mountains division of the Eastern Railroad, James could, in four hours, travel to the West Ossipee station, from which his summer place was only seven miles (Letters 6.245 and 10.257). 16. Letters 6.267. 17. Quoted in Goldmark,178. On the James’s nervousness about the purchase of the Chocorua property, see Letters 6.244, 6.267, and 6.274. For examples of James’s interest in exploiting the natural resources on his property, particularly the trees, see Letters 6.164, 6.276, 6.436, and 10.144. For examples of James’s interest in the real estate market in his and competing neighborhoods, see Letters 6.454–455 (on the desirability of a hotel on Chocorua Lake) and 7.573, 10.246, and 10.290 (on the merits of his place vs. similar neighborhoods in Vermont and further into the White Mountains). On James’s expansion of his holdings, see Letters 6.278, 6.436, and 10.88. James’s improvements to the property are mentioned in nearly all of his letters about Chocorua to close family members, but see especially his interest in improving the view (Letters 9.636–637) and (jokingly) the export of pine cones to improve the region’s economy generally (Letters 9.149). 18. Fuller, 73. 19. James, “Vacations,” 6–7. 20. Letters 6.160. 21. Letters 9.337. James generally resisted romanticizing the hardscrabble existence of the local population, and the “poverty-stricken” aspect of Chocorua and its environs increasingly made an impression upon him. See, in addition to Letters 8.48 and 9.338, this, the day after arriving in the spring of 1903: “We shall get on. But the country gives me, as it always does at first, a very poverty stricken impression” (Letters 10.253). 22. Letters 9.529. 23. Quoted in Goldmark, 180–181. 24. See his descriptions of the 1903 forest fires around Chocorua (Letters 10.253, 10.258–259, and 10.260–261) and the Grand Canyon in 1906 (Goldmark, 195–196). 25. James, “Moral Equivalent,” 1222. 26. James, “Mental Effects,” 1215–1216. 27. Brown’s chapter 2, “The Uses of Scenery: Scenic Touring in the White Moutnains, 1830–1860,” describes the commodification of the sublime in

w il l i a m ja mes at cho c orua  •  185 the growth of the tourist industry in northern New Hampshire. On the continued role of “the accelerated sublime” in contemporary adventure tourism and ecotourism, see Bell and Lyall. 28. Letters 6.199. 29. Letters 10.258–259. See also Letters 6.201, 6.437, 10.49, and 10.88. 30. Merchant, 174–175. 31. See especially those letters written in the moments of transition between Europe and America, such as Letters 8.48, 9.499, 9.536, and 9.537; and Goldmark, 185–186 and 191–193. 32. Letters 6.241. 33. Letters 6.239. 34. Buell, 52. 35. Brown, 167. His student John Elof Boodin’s reminiscence of a visit to James at Chocorua conveys the playful seriousness of James’s pastoral marvelously. For more examples of James celebrating the virtues of rural life, and very often as against city life, see Letters 6.241, 6.384, 6.436, 7.48, 7.163, 7.178, 8.39, 8.544–545, 9.538, 10.71, 10.476, and 10.477. Brown’s chapter 5, “That Dream of Home: Northern New England and the Farm Vacation Industry, 1890–1900,” provides an important context for considering James’s own variety of yeoman experience. 36. Letters 8.48–49. 37. Letters 9.543. 38. Letters 6.427 and 6.437. 39. Letters 8.516. 40. For other descriptions of patriotism in nature, see Letters 10.319 and Gold­mark, 181. On the relation of James to the republican tradition, see Malachuk. On Thoreau’s environmental ethics and for a model of how to approach James in this regard, too, see Cafaro. 41. Brown, 66–67. 42. Quoted in Gale. 43. James, Pluralistic Universe, 639–640. 4 4. James, Philosophy, 1034.

References

Bell, Claudia, and John Lyall. The Accelerated Sublime: Landscape, Tourism, and Identity. Westport, CT, 2002. Boodin, John Elof. “William James as I Knew Him.” In William James Remembered, edited by L. Simon, 204–232. Lincoln, NE, 1996. Brown, Dona. Inventing New England: Regional Tourism in the Nineteenth Century. Washington, DC, 1995. Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge. MA, 1995. Cafaro, Philip. “Thoreau’s Environmental Ethics in Walden.” Concord Saunterer New Series 10 (2002): 17–63.

186  •  r e think ing pl ace Fuller, Margaret. The Essential Margaret Fuller (1992), edited by J. Steele. Reprint New Brunswick, NJ, 1995. Gale, Richard M. “Introduction.” Phil 1240 Pragmatism. http://www.pitt.edu/ ~rmgale/pragintro.htm, accessed May 11, 2009. Goldmark, Josephine Clara. “An Adirondack Friendship.” In William James Remembered, edited by L. Simon, 174–199. Lincoln, NE, 1996. James, William. The Correspondence of William James, 12 volumes, general editor John J. McDermott, edited by Ignas K. Skrupskolis, Elizabeth M. Berkeley, and Frederick H. Burkhardt. Charlottesville, VA, 1992–2004. (Cited as Letters) ———. “The Moral Equivalent of War.” In Writings, 1902–1910, edited by B. Kuklick, 1281–1293. New York, 1987. ———. “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings.” In Writings, 1878–1899, edited by G. Myers, 841–860. New York, 1984. ———. “On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake.” In Writings, 1902– 1910, edited by B. Kuklick, 1215–1222. New York, 1987. ———. A Pluralistic Universe. In Writings, 1902–1910, edited by B. Kuklick, 625–819. New York, 1987. ———. Pragmatism. In Writings, 1902–1910, edited by B. Kuklick, 479–624. New York, 1987. ———. Some Problems of Philosophy. In Writings, 1902–1910, edited by B. Ku­ klick, 979–1106. New York, 1987. ———. “Vacations.” In Essays, Comments, and Reviews: The Works of William James, edited by F. H. Burkhardt, et al., 3–7. Cambridge, MA, 1987. Malachuk, Daniel S. “ ‘Loyal to a Dream Country’: Republicanism and the Pragmatism of William James and Richard Rorty.” Journal of American Studies 34.1 (April 2000): 89–113. Merchant, Carolyn. The Columbia Guide to American Environmental History. New York, 2002. Perry, Ralph Barton. The Thought and Character of William James. Volume 1: Inheritance and Vocation. Boston, 1935. Russell, Bertrand. Power, a New Social Analysis. New York, 1938. Excerpt available: http://www.sonic.net/~halcomb/Russell_Pragmatism_Power. html, accessed May 11, 2009. Sheppard, James W. “The Road Less Traveled: Cities, Wilderness, and Environmentalism in the Pragmatic Corridor.” Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. http://www.american-philosophy.org/archives/ past_conference_programs/pc2001/Discussion%20papers/the_road_less_ traveled.htm, accessed May 11, 2009. Townsend, Kim. Manhood at Harvard: William James and Others. New York, 1996.

A Traverse of the Presidential Range with the Scottish Highlands on My Mind R ich ar d Par a dis One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of seeing things.  — Henry Miller

W

ith all due respect to Henry Miller, a hike in the White Moun­tains is sometimes all about destination as a place. When young, I once labored up and over Tuckerman’s Ravine, my mind’s eye steadfastly fixed on the summit of Mount Washington looming above. On other outings, I remember being more enamored with my travel route, like completing the airy walk along the trail that straddles Franconia Ridge. There was the time I led a group of boy scouts on a bushwhack hike with map and compass to one of the trailless peaks in the Sandwich Range. Way-finding was the objective there. And then, during a deep winter cold snap, a sense of purpose drove us to attempt a bivouac at Greely Ponds, testing our teenage mettle as we laid our sleeping bags in depressions in the snow. Stargazing and Northern Lights became our evening entertainment. Some journeys start with a specific destination in mind, but the focus then becomes the route taken or the lessons learned along the way. Strongly held notions are challenged as new ways of seeing things are

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revealed. This particular journey begins with an early morning drive from my home in central Vermont to the mountains of northern New Hampshire. I park my car along Route 2 at a place called Appalachia, nothing more than a large gravel lot west of the sedate and gentrified mountain village of Randolph. This location often serves as the starting or ending point for those wishing to explore the Presidential Range of the White Mountains. The lot is nearly full, with assorted license plates indicating that the majority of the hikers parked here hail from out-ofstate, southern New England for the most part. I wait patiently for a scheduled shuttle bus to arrive. The day is cool and fresh with blue sky, few clouds, and low humidity for the middle of July. Visibility should be fine from the summits, an all too rare occurrence as these mountains tend to make their own weather. A bus finally pulls into the parking lot and slows to a dusty stop. Approaching it, I realize it is jammed full of hikers and their assorted equipment with no one intending to disembark here. The driver informs me that another bus should be along in about an hour. Disappointed, I settle in under a tall spruce tree, get out a map of the area, and study the trail. My plans are to leave the car and take the bus to the other side of these mountains. This will allow me to complete a traverse of the Presidential Range and end up back here in a couple of days. These mountains, not terribly tall by comparison with other ranges in the world, nonetheless inspired me while growing up in the Northern Forest. Visions of bagging all of the 4,000-footers and completing a through-hike of the Appalachian Trail occupied much of my imagination as a youth. I continue to log considerable mileage in pursuit of the personal elation experienced during a mountain ramble. I now follow my professional interests in alpine natural history and conservation while out on the trail. Many of my explorations focus on the ecological health of these mountain landscapes and the performance of those entrusted with their conservation and stewardship. On this particular journey, I want to experience a popular hiking route in the White Mountains during the busy summer season and stay at overnight facilities along the way. I admit that one of the challenges to my sense of natural landscape integrity and wilderness aesthetics has been the system of huts strung out through the White Mountains and maintained by the Appalachian Mountain Club. These “backcountry hotels” strike me as inappropriate structures in remote mountainous set-

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tings. They also appear to attract a certain class of patrons who can afford to utilize them.1 That the huts are private affairs operated on our public lands doesn’t help matters much. My personal practice over the years has been to quietly avoid them, preferring the thriftiness of an overnight stay in a small tent or an overcrowded shelter. Principled misery trumps compromised comfort in an ethically black and white world. My current research has taken me to the Scottish Highlands where a mountainous landscape of similar climatic influence, geological legacy, and physical proportions offers a wonderful opportunity for a comparison with our own Northern Forest region. I enjoy walking the hills there and staying in assorted backcountry facilities, conversing with locals and visitors alike along the way. Land managers, other researchers, and representatives from a variety of environmental organizations willingly provide opinion. I eagerly seek them out. The vast literature including mountaineering books, field studies, and conservation reports, which I am just beginning to mine, offers a diversity of perspectives and insight as well. As a result, I am documenting and analyzing examples of conservation initiatives and management strategies that aim to reduce the impacts of visitors and protect important mountain ecosystems in these two comparable regions. Identifying similarities can sometimes offer assurances that efforts aimed at specific objectives are on track and will likely succeed. One example is the use of trail markers and assorted rock structures, such as cairns and scree walls, to keep hikers on defined pathways. These practices work in a variety of geographic and cultural settings. Discovering differences, however, may be all the more useful. New ideas and refreshing perspectives can assist us with some of our most intractable conservation and stewardship challenges, offering fresh new ways to do and think about things. The right of public access to private land in Scotland is now codified in law. The law, however, is based on the premise of personal responsibility and behavior on the part of the public accessing the land as well as on the private property owner granting access, a radical concept if ever applied here in the Northern Forest. Comparing differences can also shed light on the relationship between current place-based conservation and stewardship programs and the ecological and cultural context within which they have developed. Scottish hill walkers would not likely tolerate the direct approach utilized here in the Northern Forest of stationing rangers on our mountain summits to

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discuss hiking etiquette and offer route-finding information. Unbridled freedom of the hills is the hallmark of outdoor recreation throughout Scotland. Could this be compensating for a culture that now appears controlled in so many other ways? Perhaps it is a holdout of the fierce independence that supported the traditional clan system in the Scottish Highlands of Braveheart days. The second bus finally arrives, and I climb aboard. This convenient service, operated by the Appalachian Mountain Club, takes some of the angst out of having to spot multiple cars or arrange for other forms of transport between trailheads that are sometimes dozens of miles apart. It strikes me as ironic that in rural northern New England, where public transportation to serve daily needs is virtually unavailable, we have a system catering to recreationists, most of whom are visitors to the area. The only other passenger on the bus is a young male Appalachian Trail through-hiker from Tennessee. As their name implies, through-hikers are attempting to hike the entire trail, typically all at once in a given year. This fellow is bussing around the Presidential Range to continue his hike south, with plans to return later in the week to hike this premier section of the trail with his father. Apparently, hiking the trail in linear order isn’t essential. I learn that he left northern Maine nearly a month ago and hopes to reach Georgia by later this autumn before the weather gets too cold. Our bus ride will take some time with several stops to make along the way. My destination is the Highland Center in Crawford Notch where my hike will begin. We pass through a mosaic of rural landscape features and ownership patterns, and my thoughts are drawn to the assorted notions of land in our society today. We may think of land as habitat, resource, aesthetic, place, or home. At the root of many of our environmental struggles is the principled idea that land can be regarded as property, as something to be owned, controlled, and coveted. From where in our past can we find the particular locus of the emergence of this idea? And in what ways has it influenced our relationship with these other notions of land and how we carry on our land-related affairs with each other? Might we be so stubbornly grounded to the idea of land as property as to be unwilling or unable to consider alternative models and the benefits they offer to crafting a sustainable relationship with land and an appropriate land ethic? At the Highland Center in Crawford Notch, I depart the bus and enter a formidable new building owned and operated by the Appalachian

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Mountain Club as a full service roadside lodging and outdoor recreation establishment. Designed to resemble the Grand Hotels that once catered to White Mountain tourists of the nineteenth century, the center is more modest in scale and is equipped with many features making it energy efficient. I check at the front desk about my reservations for the next two nights at Lakes of the Clouds and Madison Spring Huts. These are two of the largest and most popular huts in the system, both located above treeline in spectacular high mountain settings. At this time of year they are sure to be at capacity with the trails busy with day-trippers and longer distance hikers. Yankee frugality and a limited research budget for this trip dictated that a deal be negotiated with the Appalachian Mountain Club. I will serve as the visiting naturalist in exchange for room and board at the huts. This solo hike along the Appalachian Trail through the Presidential Range will allow me to experience a premier route at my own pace while contemplating some of the ideas coalescing in my head about land as property and as possibly other things. While lodging at the huts, I will have a chance to observe the role they play as backcountry destinations, either challenging or supporting my perceived notions of what they are. And a couple of days as visiting naturalist will provide me an opportunity to present the preliminary findings of my comparative study, assuming hut guests will be interested in hearing about Scotland’s mountains and their conservation and management. I exit the Highland Center, cross the highway, and find the trailhead for the Crawford Path. This footpath was cut by the father and son team of Abel and Ethan Allen Crawford in the early 1800s and is touted as the oldest continually used hiking trail in America.2 It runs from Crawford Notch all the way to the summit of Mount Washington, for a total distance of 8.5 miles, climbing nearly 5,000 feet along the way. I wonder how the Crawfords might have viewed this wild mountainous landscape as they toiled to construct the trail. From their cultural perspective, could they have envisioned how this land would be exploited for a variety of uses? And if so, would they have cared? Spanning several generations, the Crawfords have played a central role both in establishing a homesteading presence in the area and in promoting it to a broadening tourism market.3 The trail winds though uninterrupted forest, gradually ascending along Gibbs Brook, and then pulls away as the climb continues up a steeper

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grade. About a mile into the woods, a bright pink cotton thong hangs on a branch at eye level near the trail. I’ve heard that hikers sometimes jettison auxiliary items from their packs to lighten the load. It’s hard to imagine that this undergarment would have eased the weight much. Following a few hours of sweaty woods walking, I finally break above treeline along the ridge of Mount Pierce. This affords the first unobstructed views of Mount Washington and nearby peaks. The scene here is panoramic with heavily forested mountains stretching out in all directions. What I can observe within this viewshed is mostly publicly owned, part of the White Mountain National Forest established in the early twentieth century with the help of a collection of far-sighted conservationists and progressive politicians. The Weeks Act that created this national forest as well as several others in the eastern United States was passed in response to the abuse of these forested lands at the hands of previous owners who, in a glut of timber harvesting, left behind a devastated landscape of stumps and slash piles.4 The legacy is now a significant mass of public land, nearly 800,000 acres in northern New Hampshire with a little bit spilling over into western Maine, accessible and managed for a variety of uses, including outdoor recreation. In Scotland, the situation regarding land ownership and public access is very different. In a country replete with an attractive and open landscape of hill and glen, loch and moor, and with a tradition of both residents and visitors alike engaging in low country rambling and upland hill walking, it is no surprise that access to the countryside is of paramount importance there. Associated with the demand for access is the extremely skewed nature of private land ownership in Scotland where very few people own a majority of the countryside. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, a mere 100 people owned half of Scotland, with much of the land accumulated into large hunting estates. Today, this figure has increased to over 600 landowners. However, Scotland still has the most concentrated pattern of private land ownership of any region in the world.5 Given these conditions, access to land has been a hotly debated and contested issue in Scotland for some time. Hiking north along the ridge toward Mount Washington, I encounter an older but very fit looking couple near the side loop trail to Mount Eisenhower. Without solicitation, they provide me with our exact location and altitude, explain their role as volunteer monitors for this section of the trail, and proudly state that they have hiked the entire Appala-

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chian Trail two times and expect to do it again next year as they celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary. We are soon joined by a trio of young through-hikers. I listen passively as the conversation between these trail veterans and young mavericks revolves around various gear choices for long-distance hiking and personal favorite or reviled sections of the trail. The conversation couldn’t have taken on a more intense tone had it centered on some critical political topic or rival sports team comparison. I soon bid them all farewell and continue up the trail to the round bald summit of Mount Eisenhower. If ever a mountain was aptly named after an individual it is this one, portraying a noticeable likeness of Ike’s rotund hairless head. Descending Eisenhower, I rejoin the Crawford Path and shortly meet a woman resting at an unsigned trail junction, something quite uncommon in these well-marked mountains. We exchange pleasantries, and she admits she didn’t know which trail to take and decided to stop here and wait until someone else showed up to lead the way. I mention my hiking experiences in Scotland where very few signs are to be found as well as few trails. Way-finding there necessitates cross-country travel with the use of map and compass. She asks if this leads to many lost hikers and damaged resources, and I admit that there are increasing problems with more inexperienced city folks taking to the hills. Overall though, Scottish hill walkers are better equipped and informed than their American counterparts. The country offers a wealth of opportunities to engage in outdoor field sports including hill walking, rock and ice climbing, winter mountaineering, kayaking, and orienteering, in large part sustained by state programs and lottery funds. There is even a national outdoor sports training center located in the Cairngorm Mountains of central Scotland where citizens can go for instruction and training, principally supported by public monies. The woman at the junction is heading for Lakes of the Clouds Hut, my destination as well. I take out my map, and we are able to determine which trail will take us there. When I inform her that I am the visiting naturalist for the evening, she peppers me with questions about the area’s ecology and geology. The next several miles of open ridge walking are extremely scenic with many stops to photograph and observe the diverse alpine vegetation and views beyond. On the slope to our left across Ammonoosuc Ravine, I make out numerous fir waves marching upwards to eventually crest once the ridgeline or treeline is reached.

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These linear zones of death and regeneration appear as greyish wavy gashes against the deep green of the vegetation and are characteristic of high elevation balsam fir forests. They are the result of thin rocky soils and high winds killing trees as they stand and opening up leading edges for further disturbance and regeneration moving up gradient in a wave pattern. Experts who study this phenomenon state that it occurs in only two places in the world, here in the northeastern United States and in northern Japan.6 While walking, we continue our conversation about the similarities and differences between the mountains of Scotland and the Northern Forest. I explain that although separated geographically, it is geography that unites the Scottish Highlands with the mountains of the Northeast. They share similar topographies, with mountainous terrain relegated to the north and a more calming landscape to the south. Their climatic regimes are comparable, with changeable seasons and lots of moisture throughout the year. Cool, damp, cloudy, and windy are often the norms. Their geological underpinnings not only contain similar types of rock, such as metamorphic schists and igneous granites, but they also share deep histories and were once joined at the hip, thanks to the forces of plate tectonics and continental drift. Glaciers have worked over these old landscapes to form geomorphological features of related character. Their mountains of similar height and arrangement contain cirques, glacially carved U-shaped valleys, exposed ridgelines, and alpine plateaus festooned with assorted rock patterns and other periglacial features. Much of this has led to ecologies with many characteristics in common, including plants and animals of the same, or very nearly the same, species. Human settlement patterns and practices share some characteristics as well, although in Scotland, intensive land alteration activities stretch back farther in time and have had a longer lasting effect than here in the Northern Forest. In both regions, following the retreat of glacial ice approximately 12,000 to 15,000 years ago, humans arrived and dispersed across the countryside evolving through Mesolithic and Neolithic eras. During more recent times, both industrialization to the south and a more rural settlement pattern to the north with a strong reliance on agriculture and forestry have woven landscape tapestries with many similar strands and patterns. Even the evolution of environmental consciousness and the application of conservation initiatives are comparable in many ways. What is apparent

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in the Scottish Highlands and the Northern Forest are cultures that have developed close relationships with local environments. A cross-cultural comparison should elicit the distinguishing features of these relationships and may help determine to what degree environmentalism plays a role.7 The trail swings along the south side of the summit of Mount Monroe with Lakes of the Clouds Hut appearing below in a saddle. The massive cone of Mount Washington rises above in the background. I read somewhere that one of the two small lakes is actually deep enough for swimming, which sounds inviting after a long, sweaty hike. Reaching the hut with plenty of time before dinner, I eagerly check in with a member of the hut crew. I drop my gear in the assigned bunkroom shared with six other hikers, one of whom informs me that since I am the last to arrive, the only bunk left vacant is four up from the floor. I change into my bathing suit and go for a much needed swim. The lake, or tarn in geological parlance, is indeed inviting. The water is not as cold as I expect, but is refreshing nonetheless. The landscape scene here is fascinating, with large boulders and shards of frost-worked rock tumbled all about as if just coming to rest around and within the lake as the result of some recent cataclysmic event. The only vegetation observable are the dark green mosses that coat the rocks near the waterline and the tufts of alpine sedges and heaths tucked in among the assorted rocks. Following a brisk swim, I return to the hut, hoping to engage in conversation with some of the other hikers. Lakes of the Clouds Hut is the Appalachian Mountain Club’s largest and sleeps 90. It is a low sprawling wooden building with large iron beams as a superstructure, no doubt to deal with the extreme weather at this exposed location and elevation of 5,000 feet. The main door enters into a large common area with wooden tables and benches for meals and other activities. Down one wing are the variously sized bunkrooms. The other wing houses the bathrooms, kitchen, and crew quarters. As we are at capacity tonight, there is considerable bustle around the building with people checking in, with groups gathering both just outside and within the hut, and with crew members and volunteers preparing for the evening meal. The volunteers are an intriguing group. Through-hikers wishing to stay the evening have several options. They can pay the going rate for room and board which is a hefty $80, be charged a reduced rate for just a bunk without meals, or volunteer to help with chores in exchange for

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space on the floor and dibs on leftover food after the paying guests have their fill. Most through-hikers choose the latter. I find it interesting that the hut incorporates composting toilets although they are regularly pumped out. The waste is hauled offsite by helicopter as decomposition occurs far too slowly at this wet and cold elevation. A bank of photovoltaic panels and two small wind turbines affixed to the roof generate electricity and bottled gas is used for cooking and refrigeration. A carryin carry-out policy reduces trash generated by the guests. These efforts move the huts toward a greener operation and demonstrate to the visiting public how to go about shrinking one’s ecological footprint. Other shelters and campsites in these mountains likewise emphasize low-impact waste management approaches and leave-no-trace principles. Backcountry accommodations in the Scottish Highlands are diverse as well. The occasional fully equipped mountain lodge can be found but is usually locked and open only to members of the mountaineering club that owns it. More public lodging can be found in the assorted bothies and howffs scattered about the mountain landscape. Bothies are typically old dwellings maintained by local hill walkers and are usually sparingly furnished, if at all. Some are as quaint as the classic Highland shepherd’s cottage. Others resemble concrete block bunkers. When encountered after a long walk in the hills, a bothy can be a clean and welcoming respite or a foul abode littered with trash and reeking of urine and stale beer. A howff is a much simpler shelter such as a cave, overhanging rock, or a crude wooden lean-to, providing minimal protection from the brutish Scottish weather.8 Dinnertime at Lakes of the Clouds Hut is ceremoniously announced with much shouting, banging of pots and metal tubs, and other cacophonous fanfare. Hikers of assorted shapes and sizes scramble for seats at the tables. One of the crew welcomes everyone and mentions a few rules regarding how the food will be served family style. We are told that napkins are not used to save on trash and are asked to clean our plates as composting food scraps is a problem this high up. The menu is then recited and we begin. I sit next to a middle-aged couple from southern New England who come to this hut every year. In fact, many of the hikers here this evening appear to know each other, and I am informed by a crew member that a contingent of over 40 extended family members and neighbors have amassed here for three days. One senior associate of this group stands erect just before we begin eating and loudly delivers

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a rambling rather messianic prayer, to the nodding satisfaction of about half the diners and the wrinkle-faced annoyance of others. The food is basic but creatively presented and very well prepared. There is plenty to go around with likely sufficient leftovers for the volunteers who eat after we finish. I find it awkward to eat while others hover just at the edge of sight waiting patiently for their turn and wish they could join us to eat together as a whole community of hikers. Following soup and bread, salad, and the main course of potatoes, peas, and pot roast, we pause while the entire crew in residence is introduced. They each tell us a bit about themselves ending with a funny story or personal anecdote. Most of them either are recently graduated from college or are still students, many with an environmental focus to their studies. These young and energetic women and men appear genuinely interested in their work as the latest generation of hosts at these backcountry facilities, a tradition that dates back over 100 years. I am then introduced and say something briefly about the evening’s program. After dessert and coffee, approximately 25 guests gather outdoors in front of the hut where there are several benches and a low stone wall for seating. We begin the program by discussing interesting sightings of plants or animals and other natural phenomena. Several large black birds were observed soaring along the ridgeline earlier in the afternoon. I suggest they were probably ravens. A guest points to the tall slender plants with pale white flowers growing along the foundation of the hut. A quick look and we determine they are Boott’s rattlesnake-root, an endemic species of our local mountain summits. I talk a bit about alpine ecology and conservation with an initial focus on the mountains in the Northeast. We discuss the role of public lands, particularly the White Mountain National Forest, in providing diverse amenities including public access for recreation, something not readily available on private property. I briefly sketch the land use history of the region and how the clarion call of foresters, politicians, and tourist enthusiasts, fueled by rampant deforestation occurring during the late nineteenth century, eventually resulted in federal action to acquire lands in the region for public benefits. At the turn of the century, the newly formed Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, a premier conservation organization still active to this day, served as a catalyst by investigating the conditions of the forests in the state and how they could be improved.9 It took nearly 20 years and numerous attempts to usher

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in legislation and funding mechanisms to establish a national forest in the White Mountains.10 The government of New Hampshire got in on the action as well, acquiring significant acreage in Crawford Notch and nearby Franconia Notch, managing these two areas as popular state parks. I then explain my interest in the Scottish Highlands and how they compare to the mountains here. To my surprise, no one in our group has ever hiked in Scotland. I circulate some visual images and maps of Scotland to give folks a sense of what the landscape is like. I go on to suggest that among the many myths held about Scotland by those both within and outside the country is the longstanding and unrestricted right of access to private lands by the public, the historical right to roam or ramble, so to speak. There are elements of truth to this myth as well as confusion over the interpretation and understanding of the facts. With several hundred years of history and many unsuccessful campaigns launched on behalf of public access to the countryside, it has finally been taken up in earnest by the now independent Scottish Parliament with the recently passed Land Reform Act of 2003.11 Someone asks about the particulars of the struggle over public access to lands in Scotland. I explain that walking paths and rights of way were established in many parts of the country by the eighteenth century. Early clashes between walkers and landowners resulted in legislation permitting the closure of established rights of way if two magistrates deemed them unnecessary. These early policies were often challenged with one incident involving an owner-constructed barricade erected across a path torn down by a riotous crowd near Glasgow in 1822. The military was called out, rocks and sticks were brandished, and over 40 individuals were arrested.12 Clearly, the Scottish people take the notion of unfettered access seriously. Public access is even celebrated in British and Scottish poetry and literature. In 1810, William Wordsworth declared his beloved Lake District “a sort of national property in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy.”13 England’s renowned aesthetician and critic John Ruskin also offered his opinion that “of all the mean and wicked things a landlord can do, shutting up his footpath is the nastiest.”14 Scottish poet Norman MacCaig in several lines from “A Man in Assynt” personalizes land ownership in this way:

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Who owns this landscape? The millionaire who bought it or the poacher staggering downhill in the early morning with a deer on his back? Who possesses this landscape? The man who bought it or I who am possessed by it? False question, for This landscape is masterless and intractable in any terms that are human.15

In 1843, the Scottish Rights of  Way Society was formed in Edinburgh, consisting primarily of an urban and well-heeled membership, including many lawyers.16 Beginning in the late nineteenth century, there emerged a number of efforts to pass public access legislation, mostly championed by liberal member of Parliament James Bryce, who is often referred to as the friend of the rambler and father of the right to roam.17 Although ultimately unsuccessful, Bryce’s work did elevate the debate and helped lead to the formation of the Ramblers Association in 1905, which has a broad-based egalitarian membership now approaching 130,000 throughout Great Britain.18 I then discuss how continued growth in outdoor recreation and tourism in Scotland throughout the twentieth century has kept the issue of access to the countryside in the forefront of public policy discourse. With little public land available, recreationists have increasingly come to rely on what has been termed “by-product access” on private lands used primarily for agriculture, forestry, and field sports such as deer stalking and fishing.19 In the past, when use was light and more dispersed, resulting impacts were minimal and many landlords and estate managers effectively either looked the other way or sanctioned some levels and types of use. When both the diversity and amount of use increased, unintended and wanton damage rose as well. This has led to a number of more recent developments to address access issues including the recently passed Land Reform Act.

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The program lasts for about an hour with conversations continuing informally as we retire to the interior of the hut to escape the chilling night air. Several hut guests express their fascination with how Scotland appears to be embracing such an idealized notion of property responsibilities along with the more recognized idea of property rights. We debate whether such an approach could ever work here in the United States considering the long-standing and entrenched paradigm of land as private property. Scotland’s scarcity of public conservation and recreation lands may be contributing to this liberal access approach to private property. I explain that the country just recently established its first national park.20 The hut’s lights-out policy at 9:30 pm finally puts an end to a rewarding day. My bunkmates turn out to be a pleasant lot. The woman I met on the trail earlier is one of them. The others hail from various locations in New England and New York with one fellow from as far away as Ohio. They are mostly middle-aged and are all traveling alone hiking for several days on the trail hut to hut. The night passes uneventfully except for some loud snoring which prompts one bunkmate to abandon his fourth-tier berth in the middle of the night with mattress in hand, seeking quieter quarters elsewhere in the hut. I rise early in the morning for a pre-breakfast stroll in the alpine landscape around the hut and adjacent lakes. I know this area is the sole location of the federally listed endangered plant dwarf cinquefoil. I am curious to see the plant and where ecologists are attempting to increase its diminished population. I find the location alongside the existing Crawford Path near the hut. A sign warns hikers not to enter beyond a certain point, but my curiosity prevails and I gingerly creep to where I can observe the plant mixed in with several other alpine species. I take a few quick photographs and hastily retreat lest someone see what I am doing. Breakfast is at 7:00 am with several members of the crew singing “You Are My Sunshine” to gently wake those who are still asleep. Before breakfast, a crew member recites the local weather forecast which calls for a low ceiling of clouds with the possibility of showers and afternoon thunderstorms. Breakfast of cereal, eggs, and toast is filling, after which the crew performs a creatively funny skit that weaves in a reminder of the policies of making up our beds, carrying out our trash, and tipping for services rendered. Tableside conversations revolve around today’s hiking

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destinations. One fellow shares his desire to complete his last several New Hampshire 4,000-footers over the next two days. I mention that this infatuation with “peak bagging” is not just a North American phenomenon. Many Scottish hillwalkers strive to complete the “Munros,” the mountains in the Highlands over 3,000 feet in elevation.21 Other hiking feats are noted, including New England mountaineer and writer Guy Waterman’s record of bushwacking up all of New Hampshire’s 4,000-footers from each of the four cardinal compass directions in winter. I wish my fellow hikers a fine day and walk out the door. Two of my bunkmates are going to the same destination as I am. Preferring to hike alone and likely at different speeds, we agree to meet up at the end of the day at Madison Spring Hut. I continue up the Crawford Path toward the summit of  Mount Washington amidst a sweep of descending clouds. The wind is slight and not expected to strengthen so, except for the rain forecasted, it shouldn’t be too bad of a day at high altitude. For the first half mile, visibility is obscured with only occasional glimpses of the nearby peaks and valley below. Shortly before reaching the summit, I become enveloped in thick clouds with views limited to just beyond the next cairn. These piles of rock that mark the trail at 50- to 100-foot intervals, serve as beacons or way finders above treeline where the landscape can take on a formless character in dense fog. It has been a number of years since my last visit to the top of Mount Washington. The summit is well known for the amount of development and disturbance that has occurred there. I expect to be disheartened at what I find. My expectations are exceeded as the new summit building is a monstrous affair complete with a full-service cafeteria, gift shop, museum, and other tourist facilities one encounters at kitschy locations across America. I locate the actual top of the mountain, pressed between the parking lot and one of the other buildings, with a short path leading to a pile of rocks crowned with a small wooden sign announcing “Summit of Mount Washington.” I quickly retreat off the summit and seek out the Gulfside Trail which I will follow for most of the rest of the day. Once on Gulfside, I set into a pleasant cadence of walking in dense cloud cover with just enough visibility to be sure of where the trail is going. All intersections are well signed with side trails posted and mileage to destinations provided as well. I carry a map and compass should they be needed. This trail skirts the western boundary of the Great Gulf

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Wilderness, the first, and for a number of years the only, federally designated wilderness area in the Northeast. The concept of wilderness, although not unique to the United States, has been given particular legal credence and protection here. It has also spurred a rather animated debate about the nature of wilderness as a contemporary human construct. In Scotland, a nascent wilderness movement seeks to identify remote portions of the landscape that exhibit “wild” character, particularly in the less inhabited north. For many years it was argued that lands in the more densely populated and altered eastern United States could not possess wilderness characteristics, and thus were not worthy of designation. Our thinking about wilderness has evolved to where we now consider lands that have returned to some semblance of naturalness to qualify for wilderness designation. I find it intriguing in a country such as Scotland, with a more extensive human disturbance history, that the notion of wildness could take hold. Perhaps what may be occurring there is more along the lines of wilderness recovery or rewilding of the landscape. Much has been written about how currently remote and unpeopled regions of the Highlands were once occupied by thousands of subsistent tenant farmers. Forced removals or “clearances” of these tenants were orchestrated by a handful of individual large landowners — usually with the approval of the government and the assistance of the military — who found it more profitable to get rid of the people and move sheep onto their holdings.22 This emotional chapter in Scotland’s land use history has resonated deeply among the country’s environmentalists. There has even been a recent call to bring people back to these remote areas, restoring both the natural and cultural characteristics to the Highlands.23 After five to six miles of navigating rocky terrain with occasional descents and short scrambles, I reach a major trail intersection called Thunderstorm Junction. On the way, I decide to bypass side trails to Mount Clay and Mount Jefferson, having scaled these peaks in the past, and knowing that today’s visibility would be limited. At this junction, assorted trails lead up to the summit of Mount Adams, angle down toward the valley near Randolph to the north, or continue on to Mount Madison and Madison Spring Hut. As my knees are beginning to ache and with showers threatening, I decide to also bypass Mount Adams and go straight to the hut. The low cloud cover breaks open for awhile providing fine views of Mount Madison as I descend to the hut at the base of the

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alpine cone of the mountain. The eight miles between the two huts took approximately five hours to negotiate, with most of the time encased in clouds which kept me moist but not soaked. This intimate hike through a shrouded landscape that on other days would provide for extensive vistas, and thus a very different experience, reminds me of an essay I came across recently in an old volume of Appalachia, the renowned mountain journal published by the Appalachian Mountain Club. Charles Fay, the club’s third president and faithful editor of the journal for over 40 years, brought his scholarship in the humanities to bear in his address to the club’s membership in 1879.24 Fay proposed that similar to the geographical zones found as one ascends a mountain slope, there are categories of experiences one encounters as well. He labeled these categories as the physical, social, intellectual, and emotional, and went on to describe how each of them unfolds as the journey from the base of the mountain to its summit takes place. The physical is the first encountered as one focuses inward on how the body reacts to the exertion invested at the outset of the journey. The deep enclosed forest which affords little opportunity for the stimulant of grand views facilitates this inward physical focus. The social nature of the trip also becomes apparent here as participants outwardly exchange thoughts and banter is common. When treeline is finally reached, one again begins to focus inward, but this time it is the intellectual and emotional characteristics that hold sway. Group conversation ceases as individuals attempt to process the vastness and aesthetics of the unfolding landscape. It is these latter characteristics, according to Fay, that attract us to mountain summits and fuel our desire to continue to seek out the pleasures they provide. A mountain climbed is as much an intellectual and emotional conquest as it is a physical one. Would these categories hold true if, once reaching the mountain summit, the long view is obscured by clouds? And what about a ramble in the Scottish Highlands, where it is often common to begin a mountain climbing journey in an open and view-filled landscape at the base? Arriving earlier than the previous afternoon enables me to secure a bunk at a less dizzying height. Madison Spring Hut is smaller than Lakes of the Clouds, with space for 50 overnight guests. It sits just above treeline at 4,700 feet on a flat saddle between the summit of Mount Madison and the slopes that rise to the southwest forming the larger and higher buttress of Mount Adams. The hut has not yet been updated and con-

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tains flush toilets and fewer green features than its counterparts. I speak about the evening program with a friendly crew member working in the kitchen. She recommends I check out the area around a small lake several hundred yards up behind the hut that usually has many blooming plants at this time of year. A short walk confirms this, and I decide to offer a guided hike this evening if the weather doesn’t turn too nasty. With several hours before dinner, I take the opportunity to strike up conversations with other guests milling around the hut. I chat with two young women through-hikers walking south, having begun their hike of the Appalachian Trail this May in Maine. I am surprised to hear they will take the rest of the calendar year to complete the trail. Both of them expect to leave the trail for up to several weeks on occasion to rest and resupply. They have each recently graduated from college and are trying to decide what to do next. A man looking to be in his mid-40s is here with his youngest son. An academic from southern New England, he has taken each of his three older children on a coming-of-age hike such as this one when they turned ten. The huts are known to attract lots of children with parents and other relatives and friends. Here at Madison Spring, one group consists of several older men with their assorted daughters. Apparently it’s an annual outing that doesn’t involve mothers or other male members of their families. Two middle-aged pharmacists from New York hike in the White Mountains each summer for several days. They usually make it a trio, but one member of their party couldn’t go this year. I reconnect with the two bunkmates I met last night. One arrives before me and the other later in the afternoon. We end up sitting together for dinner, along with the father and young son, and the pharmacists from New York. Our conversation spans politics, world news, and family affairs. Once they learn I am tonight’s entertainment, so to speak, we turn our attention to the ecology and conservation of mountains. Dinner unfolds as last night’s with much noise, frivolity, and laughter. I announce our hike to the lake and get a good showing of around 20 people with colorful raingear and headlamps in case we stay out late. Our walk up to the lake is delayed at first with my inability to find the right trail. I apologize to a most accommodating group who appear happy to be in each other’s company with someone interested in sharing his interest and knowledge of the natural world. We are far less formal than last night, with assorted questions and personal observations offered around.

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There are several botanists in the group who relish the opportunity to get to know some of the alpine flora. We see much mountain sandwort in bloom mixed in with bilberry, cranberry, and assorted sedges. Even the children get involved by asking questions about moose, bears, and wolves. We saunter back to the hut at dusk conversing about Scotland when one member of the group proffers a bottle of high quality Scotch whiskey and stories of visiting distilleries and golf courses while over there earlier in the year. Our talk eventually turns to politics and the new Scottish Parliament now ensconced in Edinburgh. The timing of this switch in governance offers a unique opportunity for change as the Labour Party in power embraces a more socialist-centered agenda than previous governments in Westminster. With land reform a rallying cry during the devolution of British control, this embryonic legislative body quickly took up the cause and passed the Land Reform Act in early 2003. The sections of the act addressing access specifically identifies who possesses access rights, what those access rights are, including conduct allowed and excluded, and how those rights are to be exercised responsibly. Reciprocal obligations of landowners mandate public access. There are some lands over which access rights are not exercisable such as lands immediately around buildings and farmsteads, construction sites and industrial areas, sports playing fields in use, and land on which crops have been sown or are growing. The act also directs Scottish Natural Heritage to create the Scottish Outdoor Access Code which details the rights and responsibilities of access.25 The Land Reform Act is touted as providing the most liberal of access rights in all of Europe. It finally advances and legalizes access rights in a country that has long advocated for, but up until now has failed to deliver on, the promise of unfettered access to the countryside. The Scottish Outdoor Access Code, in particular, advances the notion that with the right of access also comes the responsibility to act accordingly to ensure that all stakeholders’ interests are considered. This altruistic approach turns the notion of private property on its head, or at least expands the tenets of what John Locke articulated in his Two Treatises of Government well beyond what it has been taken to mean when applied to the idea of land as property throughout much of the western world. Irony strikes again that in the very region where Locke’s ideas took hold, we have an example of the land looking less like property and more like a

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public asset or commons. This “social experiment” has many both within Scotland and beyond watching to see how it will work. With more public land accessible here in northern New England, access rights similar to those in Scotland have been less vigorously pursued. However, rights of way such as hiking trails, once established and consistently used on private lands, are subject to prescriptive rights even against the landowner’s wishes. In most situations where access is pursued, a dedication is made by a property owner to allow for public access and a town or other public body receives the right of way.26 This occurs primarily on private lands protected in some way for conservation purposes. Even in areas where much public land has been amassed, access issues do emerge, particularly where private lands abut public ownership. In the White Mountain National Forest, there is an active campaign spearheaded by the Trust for Public Land to acquire outright or as easements access across private lands adjacent to the national forest near important trailheads and other public resources.27 We eventually retire inside for lights out and an attempt at sleep amidst the discordance of snores and other assorted night noises. Early morning comes quickly, and I’m off on a brisk solo scramble to the summit of Mount Madison. The view from the top is magnificent with an undercast of valley fog below and a high ceiling of thin clouds above creating a bluish tint over the mountain ranges as they recede like waves toward the horizon. The view back in the direction of Mount Washington is grand as well, with the summit buildings and auto road cutting across the mountain’s flank spoiling the scene somewhat. From this perch, it is easy to contemplate the vastness and beauty of this mountainous landscape. That much of it is publicly owned and accessible may often be taken for granted by many who choose to come here. What if our situation here in the Northeast was like Scotland’s where most of the land is in the hands of a few private interests? As a country newly explored and exploited, would we have responded as Scotland has to this land inequity by liberalizing public access? And I can’t help but wonder if our struggle with seemingly intractable environmental problems would be eased some if we could develop a different relationship with land, treating it less as property and more as a living entity to which we develop some type of reciprocal relationship.28 Would it be possible to rely on enlightened self-interest to move us in this direction — a pragmatic approach that we have turned to on countless occasions — 

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or is developing new social mechanisms the only sure way forward? Perhaps abandoning the notion of land as property is too much to ask for, at least at this time. Considering property within the context of both an individual entitlement and a social commitment would be more attainable. In fact, legal scholars argue that property rights and property law already have a distributive component and that they shape and are shaped by the contours of social relationships.29 Here in the Northeast, as in Scotland, we may just have some of the ingredients and the raw opportunity to move toward a new paradigm in how we come to view land and our complex multifaceted relationship with it. I descend Madison quickly in time for our early morning serenade, a bluesy folk melody reminiscent of Bob Dylan, calling people from their beds for breakfast. Following the weather report which sounds even less promising than yesterday’s, we fuel up on porridge and cinnamon rolls. This is followed by a hilarious skit performed by the crew depicting two Austrian body builders — a parody of Hans and Franz from Saturday Night Live — working on their muscle tone by folding bed blankets and packing out trash. I note to take additional time on my next planned trip to talk with crew members about their activities and what attracts these young and energetic folks to this type of experience. For my hike down to the valley today, I actually begin by climbing a short distance back up the way that brought me here to connect to the Airline Trail that I will take to Appalachia where my car is parked. It’s about four miles to the base with the first mile skirting the east side of King Ravine with a fine view across this airy expanse and back up toward Mount Adams. At one point you can gaze across the ravine to Crag Camp, a lodging facility operated by the local Randolph Mountain Club literally perched on the edge of this rocky defile. I eventually enter the woods, pass through a balsam fir wave, and descend steeply first through high elevation spruce and fir and then hardwoods toward the bottom. On my way, I encounter numerous hikers ascending, most of them daytrippers as this is a Saturday and a busy day for the trails. I pass a few small groups destined for Madison Spring Hut, and that prompts me to revisit my long-held opinions of the huts and the role they play in this backcountry landscape. No doubt they enable many people who might have few other options available to experience these remote mountain locations. They appear to attract multigenerational groups who pursue the traditions of repeated visits rekindling familial bonds

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and friendships. They may serve as examples of simplified sustainable living, or at least remind people of the limitations of our planet as a repository of our waste and castoffs. After over 100 years in operation, the Appalachian Mountain Club huts continue as a social, educational, and even environmental experiment that may help us better understand what it is that attracts us to these mountain landscapes, and if we are to continue to come here, how we can do so respectfully. Henry Miller may have a point after all.

Notes 1. As of the summer of 2007, the rates for staying at one of the Appalachian Mountain Club huts are $79–$94 per adult per night. This includes dinner and breakfast. Children 12 years of age or younger are charged $48 – $58 per night. 2. Dickerman, 84. 3. Cenkl, 45. There is a considerable literature on the history of the White Mountains with a particular focus on the Presidential Range and the Crawford Notch region. See especially: Cenkl; Dickerman; Johnson; Kilbourne; King; Morse; and Purchase. 4. Johnson, 174; and Smith, 37. 5. Wightman, 21; and Wightman and Higgins, 19. The situation of land ownership is most extreme in the northern mountain and western island regions of Scotland where 340 sporting estates account for over half of the privately owned land. As remarkable as these figures appear, they include the entire land area of which 15 percent is either publicly owned or covered by cities and towns. Factoring in this percentage paints an even starker image of much of the rural privately held landscape in the hands of very few owners. Many of these privately owned estates are 20,000 acres or larger in size with several exceeding 100,000 acres. The Duke of Buccleuch, for example, controls over 270,000 acres in the southern Borders region of Scotland. In Sutherland in the northern reaches of the country, the Duchess of Westminster owns 120,000 acres. The commercially owned Alcan Highlands Estate of 135,000 acres in western Scotland is used for the generation of hydroelectricity. Some land is held for conservation purposes. The National Trust for Scotland, a conservation charity, owns 190,000 acres across the country with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds controlling nearly 90,000 acres (Cramb, 26–27). 6. Marchand, 96. 7. Milton, 133. 8. Brown and Mitchell, 6. 9. Disagreements surfaced as to who would be best suited to acquire and manage the White Mountain landscape and how best to protect the land

a tr av er se of the pr esiden t i a l r a nge  •  209 from logging and other nefarious activities. Some argued that the land be acquired by the state of New Hampshire, an unlikely scenario considering the costs involved (Smith, 40). Others proposed establishing a national park or national forest, drawing on the federal government’s more substantial resources (Johnson, 181). The question was even raised as to whether the land should be acquired outright or regulations passed controlling the scale and intensity of logging on privately held lands (Smith, 38). Ultimately, with the assistance of the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests formed in 1901, along with assorted newspaper writers and other boosters and politicians, Congress was convinced that something needed to be done to acquire land in the White Mountains as a federal reservation or national forest. 10. The Weeks Act was passed by Congress in 1911. Named for John Wingate Weeks, a Massachusetts congressman and a native of Lancaster, New Hampshire, who tirelessly worked for its passage, the act authorized the federal government to appropriate funds to acquire lands for “the conservation and improvement of the navigability of a river” (Bennett, 129). Tying land acquisition and river navigation together made it considerably easier to enact legislation as the federal government was restricted to being able to acquire land only under the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution (Johnson, 188). It was convincingly argued that protecting the White Mountains’ watersheds would support transport along the lower reaches of the many rivers that have their headwaters there. It took a number of years and successive appropriations under the act to eventually acquire a substantial portion of the White Mountains. By 1915, a total of 265,000 acres had been protected, mostly in the vicinity of the Presidential Range (Johnson, 191). These lands, and many others to follow, were included in the White Mountain National Forest, officially established in 1918. 11. Passed by the Scottish Parliament in early 2003, the Land Reform Act addresses land access and ownership problems by creating a public right of responsible access to public and private land and water for recreation and passage. The act also provides rural communities with the right to purchase land when it comes on the market. Crofting, or small-scale traditional agriculture communities, can acquire their croft lands anytime by direct purchase (Sellar, 107). These latter two elements of the act attempt to address the large inequity with land ownership in Scotland. This legislative effort has fueled recent interests and actions in a flurry of community buyout schemes and land conservation initiatives across the Scottish countryside (Boyd and Reid, 1999, 1; 2000, 1; 2001, 1; Chenevix-Trench and Philip, 139; Rohde, 199). 12. Smout, 149. 13. Quoted in Smout, 146. 14. Quoted in Smout, 155. 15. Quoted in Hunter, Other Side, 134.

210  •  r e think ing pl ace 16. Warren, 184. Among the causes taken on by this organization was the “Battle of Glen Tilt” where a university professor from Edinburgh on a botanical outing with his students was barred from accessing an old drove or cattle road through the glen by the Duke of Atholl’s gamekeepers (Smout, 149). 17. Inspired by the words of John Stuart Mill in the Principles of Political Economy, Bryce opined: “Property of land is of a very different character from every other kind of property. Land is not property for our unlimited and unqualified use. Land is necessary so that we may live upon it and from it, and that people may enjoy it in a variety of ways; and I deny therefore, that there exists or is recognized by our law or in natural justice, such a thing as unlimited power of exclusion” (Stephenson, 74). 18. Warren, 184. 19. Warren, 227. 20. In Great Britain, the seminal National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act, passed in 1949, provided impetus for the creation of national parks and provisions for improved public access in England and Wales. The act, however, failed to address these concerns in Scotland. Influential pressure from the powerful landed gentry, along with a strong desire to bring economic development to the depressed rural Scottish countryside, including tree planting and hydroelectric schemes, may have contributed to this failure. There was also considerable resistance from some conservation quarters, including the National Trust for Scotland, who felt that their particular efforts adequately brought protection to the countryside. It’s ironic that the birthplace of John Muir, often considered the father of the national parks movement, was one of the last places on earth to establish them (Warren, 211). 21. A list of all of the Scottish mountains above 3,000 feet was first drawn up by Sir Hugh Munro in 1891. Termed “Munros,” these 284 summits are attracting a growing number of “peak-baggers” with those accomplishing the feat referred to as “Munroists.” If completing this list does not satiate one’s appetite for peak bagging, there are the “Corbetts” to bag (between 2,500 and 2,999 feet) as well as the “Grahams” (between 2,000 and 2,499 feet). 22. Hunter, Crofting, 49; and Richards, 67. 23. Hunter, Other Side, 176. 24. See Fay. 25. The Access Code is based on three key principles that apply to the public and to land managers and owners (Scottish Natural Heritage, 1–2). These principles are:   1) Respect the interest of other people.   2) Care for the environment.   3) Take responsibility for your own actions.

a tr av er se of the pr esiden t i a l r a nge  •  211   The code was adopted by the Scottish Parliament in July 2004. This remarkable document is a comprehensive explanation of the responsible conduct to be followed by those desiring access to land and water and those controlling the land available for access. It relies heavily on personal responsibility and conduct of behavior and seeks to cultivate a sense of care and respect for the land and for the interests of others. Scottish Natural Heritage is also vested with the responsibility of publicizing the access code, helping promote the understanding of it, and periodically reviewing and modifying it when deemed necessary. Any changes made to the code must first go through a consultation period and then be approved by the Scottish Parliament. 26. Moore, 69. 27. Based on personal interview; see Krussman. 28. Chilson, 6. 29. Singer, 15.

References

Bennett, R. The White Mountains: Alps of New England. Charleston, SC, 2003. Boyd, G., and D. Reid, eds. Social Land Ownership: Eight Case Studies from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, 3 volumes. Inverness, Scotland, 1999, 2000, 2001. Brown, D., and I. Mitchell. Mountain Days and Bothy Nights. Edinburgh, Scotland, 1987. Cenkl, P. This Vast Book of Nature: Writing the Landscape of New Hampshire’s White Mountains 1784–1911. Iowa City, IA, 2006. Chevenix-Trench, H., and L. J. Philip. “Community and Conservation Land Ownership in Highland Scotland: A Common Focus in a Changing Context.” Scottish Geographical Journal 117 (2001): 139–156. Chilson, G. “ ‘Editorially Speaking’: Property Rights or Wrongs.” Adirondack Journal of Environmental Studies 4.2 (Fall/Winter 1997): 3–6. Cramb, A. Who Owns Scotland Now? The Use and Abuse of Private Lands. Edinburgh, Scotland, 2000. Dickerman, M. A Guide to Crawford Notch. Littleton, NH, 1997. Fay, C. E. “The Annual Address of the President.” Appalachia 2 (January 1879): 1–14. Hunter, J. The Making of the Crofting Community (new edition). Edinburgh, Scotland, 2000. ———. On the Other Side of Sorrow: Nature and People in the Scottish Highlands. Edinburgh, Scotland, 1995. Johnson, C. This Grand and Magnificent Place: The Wilderness Heritage of the White Mountains. Durham, NH, 2006. Kilbourne, F. W. Chronicles of the White Mountains. Boston, MA, 1916. King, T. S. The White Hills: Their Legends, Landscape, and Poetry. Boston, 1859.

212  •  r e think ing pl ace Krussman, R. Senior Project Manager, Trust for Public Land, Northern New England Office, Montpelier, VT. Personal Interview. January 5, 2007. Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003. Queen’s Printer for Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland. Marchand, P. J. North Woods: An Inside Look at the Nature of Forests in the Northeast. Boston, 1987. Miller, H. Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. New York, 1957. Milton, K. Environmentalism and Cultural History: Exploring the Role of Anthropology in Environmental Discourse. London, England, 1996. Moore, A. R. “In America, Does the Right to Roam Exist?” Appalachia 58 (2007): 66–72. Morse, S., ed. Lucy Crawford’s History of the White Mountains. Hanover, NH, 1966. Purchase, E. Out of Nowhere: Disaster and Tourism in the White Mountains. Baltimore, 1999. Richards, E. Highland Clearances: People, Landlords and Rural Turmoil. Edinburgh, Scotland, 2000. Rohde, R. “Ideology, Bureaucracy and Aesthetics: Landscape Change and Land Reform in Northwest Scotland.” Environmental Values 13 (2004): 199–221. Scottish Natural Heritage. Scottish Outdoor Access Code: Public Access to Scotland’s Outdoors. Perth, Scotland, 2005. Sellar, D. “The Great Land Debate and the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003.” Norwegian Journal of Geography 60:1 (January 2006): 100–109. Singer, J. W. “Property and Social Relations: From Title to Entitlement.” In Property and Values: Alternatives to Public and Private Ownership, edited by C. Geisler and G. Daneker, 3–19. Washington, DC, 2000. Smith, C. “The Mountain Lover Mourns: Origins of the Movement for a White Mountain National Forest 1880–1903.” New England Quarterly 33 (January 1960): 37–56. Smout, T. C. Nature Contested: Environmental History in Scotland and Northern England since 1600. Edinburgh, Scotland, 2002. Stephenson, T. Forbidden Land: The Struggle for Access to Mountain and Moorland. Manchester, UK, 1989. Warren, C. Managing Scotland’s Environment. Edinburgh, Scotland, 2002. Wightman, A. 1996. Who Owns Scotland? Edinburgh, Scotland, 1996. Wightman, A., and P. Higgins. “Sporting Estates and the Recreational Economy in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.” Scottish Affairs 31 (2000): 18–36.

Living with the Woods Disturbance Histories in Thoreau and Burroughs Jim Warr en

T

om Wessels’s Reading the Forested Landscape is a primer for reading the disturbance history of landscapes in central New En­ gland. Kent Ryden calls it a “primer in Forestese.”1 It teaches us to observe the effects of the six common forms of forest disturbance in New England: fire, pasturing, logging, blights, beaver, and blowdowns. In addition, it relates disturbance history to topography and substrates, so that ultimately the reader of Wessels’s book gains a strong sense of landscape ecology. Finally, the categories of disturbance histories, topographies, and substrates suggest that Wessels is reading forest history as the combination of nature and culture. As a textbook for studying nature and culture in the northeast woods, Wessels’s primer could hardly be better. After making your way through the eight chapters and accompanying etchings of Reading the Forested Landscape, you can hike through a forested landscape with a fresh eye. Stone fences do not enclose a hiero­ glyphic and distant past; instead, they open up questions of how the land was used — for cultivation, pasturing, or mowing — and when it was abandoned. Wessels teaches reader-hikers how to put parts of the landscape together, like a complex jigsaw puzzle. In addition, he teaches

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how much there is to know about plant biology before you can begin to discern patterns in the disturbance histories. So, for instance, the white pine weevil’s impact on the terminal shoot of a young white pine, leading to multiple branching, can become a clue to the open landscape the pine once inhabited, or a wall with many small stones in its construction suggests that the enclosed field was cultivated, producing an annual “crop” of rocks.2 Wessels freshens our eyes by bringing forest ecology and human history to bear on each other. This kind of interpretive exercise is not easy, especially for an unpracticed eye. When I walk in my home woods of western Virginia, between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies, I may happen upon stone walls, old apple trees, coppiced maples, interesting wind-throws, or wooly adelgids on hemlock branches. Sometimes I may recognize a couple of patterns from Wessels’s book, leading me to draw provisional inferences about the history, both natural and cultural, of the mountains I live in. Moreover, if I pursue the knowledge resolutely and well, it leads me further into the specific ecology and history of the southern Appalachians. So, for instance, I am learning that iron manufacturing shaped the landscape of antebellum southern Appalachia throughout the 1840s and 1850s, having an effect as significant, say, as the abandonment of farms and mass migration to the Ohio River valley and farther west in 1840s New England.3 How that fact translates to the experience of living in the twenty-first century forests of western Virginia, however, is by no means transparent. Only by seeking out the signs of logging, charcoal production, and iron furnaces can I begin to appreciate the place name of a neighboring town like Clifton Forge. Thus, in addition to providing knowledge about the New England forested landscape, Wessels teaches us how much we need to know and how much there is to see in any landscape. Often, moreover, he teaches us how to ask questions that require even more knowledge to answer. The primer becomes a way of seeing and knowing rather than a repository of knowledge. The same can be said of reading a literary landscape. In the “Ktaadn” chapter of The Maine Woods, for instance, Thoreau describes the descent from Mount Katahdin toward the East Branch of the Penobscot River. As the party crosses the “Burnt Lands” to the southwest of Baxter Peak, Thoreau wonders if the clearings were “burnt by lightning, perchance, though they showed no recent marks of fire, hardly so much as a charred stump, but looked rather like a natural pasture for the moose and deer,

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exceedingly wild and desolate, with occasional strips of timber crossing them, and low poplars springing up, and patches of blueberries here and there.”4 Thoreau asserts that the natural pasture presents “primeval, untamed, and forever untameable Nature,” and that “Man was not to be associated with it. . . . Perchance where our wild pines stand, and leaves lie on their forest floor in Concord, there were once reapers, and husbandmen planted grain; but here not even the surface had been scarred by man, but it was a specimen of what God saw fit to make this world.”5 Reading the Maine landscape in contrast to his home place, Thoreau marvels at the presence of the place before him: “What is it to be admitted to a museum, to see a myriad of particular things, compared with being shown some star’s surface, some hard matter in its home!” The sense of an awesome, powerful presence leads directly to his famous exclamation: “Talk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?”6 The mysterious opening in the woods leads to Thoreau’s ecstatic, imaginative opening concerning humanity’s place in the physical world. The irony of Thoreau’s opening lies, first, in the role of nature as the alien other that inspires questions of human identity and place. But a deeper irony lies in the landscape itself, for the Burnt Lands may not in fact be only natural, the ultimate wild, nonhuman place. When Thoreau’s party first hikes along the Aboljacknagesic stream toward Katahdin, he notes that they walk “through burnt lands, now partially overgrown with young aspens, and other shrubbery.”7 Upon returning to the clearing, he speculates that the landscape has been “burnt by lightning, perchance,”8 but the description recalls Wessels’s discussion of fire as a landscape management tool used by native people.9 That possibility is strengthened by the patches of blueberries, a product of native permaculture, and by Thoreau’s mention of moose and deer, the preferred ungulate game of native people. The problem with this hypothesis is the location of the Burnt Lands within the northern forests of Maine. The consensus of environmental historians is that native burning took place most extensively in southern and coastal New England, especially along rivers and streams.10 It would seem unlikely, then, that the Burnt Lands result from Abenaki permaculture. More likely, they result from logging operations. As Thoreau

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remarks earlier in the chapter, the party leave their camp on North Twin Lake with “our fire blazing”: “The lumberers rarely trouble themselves to put out their fires, such is the dampness of the primitive forest; and this is one cause, no doubt, of the frequent fires in Maine, of which we hear so much on smoky days in Massachusetts. The forests are held cheap after the white pine has been culled out; and the explorers and hunters pray for rain only to clear the atmosphere of smoke.”11 Only 20 years before Thoreau’s expedition, fires in Maine burned some 832,000 acres.12 In another part of “Ktaadn” Thoreau notes that “what is most striking in the Maine wilderness is, the continuousness of the forest, with fewer open intervals or glades than you had imagined. Except the few burnt lands, the narrow intervals on the rivers, the bare tops of the high mountains, and the lakes and streams, the forest is uninterrupted. . . . These are not the artificial forests of an English king — a royal preserve merely. Here prevail no forest laws, but those of nature.”13 The word “intervals” refers specifically to riparian grasslands, created by years of native burning and agriculture. But throughout the “Ktaadn” chapter Thoreau defines the Maine forest as essentially untamed by human beings and their laws. Because his rhetorical strategy is to develop the idea of wilderness, he minimizes the effect of human laws on the landscape of the northern woods. But a knowledge of disturbance histories can provide us with a different way of seeing the landscape Thoreau describes. I do not mean to suggest that Thoreau misperceives or misreports his experiences in the Maine woods. In fact, he is remarkably precise and accurate in many cases. For example, in describing his ascent of Mount Katahdin, he describes in telling detail plant communities along the elevational gradient of the mountain. On the approach hike, he notes “damp and somber forest of firs and birches” and the “yellow birch, spruce, fir, mountain-ash, or round-wood, as the Maine people call it, and moose-wood. It was the worst kind of traveling; sometimes like the densest scrub-oak patches with us.”14 The list of species suggests a mixed forest of spruce-fir and northern hardwoods, but the density and somberness indicate the predominance of conifers. As the party climbs, they leave behind the hardwoods and enter the boreal conifer forest. When Thoreau leaves his companions in camp, climbing alone up the torrent toward the Table Land west of Baxter Peak, he describes the remarkable experience of entering a forest of Krummholz, the “crooked wood” that inhabits the high elevations before tree line:

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  Leaving [the streambed] at last, I began to work my way, scarcely less arduous than Satan’s anciently through Chaos, up the nearest, though not the highest peak. At first scrambling on all fours over the tops of ancient black spruce-trees, (Abies nigra,) old as the flood, from two to ten or twelve feet in height, their tops flat and spreading, and their foliage blue and nipt with cold, as if for centuries they had ceased growing upward against the bleak sky, the solid cold. I walked some good rods erect upon the tops of these trees, which were overgrown with moss and mountaincranberries. It seemed that in the course of time they had filled up the intervals between the huge rocks, and the cold wind had uniformly leveled all over. Here the principle of vegetation was hard put to it. There was apparently a belt of this kind running quite round the mountain, though, perhaps, nowhere so remarkable as here.15

Along with the evocation of Milton’s Satan, Thoreau accurately describes the belt of ancient, stunted black spruce at the elevation of about 4,500 feet. Moreover, he renders the experience of bushwhacking over and through the thick carpet of Krummholz. Although the description is understated, it places Thoreau in the wildest part of the Maine woods. In the second chapter, “Chesuncook,” Thoreau uses the comparative method to develop his untamed attitude, and once again Wessels provides a way of seeing what Thoreau perceives in the Northern Forest. Throughout The Maine Woods, Thoreau remarks on the timber industry and the vast numbers of trees that are cut down, hauled, sawed, shaped, and ground up for commercial use.16 At the close of “Chesuncook,” the industry leads him to reflect on the difference between a “wild forest which once occupied our oldest townships, and the tame one which I find there to-day.”17 Thoreau considers the forest around Concord just as “cultivated” as the open fields, and in both cases human beings have altered the landscape to suit the purposes of production, so that “it has lost its wild, damp, and shaggy look, the countless fallen and decaying trees are gone, and consequently that thick coat of moss which lived on them is gone too.”18 Thoreau’s sense of human disturbance appears in a simple description of his home place: “The earth is comparatively bare and smooth and dry.”19 In the Maine forest, by contrast, he finds plants that are confined to swamps in Massachusetts: “Clintonia borealis, orchises, creeping snowberry, and others; and the prevailing aster there is the Aster acuminatus, which with us grows in damp and shady woods.”20

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Clintonia is a common nonwoody eco-indicator species, according to Wessels, associated with acidic, cool sites.21 Some of the other plants in Thoreau’s list may be generalists, but he accurately cites the orchises, the whorled wood aster (acuminatus), and the creeping snowberry, all indicative of shaded and damp woods. He also notes that there are “no soft, spreading, second-growth white-pines, with smooth bark, acknowledging the presence of the wood-chopper, but even the young white-pines were all tall and slender rough-barked trees.”22 In the conclusion to “Chesuncook,” Thoreau’s sense of the Northern Forest relies on his sharp eye and his powers of comparison. He sees the Maine wilderness in relation to the tamed landscapes of central New England and Old England, and he argues that the wilderness is necessary as a “resource and a background, the raw material of all our civilization.”23 In the penultimate paragraph of the chapter, he notes the “new and more bracing fountain of the Muses, far in the recesses of the wilderness,”24 suggesting that the Northern Forests are a resource for more than paper and houses and charcoal. Nor is the wilderness far removed from us. He notes that the eastern United States contains more of these great forests than mapmakers realize. A recently published physical atlas, he says, represents New Brunswick and Maine as “bare as Greenland,” whereas they are in fact “still covered with an almost unbroken pine-forest.”25 In predicting the future of the Maine woods, however, he wonders if Maine will “soon be where Massachusetts is,” since “we seem to think that the earth must go through the ordeal of sheep-pasturage before it is habitable by man.” For that reason, Thoreau ends “Chesuncook” by calling for national forest preserves — “our forests, not to hold the king’s game merely, but to hold and preserve the king himself also, the lord of creation.”26 Thoreau does not always read the landscape of Maine in the same untamed way. In the third chapter, “The Allegash and East Branch,” for example, he comes upon an island at the farthest northern point of the journey, and he sees an elevated clearing on it; but we learned afterward that it was not inhabited, had only been used as a pasture for cattle which summered in these woods, though our informant said that there was a hut on the mainland near the outlet of the lake. This unnaturally smooth-shaven, squarish spot, in the midst of the otherwise uninterrupted forest, only reminded

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us how uninhabited the country was. . . . Such, seen far or near, you know at once to be man’s work, for Nature never does it.27

Here Thoreau places the forest and pasture in relation to one another, but he does not do so merely to praise the uninterrupted wilderness. Instead, he recognizes that humans need both kinds of landscape. Likewise, in the conclusion to “Chesuncook,” he considers the “smooth, but still varied landscape” of Massachusetts more suitable for “permanent residence” than the wilderness, for the wilderness is “simple, almost to barrenness.”28 Thoreau’s eye for disturbance histories leads him to deplore excessive logging, damming, and clearing. A good example of that sense of place comes in “Chesuncook,” where he notes that “they have lately, as I hear, invented a machine for chopping up huckleberry-bushes fine, and so converting them into fuel! — bushes which, for fruit alone, are worth all the pear-trees in the country many times over.”29 Another comes in “The Allegash and East Branch,” where he rails against the dams and loggers, concluding that “the Anglo American can indeed cut down and grub up all this waving forest and make a stump speech and vote for Buchanan on its ruins, but he cannot converse with the spirit of the tree he fells — he cannot read the poetry and mythology which retire as he advances. He ignorantly erases mythological tablets in order to print his handbills and town meeting warrants on them.”30 For Thoreau, the simplicity of the Northern Forest is not at all barren, nor is it really simple. Rather, by traveling “the logger’s path and the Indian’s trail” into the wilderness,31 he finds what John Burroughs calls, in his 1889 essay on Thoreau, the “inspiration of the eye.”32 The complexity and diversity of the forest appear in sharp detail throughout the book, and they are well represented in the appendix, in which Thoreau lists and discusses trees, shrubs, and flowers at length, placing them in their particular habitat and noting when they are introduced from Europe.33 He also lists birds from the 1857 trip, quadrupeds, equipment for an excursion, and Indian words. Finally, Thoreau’s three trips into the Maine woods give him what Tom Wessels calls “an ecological eye,” or at least the beginnings of such a perspective. Thoreau sees past and present disturbances; he recognizes processes of succession; he thinks in terms of forest health — both the biological health of the wilderness and the many-sided health of the human beings who depend upon it more than they realize.

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Writing a generation after Thoreau, after the industrialization of logging across the United States, John Burroughs’s “ecological eye” is more scattered and less developed than what we find in Thoreau’s The Maine Woods. Several essays give Burroughs’s excursions into the Northern Forests: “In the Hemlocks,” “The Adirondacks,” and “Birch Browsings” were published in the 1860s and collected in Burroughs’s first book of nature essays, Wake-Robin (1871). “The Halcyon in Canada” (1879) is a narrative of a fishing/camping expedition to Lake St. John, 125 miles north of Quebec, and “Pepacton: A Summer Voyage” (1879) narrates Burroughs’s trip down the east branch of the Delaware River in his own homemade boat. Burroughs has a sharp eye for disturbances. In the essay “In the Hemlocks,” for example, he represents the “ancient hemlocks” as rich in many things besides birds . . . [having a] history . . . of an heroic cast. Ravished and torn by the tanner in his thirst for bark, preyed upon by the lumberman, assaulted and beaten back by the settler, still their spirit has never been broken, their energies never paralyzed. Not many years ago a public highway passed through them, but it was at no time a tolerable road; trees fell across it, mud and limbs choked it up, till finally travelers took the hint and went around; and now, walking along its deserted course, I see only the footprints of coons, foxes, and squirrels.34

Burroughs registers shifts in species, as when he passes down through maple arches, crosses an ancient brush fence, and is “fairly within the old hemlocks, and in one of the most primitive, undisturbed nooks. In the deep moss I tread as with muffled feet, and the pupils of my eyes dilate in the dim, almost religious light.”35 Later, he enters an “overgrown Barkpeeling,” where the bark for tanning was removed,36 and here he observes a “rough, scraggy yellow birch on a bank of club-moss,” partridge-berry, wintergreen, and six varieties of ferns, “some gigantic ones nearly shoulder-high.”37 Wessels tells us that the yellow birch, like the hemlock, is shade tolerant,38 and Burroughs’s description suggests a pillow or nurse log structure with a birch growing out of a mossy log. Wessels also notes that hemlock bark is very rot-resistant because of the tannin in its bark, and “hemlock bark was the mainstay of the tanning industry until the early twentieth century and has the most rot-resistant bark of any tree in central New England.”39 Burroughs doesn’t remark on stumps, but there are “soft and decayed logs,” “a network of briers

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and hazels,” “a perfect bower of wild cherry, beech, and soft maple,” “waist-deep . . . raspberry bushes.”40 Many of these plants suggest clearing succession, similar to pasture succession.41 The exposed areas of soil are colonized by herbaceous plants that grow as basal rosettes, followed by tall perennials and thorny shrubs, and then by a variety of trees. If Burroughs were more specific about the six species of ferns, we might identify some eco-indicators among them, since ferns are “wonderful eco-indicators for soil moisture and nutrient levels.”42 Like Thoreau, Burroughs is best at detecting differences and discontinuities, though he typically does not develop the broad implications of his observations. In “Birch Browsings,” set in the Catskills, Burroughs notes that the so-called Pine Mountains should be renamed “Birch Mountains,” for on their summits birch is the prevailing tree. “On their sides beech and maple abound; while, mantling their lower slopes and darkening the valleys, hemlock formerly enticed the lumberman and tanner. Except in remote or inaccessible localities, the latter tree is now almost never found.”43 Tanneries were a major industry, and they remain prominent in the 1860s. Burroughs notes that “the few patches of hemlock that still lingered high up on the sides of the mountains were being felled and peeled,”44 suggesting that the beech, maple, and birch represent a shift in species composition. Burroughs makes a similar observation in “The Adirondacks.” There the campers hike “to an elevated region of pine forest, years before ravished by lumbermen,” and the “woods were largely pine, though yellow birch, beech, and maple were common.” “The most noted object,” he writes, “was a mammoth pine, apparently the last of a great race, which presided over a cluster of yellow birches, on the side of the mountain.”45 The “mammoth pine” evokes the white pines of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a remnant of the 400-year-old groves of giant trees,46 and it looks forward to the shift of white pine stands to upland abandoned pastures in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The narrative essays tend to lose any analytical focus in the interest of the story, which focuses on the journey and the adventures of camping and fishing in the wilderness. In “The Halcyon in Canada,” Burroughs describes the vast, dense spruce forests on his journey north of Quebec. “As we proceeded the spruce became smaller and smaller till the trees were seldom more than eight or ten inches in diameter.”47 The pattern suggests that logging took place in the south and proceeded northward,

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so that the second growth forests in the north have not yet reached the diameter of those to the south. But Burroughs does not pause to expand on the remark. In another passage, Burroughs associates bold streams with the wilderness: The river at this point was a swift, black stream from thirty to forty feet wide, with a strength and a bound like a moose. It was not shrunken and emaciated, like similar streams in a cleared country, but full, copious, and strong. Indeed, one can hardly realize how the lesser water-courses have suffered by the denuding of the land of its forest covering, until he goes into the primitive woods and sees how bounding and athletic they are there.48

But where Thoreau would draw a caustic inference or develop an extended comparison from the observation, Burroughs allows it to stand on its own. To take a final example, in “Pepacton: A Summer Voyage,” Burroughs remarks on “denuding the country of its forests”49 and describes the giant rafts of hemlock timber tied to the shore along a 100-mile stretch of the Delaware River.50 But he does not connect the two descriptions to draw inferences about logging and the landscape. Burroughs was a sharp observer of nature and perhaps an even sharper observer of Thoreau’s writing. In the posthumous essay “Emerson and His Journals,” Burroughs praises The Maine Woods as “one of the best books of its kind in English literature. It has just the right tone and quality . . . a tone and quality that sometimes come to a man when he makes less effort to write than to see and feel truly. He does not aim to exploit the woods, but to live with them and possess himself of their spirit.”51 At his best, Burroughs is just as observant as Thoreau, and like Thoreau he evokes “living with the woods” through his descriptive language and his narrative skill. But the two writers differ most fundamentally in the “ecological eye.” Burroughs’s sharp eye is limited to particulars, to parts; Thoreau’s more “ecological eye” tends to connect parts together and ask how they contribute to one another’s success or failure. Though both writers clearly appreciate the Northern Forest, Thoreau shows a deeper sense of place than Burroughs does, for Thoreau delves into the disturbance histories of the landscapes he visits. Indeed, Thoreau’s ecological eye may well be the faculty that led Burroughs to read The

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Maine Woods repeatedly and praise Thoreau for not aiming “to exploit the woods, but to live with them and possess himself of their spirit.” Tom Wessels’s Reading the Forested Landscape is a primer in Forestese, but it is also a primer in reading nineteenth-century nature writers. By learning ways of seeing and reading the forested landscape, we can learn new ways to possess ourselves of the spirit of the woods — and of the writers who walked through them.

Notes

1. Ryden, 278. 2. Wessels, 42–44. 3. Davis, 147–153. 4. Thoreau, 70. 5. Thoreau, 70–71. 6. Thoreau, 71, emphasis in original. 7. Thoreau, 56. 8. Thoreau, 70. 9. Wessels, 34–39. 10. Cronon, 38–53; Whitney, 108–120. 11. Thoreau, 41. 12. Whitney, 199. 13. Thoreau, 80. 14. Thoreau, 59. 15. Thoreau, 60–61. 16. Thoreau, 150–151. 17. Thoreau, 151. 18. Thoreau, 151. 19. Thoreau, 151. 20. Thoreau, 152. 21. See Wessels, Appendix E. 22. Thoreau, 152. 23. Thoreau, 155. 24. Thoreau, 156. 25. Thoreau, 153. 26. Thoreau, 156. 27. Thoreau, 233–234. 28. Thoreau, 155. 29. Thoreau, 154. 30. Thoreau, 229. 31. Thoreau, 156. 32. Burroughs, 8: 38. 33. Thoreau, 298–316. 34. Burroughs, 1: 43.

224  •  r e think ing pl ace 35. Burroughs, 1: 47. 36. Burroughs, 1: 59. 37. Burroughs, 1: 59. 38. Wessels, 121. 39. Wessels, 65. 40. Burroughs, 1: 67–68. 41. Wessels, 48–52. 42. Wessels, 131. 43. Burroughs, 1: 171. 4 4. Burroughs, 1: 172. 45. Burroughs, 1: 81–82. 46. Wessels, 71–73. 47. Burroughs, 4: 217. 48. Burroughs, 4: 220. 49. Burroughs, 5: 17. 50. Burroughs, 5: 30–32. 51. Burroughs, 23: 21–22.

References

Burroughs, John. The Writings of John Burroughs, Riverby Edition. 23 volumes. Boston, 1922. Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (1933). Revised edition, New York, 2003. Davis, Donald Edward. Where There Are Mountains: An Environmental History of the Southern Appalachians. Athens, GA, 2000. Ryden, Kent. Landscape with Figures: Nature and Culture in New England. Iowa City, IA, 2001. Thoreau, Henry. The Maine Woods, edited by Joseph J. Moldenhauer. Princeton, NJ 1972. Wessels, Tom. Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New En­ gland. Woodstock, VT, 1997. Whitney, Gordon G. From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain: A History of Environmental Change in Temperate North America from 1500 to the Present. Cambridge, MA, 1994.

Nature as Commodity

In Awe of the Body Physical Contact, Indulgence Shopping, and Nature Writing Pr iscill a Paton I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me. I fear not spirits, ghosts, of which I am one, — that my body might, but I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them.  — Henry David Thoreau, “Ktaadn” (71)

T

hese lines from the “Ktaadn” section of Thoreau’s The Maine Woods precede his famous outburst, “the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact!” The physicality of existence as practical necessity gives way to unbounded awe, though that awe is paradoxically expressed by the exclamation “common sense” and literally grounded on the mountain. Such consciousness of the self located in place as both pragmatic and mystifying distinguishes the hiking, fishing, canoeing Thoreau from the airier Emerson of the lecture circuit. Nonetheless, it is rare for Thoreau to refer explicitly to his body — except as a low maintenance presence that needs not what others desire: central heating, luxury apparel, or gourmet fare. Thoreau, and perhaps we have something to be thankful for here, does not share with us his aches, pains, itches,

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or carnal longings (if any). Though Thoreau states that to “write with gusto,” “The body, the senses, must conspire with the mind,” his works still assume a nineteenth-century discretion and idealism.1 The tendency of his prose in Walden, for example, is to transcend rather quickly the individual body and to abstract and universalize from sensation: his morning bath becomes like an ancient religious ritual, and his bean hoeing in the warm sun becomes the embodiment of some heavenly thought. Sustained focus on “this matter to which” we are bound — the body itself with mouth, hair, skin, alimentary and sexual organs — has to wait for Walt Whitman. By itself, the move toward open discussion of the body does not guarantee understanding or valuing of “contact,” however elemental and potent that contact might be. As Thoreau in “Walking” wishes to reclaim “man” as “part and parcel of Nature,” so might we wish to reclaim the Body for Nature. In claiming the Body for Nature, I do not intend a promotion of nudism or naturism (though an appropriate camp lies on the east side of  New Hampshire’s White Mountains for those who dare to bare during black fly season.) Rather, the Body for and in Nature involves recognizing how sensations draw us into our surroundings or make us shrink away, how preconceptions and social circumstances direct the possibilities of the body, and how sensory perceptions become symbiotic with intellectual, moral, and emotional existence. To reclaim the body for nature, it is worth considering intersections of intellectual and social trends that, as disparate as they initially seem, influence attitudes toward and use of the environment. These include confusion over the value of the concrete and the ineffable in the economy and the environment; related concepts of mind/body dualism; romantic myths of contact that challenge such dualism; contemporary social and consumer trends that in “enhancing” the body undermine vital contact and threaten endangered ecologies like the Northern Forest; and alternatives to commodified attention to the body in contemporary nature writing and in intellectual discourse. Robert Frost’s insights into the interplay of mind, body, and place will be useful throughout, and his poem “To Earthward” brings to the discussion an intimate intensity. This work, which dates from Frost’s residence in the New Hampshire mountains, dramatizes experience crossing back and forth over the membrane of self. Like Thoreau’s “Ktaadn,” “To Earth-

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ward” assumes an essential need for contact, yet finds that contact unnerving, paradoxically uncanny and elusive in its reality. The significance of “contact” with earth is usually taken for granted, even as bodily attention in all meanings of the phrase was and remains a key element of nature writing and of ecological awareness. After all, it is through the body that we inhabit a world populated by many others  — like those bodies that raise Thoreau’s hackles on Ktaadn. Environmental degradation is not just a vague assault on the idea of “Mother Nature”: it is specific damage to biotic systems — forests, watersheds, coastal zones — and the organisms that constitute those systems. Environmental organizations focus on researched facts and scientific paradigms to “prove” damage, economic impact, or success in recovering ecosystems. This is certainly reasonable, given the assumed regard of lawmakers and business and community leaders for quantification and the “bottom line.” Nonetheless, the language surrounding the “facts” ellides into different realms of value. Groups such as the Northern Forest Alliance (a coalition of conservation, forestry, and recreation organizations in New England and upstate New York) seek to protect “the forest’s ecological integrity.” In such statements, “integrity” implies both moral worth and organic health, and “ecological integrity” would seem to include the ability to sustain the livelihoods of people who work not with abstractions but with resources. However, not just physical survival is at stake: the human body with the range of its senses and thought cannot be separated from perception of nature. While activist groups present their cases in quantifiable terms — referring to acreage, species counts, development statistics, tourist use — they also invoke pleasure — a sensory and emotional response — and imply virtue. Mission statements defend outdoor “magnificance” and “opportunities for recreation and spiritual renewal that pristine forests, rivers, deserts and mountains provide.”2 Such statements discreetly evoke past cultural myths: rugged individualists in the wilderness, character shaped by experiences with the land, and a healthy mind in a healthy body thriving in an invigorating setting. These myths are aptly voiced by a twentieth-century advocate of the environment, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. His books on western and eastern mountains and wilderness areas connect the experiences of the body to faith and integrity. Douglas was not worried about strict philosophical accountability; his descriptions echo a

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popular understanding of romantic correspondences between body and soul, earth and spirit: They — if they are among the uninitiated — may be inspired to search out the high alpine basins and fragile flowers that flourish there. They may come to know the exhilaration of wind blowing through them on rocky pinnacles. They may recognize the music of the conifers when it comes both in whispered melodies and in the fullness of the wind instruments. They may discover the glory of a blade of grass and find their own relationship to the universe in the song of the willow thrush at dusk. They may learn to worship God where pointed spires of balsam fir turn a mountain meadow into a cathedral.3 God made [Katahdin] for man and all His other creatures — to use, to adore, but not to destroy. In this wildness the body cells are once more in rhythm.”4

Postmodern thought critiques as a construction (generally a masculinist, elitist, or imperialist one) such beliefs in the American outdoors and in a spiritualized nature and naturalized humanity. But even before deconstruction, Emerson noted, however he might wish otherwise, that a setting’s grandeur does not inevitably produce a like breed of men. Distressed by Northern apathy toward slavery, he writes in “Monadnock,” “The God who made New Hampshire / Taunted the lofty land / With little men.”5 Present and past doubts do not mean, though, that we must give up on myths of contact. Rather, they can be thoughtfully, deliberately revised, as many environmentally conscious activists and writers do in outlining specific policies (such as permissable use of certain terrains) and shaping broader perceptions (such as considering ourselves as stewards rather than controllers of nature) that mutually benefit human and nonhuman life. To paraphrase Frost, we can believe something into fulfillment.6 Meanwhile, other attitudes toward body and nature appear to prevail. In a variety of ways, our era is body-conscious, often not wisely so. In this Age of the Makeover, the focus in much media is not simply on well-being but on an appearance that exudes sexiness and success: rippled six-pack abs and serene botoxed faces advantageously set off by professionally styled hair and wardrobe. In 2003 and 2004, one of the news features that could regularly compete with the war in Iraq was the low-carb diet: our nation wants to be safe from terrorism — and thin. In

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neither of these unlike cases was the environmental consequence of war or of a diet high in animal protein much considered. At the same time, an argument can be made that this is an era of sensory deprivation. Diane Ackerman espouses this view in her 1990 book, A Natural History of the Senses, that became a PBS series, Mystery of the Senses: “Much of our experience in twentieth-century America is an effort to get away from those textures [of life], to fade into a stark, simple, solemn, puritanical, all-business routine that doesn’t have anything so unseemly as sensuous zest.”7 The assumption is that most people pursue careers involving abstract information in hermetically sealed offices. (This is another reason why many who make policy have limited comprehension of life in rural and forested areas.) Executives, lawyers, philanthropists, teachers, and receptionists may be alike in that they spend a good deal of time in a room, at a desk. They look at other people dressed to work in similar rooms, they look at paper, they look at computer monitors. After-work entertainment comes through an electronic form, dependent on flat screens and speakers to predictably engage the eyes and ears; virtual reality is becoming a common part of childhood and adult experience. Most of us only occasionally, if at all, engage in tasks that delight the senses (and that are seen as nostalgic hobbies): kneading yeasty bread dough, sewing with textured fabrics, woodworking with pine or cherry. If we have been cut off from labor that satisfies in its productivity and its physical engagement, like the rural tasks described in Thoreau’s Walden or Frost’s poetry, we have been “saved” by technological progress from onerous jobs that overtaxed the body and assaulted the senses. No field work to the point of sunstroke, no descent into mines that cause black lung. The “filth” of excrement, disease, and death is generally handed over to professionals or a plumbing process. Though as Thoreau sought the shipwrecked dead on the beaches of Cape Cod and as Whitman aided the Civil War wounded, military personnel and civilians in several countries currently face the task of attending to the bloodied and collecting body parts after acts of violence. For the majority, nonetheless, scenes of dismemberment are rendered more palatable when distanced from the senses by a screen or newsprint. It is interesting that television —  in reporting “reality” — makes real scenes abstract. In general, our responses and tasks are not visceral but cerebral: the processing of information in its drier forms.

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This assumed deprivation creates a marketing opportunity. There’s money in relieving the stress of the psyche with the indulgence of the senses: aromatherapy, sea-salt body scrubs, luxury lingerie, fat-friendly diets. It seems as if we’ve handed over the satisfying of bodily contact, as we’ve handed over much else, to the marketplace. This seduction by consumer culture becomes evident in a variety of cultural trends, including the obsession with a sexy presence that requires purchasing sensually attractive goods. Economic vitality is generally construed as a basic need: one cliché is that sustaining jobs takes precedence over sustaining remote terrains. This platitude, however, overlooks outsourcing and overlooks that the “market” is not rationally based on meeting all people’s basic material needs but frequently flourishes with conspicuous consumption — the selling of fads and status items that attempt to fulfill elusive desires. These trends may be all too familiar, but their implications for the environment are less so, particularly for an ecology like the Northern Forest — which is not a place where the human animal easily survives and which is threatened by expansion of “comfortable” development and materially luxurious lifestyles. I am particularly conscious of this because I recently lived near Columbus, Ohio, whose economic situation is closely tied to that of a home company, Limited Brands (whose chairman Les Wexner is prominent in local suburban development and philanthropic causes). According to its website, Limited Brands was “ranked #1 in ‘World’s Most Admired Companies,’ Fortune magazine, March 3, 2003.” This success, besides depending on how the company is managed, depends on the popularity of its “brands,” including the White Barn Candle Company, Bath & Body Works, and Victoria’s Secret. These stores, with the enticements of décor and decolletege, aim to cultivate middle-class sensory indulgence. The allure of perfumed candles, soothing oils, and soft fabric on soft bodies is ancient. But in historic legend, luxuries were just that — luxuries, enjoyed by Cleopatras and Marie Antoinettes while the masses toiled, drab and dreary. The proliferation of Limited Brands’ stores suggests that even for working folk of modest income, lighting, soap, and underwear need not be white, functional, and unflattering. The sales record of these companies depends not only on central office decisions and malls distant from the Northern Forest, but on catalogues. And catalogues require paper, and paper requires wood. In the fall of 2004, a protest campaign was launched against Victoria’s Secret,

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which sends out 395 million catalogues per year, and these are mostly “produced with un-recycled paper, with some of the paper coming from endangered forests such as Canada’s boreal forest.”8 While the lingerie company (whose sexy supermodel catalogue seems a product in its own right) is at the top of the villain list for consuming virgin timber, other companies are not immune, including some that encourage an active life outdoors, such as Lands’ End and L.L.Bean. This is the dark side of current economic patterns: the networks of resource acquisition, production, marketing, outsourcing, advertising, and merchandising are so diffuse that many impacts of corporate decisions and consumer choices are distanced and difficult to envision. This sense of globalization as undermining knowledge of and responsibility toward specific regions causes justified concern over rapidly changing absentee ownership of resources. In contrast, long-term investment (economic and civic) in local sustainability and quality of life is the goal of the conservation groups to “build strong, diverse, locally based economies that support vibrant communities throughout the Northern Forest.”9 It is not just marketing directors who imagine a return to the senses: there is a pronounced emphasis on the body in contemporary nature writing. In the spring of 2004, I attended a reading by Rick Bass: the piece he read, “The Cave” from A Hermit’s Story, was nothing if not sensual. In that story a couple traveling through the South come across an abandoned coal mine, and the man, once a miner, feels compelled to explore and takes off his clothes to avoid dirtying them; the woman follows. They become separated in the dark womb of the mine, but when they bump into each other they fall into making love, blind to everything except the language of touch — so heightened now by the deprivation of other senses that it seemed possible that when they emerged, if they emerged, they might somehow be able to transfer a similar intensity to all of the other senses, and that in so doing, they might stride the earth as strongly and freely as giants.10

Such passages call attention to ourselves as animal, to the negotiation of the world through the senses, to the transforming energy of a response that is more than cerebral. The heightening of receptivity — and therefore of pleasure, pain, and consciousness — recalls the expansion of human potential in Transcendental writings. In the famous 1836 “Nature” essay, Emerson writes of Man as “a god in ruins,” “the dwarf of himself ”

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who needs to recover a greater dominion: “The problem of restoring to the world original and eternal beauty, is solved by the redemption of the soul.”11 However, there seems to be a reversal in rhetoric between classic Transcendentalism and current nature writing. The Transcendentalists were bold in talk of the soul, shy in talk of sex — though their language implies the pull of the physical. Our contemporaries are bold in talk of sex, shy in talk of the soul — though their language implies the pull of the spiritual. Emerson’s transcendent uplift and Bass’s erotic descent lead to a similar end: an intensified, more fulfilling awareness of the self and, correspondingly, an intensified, more fulfilling awareness of relationship with other selves and with the natural world. Contemporary women writers — Diane Ackerman, Terry Tempest Wil­liams, Pattiann Rogers, and Barbara Kingsolver, to name a few — also celebrate a sensory, sensual, and sexual response to nature. In part this is a recovery of the traditional feminine — of the nurturing and the maternal, of feeling related by birth and “marriage” to a sustaining landscape. Their directness reflects as well a liberating trend, an era in which women can express and define their own sensuality. Consciously or not, they are reclaiming female sexuality from pop culture and marketplace — a sexuality that is not realized through the purchase of a reinvented corset but through an embracing of the outdoors. For example, in “Yellowstone: The Erotics of Place,” Williams reinvents the myth of Echo and Pan to express a relationship with landscape that involves desire, seduction, danger, and response: “It is time for us to take off our masks, to step out from behind our personas — whatever they might be: educators, activists, biologists, geologists, writers, farmers, ranchers, and bureaucrats — and admit we are lovers, engaged in an erotics of place.”12 The titles of works by Pattiann Rogers illustrate her sexualized, sensualized poetics: “Seduced by Ear Alone,” “The Hummingbird: A Seduction,” “Naked Boys on Naked Ponies,” “Rolling Naked in the Morning Dew,” and “Foreplay.” Barbara Kingsolver, in an essay “Taming the Beast with Two Backs,” justifies the explicit sexuality of one of her novels (presumably Prodigal Summer) and connects it to the environment: “Not that the sex is gratuitous, I keep telling myself. The novel is about life in the biological sense: the rules that connect, divide, and govern living species, including their tireless compunction to reproduce themselves.”13 Noting how sexuality pervades magazines, television, advertising, and movies, she adds, “Why should literary authors shy away from something so important?”14

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The academic world has also shown fresh interest in challenging the mind/body dualism of the Western philosophical tradition, in rethinking the interaction of mind/body/environment through cognitive studies and ecological psychology and in examination of the animal/human continuum. Seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes (cogito ergo sum — I think, therefore I am) epitomizes the mindset that privileges the abstract over the bodily and that views whatever is external to the mind as objects to be studied, manipulated, and improved. Descartes, as intellectual historian Roy Porter summarizes, made “remarkable claims for the power of reason” and “deprecated sensory knowledge, which could not shake of the uncertainty of subjectivity.”15 His “mechanical” philosophy supposes a “rigid dualism” and relegates the human body and the lives of animals to the status of “mechanical automata.”16 The valorization of the rational and dismissal of the subjective were challenged in the nineteenth century by the Romantic movement in literature and philosophy: think of British poet William Wordsworth’s charge, “we murder to dissect,” and of American Transcendentalism. Robert Frost describes the Romantic impulse as the attempt “to say matter in terms of spirit, or spirit in terms of matter, to make final unity”; but he cryptically adds, “That is the greatest attempt that ever failed.”17 Unifying body and spirit can sound like the stuff of inconsequential dreams, mystifying poetry, and enticing brochures for outdoor vacations: the dualisms of mind over matter, human dominance over the mechanisms of nature, and quantifiable results over feelings have often been pervasive. In other words, the desire remains to be “uplifted” by physical experiences and entities; but in the arenas of politics and the marketplace, the argument that nature should be protected because “it makes us feel good” has not sounded adequately rational. Now, it seems, Descartes is dead. “Reason” leads scholars and scientists to very different conclusions: “there is no Cartesian dualistic person, with a mind separate from and independent of the body.”18 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson move beyond traditional dualism in Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. They argue that “the very structure of reason itself comes from the details of our embodiment. . . . Reason, even in its most abstract form, makes use of, rather than transcends our animal nature. . . . Reason is thus not an essence that separates us from other animals; rather, it places us on a continuum with them.”19 As Johnson further explains elsewhere, “We

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can only experience what our embodiment allows us to experience. We can only conceptualize using the conceptual systems grounded in our bodily experience.”20 Terry Eagleton, in reviewing a book on eighteenthcentury views of the body, echoes this view and adds that “we forget to think about the body, and so overlook the fact that we think in the way we do, generally speaking, because of the kind of bodies we have. Our rationality and animality are bound tightly together.”21 Ecological psychology also examines the development of the human within a setting: it shares with Lakoff and Johnson’s cognitive approach the assumption that human learning “is something that goes on in particular settings, with particular constraints, and with particular purposes.”22 It is not the same as E. O. Wilson’s biophilia, an important concept itself about how we may be hardwired to connect to landscape. Ecological psychology, neutral in terms of “green” awareness, emphasizes “the study of information transactions between living systems and their environments, especially as they pertain to perceiving situations of significance to planning and execution of purposes activated in an environment.”23 Harry Heft explains, “Psychology needs to be built on a conceptual foundation compatible with the life sciences, and especially with the study of animals as organized, dynamic, adaptive beings, rather than on the mechanistic foundations of physical science.”24 Heft’s pairing of psychology with the life sciences, particularly in the study of humans and nonhumans as “adaptive beings,” highlights another direction of contemporary thought — an interest in parallels between human and animal development. The traditions of philosophy and science have often been occupied with “human specialness”: with what makes humans more than beasts but less than gods.25 That hierarchy has been challenged by theories of evolution and by ethologists who study animal communication and socialization, who ask questions like, “If animals are thinking creatures capable of emotions, as a growing number of scientists now believe, do their signals convey information (similar to our words)?”26 Scientists no longer think that studying personality in animals is “foolish anthropomorphism”; besides revealing what different profiles of animal behavior contribute to survival, such studies segue into exploration of the “deep evolutionary roots” of human personality.27 Attention to a continuum among species places humans in an ecology of varied creatures rather than in a realm above nature. The focus on human beings as species adapting to a physical world is

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evident as well in David Abram’s book, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. Abram blends traditional Western academic thought with indigenous magic and medicine to explore perception and to rethink the relation between “the human community and the natural landscape.”28 He revisits phenomenology and a question that concerned the philosopher Husserl: “How does our subjective experience enable us to recognize the reality of other selves, other experiencing beings? The solution seemed to implicate the body — one’s own as well as that of the other — as a singularly important structure within the phenomenal field.”29 Sophisticated and cerebral as we may be, we still live in and through the body: our brain is not in a separate place, like a computer hard drive, but is a living organ working with and through the senses that provide contact. So through these various avenues, contemporary culture is self conscious about the mind in the body, the body in a place, and the senses reawakened to themselves and to surrounding life. In the contemporary literature mentioned above, the tone of body-consciousness is often celebratory. As important as celebrating the pleasures is acknowledging the challenges of being a body in nature. In the Northern Forest, sunscreen may be replaced by snow suits, seductive breezes by 200-mph gales. Here Nature can be, as in Thoreau’s “Ktaadn,” a cruel “stepmother.” Markers on the Appalachian Trail remind hikers that if stranded in adverse conditions they can die. The struggle to survive in Nature has often been displaced in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by the struggle to survive in the wilderness of human territorialism, misunderstanding, and hatred. But nature’s force cannot be forgotten. Because many Americans take the satisfaction of physical needs for granted, they can be mindless of the adaptations required of themselves and of a place to reach a familiar level of comfort. “We still prefer our nature packaged and safe, on our terms and time schedules, which of course is not nature at all,” according to essayist Robert Finch.30 An oblivious expectation of comfort has farreaching implications for the environment. With the Northern Forest, for example, accessibility is an issue: should more roads, parking lots, and rest areas be built to make areas accessible to those “bodies” unable or unwilling to bear the rigors of distance back-packing and canoeing? On a different level, should the woods be logged for a profit, to sustain a minimal existence for locals (possible index — one shower per dwell-

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ing), or to sustain a moderate existence for company shareholders (two showers and a hot tub), or to sustain a high level of luxury for some (six showers, two heated pools, and shore-front property)? On a more philosophic, less economical level (though the two are related, as Thoreau and Frost realize in their writings on labor), it seems that terrain and climate influence human behavior and knowledge. The parables offered by the Northern Forest differ from those offered by the Caribbean. I could ask, are cold climates responsible for puritanism and repression? The answer is — no, of course not — it just feels that way. However you choose to think of climate and sensuality, explicit bodyconsciousness has not been part of the New England tradition (unless sybaritic Edna St. Vincent Millay is fully embraced). One of the region’s icons, Robert Frost, poet of conversation and rural tasks, is an unlikely anchorite for the realm of the senses. However, “A Servant to Servant,” “The Hill Wife,” “Two Witches,” and “The Subverted Flower” emerge from sexual fears and longings. In the fertility poem, “Putting in the Seed,” the double meanings are obvious as the speaker addresses the she who comes to call him to dinner, wondering if she too might become: “Slave to a springtime passion for the earth. / How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed.” A little-discussed poem, “To Earthward,” dwells on the pull of the body, and on the pull of the body toward contact. The poem dates from Frost’s years in Franconia, New Hampshire, and was probably drafted at his farm there in the summer of 1917; it was published in the collection New Hampshire of 1923.31 “To Earthward” is an enigmatic study of sensuousness and pain, and as he did with “The Subverted Flower,” Frost avoided reading this poem in public.32 The piece opens with precocious romantic sensitivity, harkening back to the poses of Frost’s first book, A Boy’s Will, with its self-conscious epigraphs about the “youth” who would dream such lines as “She a window flower, / And he a winter breeze.”33 However, the lyricism is spare here, shadowed by a backward glance: Love at the lips was touch As sweet as I could bear; And once that seemed too much; I lived on air That crossed me from sweet things, The flow of — was it musk

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From hidden grapevine springs Down hill at dusk? I had the swirl and ache From sprays of honeysuckle That when they’re gathered shake Dew on the knuckle. I craved strong sweets, but those Seemed strong when I was young; The petal of the rose It was that stung.34

These lines pair specificity of sensation with vague generality about the dramatic situation; the meter is also quatrameter, rather than the more talk-like iambic pentameter. So the poem, rather than being a narrative in which a man and woman are identified and situated, is a lyric on the essence of sensation. The images could almost be textbook examples conveying the different bodily senses and responses: touch, scent, and taste; appetite, scarring, and pain. Visual perception, usually dominant and more readily associated with objective knowledge, is supplanted by touch, with its implied absorption of surface sensation into a mysterious interior. The first lines imply a feminine other and romanticized fulfillment through gentle contact: “Love at the lips was touch / As sweet as I could bear.” This longing is intensified even as it seems dispersed through images that are ethereal — the “air” from “sweet things”; invisible —  “musk from hidden grapevine”; and also tangible — “dew on the knuckle.” The speaker is overcome by sweets; the delicate becomes “strong” to a mind and body hypersensitive to the possibility of delight beyond comfortable moderation. The diction — flow, musk, swirl, ache, sprays, dew, petal, stung — creates a discreetly sexual overtone. That word “stung” provides the transition from the pleasing ache of the first four quatrains to the scarring pain of the poem’s second half as calloused experience looks back on sensation-seeking youth: Now no joy but lacks salt That is not dashed with pain And weariness and fault; I crave the stain

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Of tears, the aftermark Of almost too much love, The sweet of bitter bark And burning clove. When stiff and sore and scarred I take away my hand From leaning on it hard In grass and sand, The hurt is not enough: I long for weight and strength To feel the earth as rough To all my length.35

With sensation and emotion, the bodily and the conceptual continually feed each other. In what seems a core metaphor of human experience, “feeling” through nerve endings is conflated with feeling “for” something or someone. Elizabeth Harvey writes in Sensible Flesh: On Touch in Early Modern Culture: “Although touch is usually associated with the surface of the body, it becomes a metaphor for conveyance into the interior of the subject, particularly the capacity to arouse emotion (registered in the figurative sense of ‘touching’ as kindling affect).”36 In the poem, the sweetness that had suffused the idyllic, dreamlike past is replaced by “salt” — a sharp taste but one nonetheless desired. A “joy” that is only sweet no longer seems substantial, convincing. The poet has learned to crave suffering, and we can only speculate why. Because he cannot avoid pain? Because “the aftermark / Of almost too much love” is physical proof that some emotional experience was real? That last phrase is a strange one mixing a qualifier with an assertion — “almost too much.” Too-muchness frequents Frost’s poetry. Some imbalance of situation or feeling afflicts the poet or his characters, as in these few examples: “For I have had too much / Of apple-picking” (“After Apple-Picking”); “Too glad for the one thing // As we are too sad for the other” and “It was too lonely for her there, / And too wild” (“The Hill Wife”); “Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh / From too much dwelling on what has been” (“The Need of Being Versed in Country Things”); “Back out of all this now too much for us” (“Directive”). The phrase “too much” suggests the unbearable — sensations, feelings, and circumstances that

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threaten the self ’s autonomy. “Too much” also evokes excess and restraint at once. Rather than flowing from a romantic “full throated ease,” to borrow Whitman’s words, passion and extravagance (one of Frost’s key terms) are filtered, but not dismissed, through moderation. “Too much” enhances the suppleness of Frost’s voice: the poet seems to speak from a communal perspective of what is acceptably ordinary, even as he shows what lies beyond that norm — at the heart of the poem is a sense of the uncanny and uncontrollable. In this case, “too much” raises doubt about the limits of human endurance for joy and pain and about the possibility that love can or does have limits. In a way, the expression is masochistic, and chastisement through sensation concludes the poem: The hurt is not enough: I long for weight and strength To feel the earth as rough To all my length.

The poet seeks the reassurance of a contact that commands him completely, immediate sensation paradoxically complementing and negating the pain of memory. After the craving, the tears, the “sweet of bitter bark,” the poet wants to be ruled by the sensation of rough contact with the earth. We can control touch, but it can control us. As Harvey summarizes, “Touch evokes at once agency and receptivity, authority and reciprocity, pleasure and pain, sensual indulgence and epistemological certainty.”37 So what of these is the poet seeking in “To Earthward”? The poem shifts from the pleasing to the astringent side of that equation. It’s as if the poet wishes to be chastised, punished, and refined, through the corporeality of rough touch. Tactile sensations, as Robert Finch suggests, can give rise to powerful memories, illustrating again the “embodiment” of thought.38 Or tactility can distract, one touch, hurtful and rough, replacing the memory of another — the light kiss. The last stanza of “To Earthward,” like Thoreau’s cries of “contact,” “the actual world,” express a desire for certainty — a certainty that is reassuringly tangible even as it can be emotionally overwhelming. Because touch can involve the full “length” of the body, it can be correlated to the self — and touch is as close as one being can come to another. For these reasons, according to Harvey, there is the “enduring idea that tactility is the ‘root’ of the other senses and, further, that touch is somehow

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synonymous with life itself.”39 Maybe, then, “To Earthward” suggests a possible death and rebirth through the sensation of “life itself.” Yet the poem does not end, as “Birches” does, with a restoration of agency or free will, a movement between heaven and earth. It still seeks and becomes dependent upon that harsh grounding. Suffering, even as it is caused by another, can become a solipsistic and isolating obsession. Yet pain and rough sensation then remind the poet that he is alive and that he is in a world of concrete entities and sentient beings. “Contact” may be the essential reassurance, but not necessarily a reassurance of human mastery and happiness. Many read Thoreau’s account of climbing Katahdin as an example of the sublime — the encounter of the limited human with something beyond his ken. Frost’s poem avoids the grand scale for the intimate, but the speaker’s response to “honeysuckle,” “salt,” or “sand” take him far beyond the comfortable and familiar. The shock of contact in Frost’s “To Earthward” and Thoreau’s “Ktaadn” reveals that identity is formed by individual responsiveness grounded in cultural traditions (ideas of the sublime and of lyric expressiveness) and “grounded” in place shared with others. David Abram connects the poetic and scientific meanings of this: To acknowledge that “I am this body” is not to reduce the mystery of my yearnings and fluid thoughts to a set of mechanisms, or my “self ” to a determinate robot. Rather it is to affirm the uncanniness of this physical form. It is not to lock up awareness within the density of a closed and bounded object, for as we shall see, the boundaries of a living body are open and indeterminate; more like membranes than barriers, they define a surface of metamorphosis and exchange.40

While that “metamorphosis and exchange” between the self and other can be life-giving, it can also threaten: the senses, along with intellectual doubts, exist to sound alarms. The body continually reminds us not only of the possibilities for pleasure and movement into the tangible, populated world but also of limits. Terry Eagleton revisits the frailty of the flesh: From Plato to Bertrand Russell, truth and flesh have been at war with each other. Yet the body is where thought begins, since the body is where we are. And the flesh can be seen as a critique of pure reason, deflating

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the grandiose ambitions . . . In its dependency, the body recalls the unpalatable truth that we are not self-determining self-sufficient beings but creatures who draw our life and meaning from one another.41

It is not always a pleasure to live with the body we have, the mind we have, in the place we’re given. So we negotiate the dependency of the body through the abstractions of science, philosophy, and literature. Although we cannot always reconcile or articulate the mind/body/environment connection, we should honor its significance. This could lead to a “self ” awareness that acknowledges mind and body as part of nature and thus hesitates before seeking to buy all sensory satisfaction or alter the supporting environment. So the question of what it means to reclaim the Body for Nature is worth continued exploration. The answers will be varied, but we know this already: places like the Northern Forest revitalize us with the thrilling feeling of being outside in an atmosphere where, to quote Douglas again, “the body cells are once more in rhythm.” As a formidable terrain, the woods challenge the resourcefulness of body and mind. As a site of beauty that is not contained in a predictable package, the woods soothe in a way that no mall purchase can. The Northern Forest also reminds us of humility, as the contact with earth undid and reassured Thoreau and Frost. We are still learning how to adapt our weak corporeality and our vulnerable emotional being to places that, in Thoreau’s words, are “not bound to be kind to man”: the trick is how to adapt ourselves without destruction of “vast, terrific” Matter.42

Notes

1. Thoreau, “Journal Passages.” 2. See the Wilderness Society’s “Mission Statement.” 3. Douglas, Of Men and Mountains, x. 4. Douglas, My Wilderness, 289. 5. Quoted in Frost, 861. 6. Frost, 726. 7. Ackerman, xviii. 8. See Independent Media, “Protest.” 9. See Northern Forest Alliance website. 10. Bass, 82. 11. Emerson, 45–47. 12. Williams, 84.

244  •  nat ur e a s c ommodit y 13. Kingsolver, 223. 14. Kingsolver, 224. 15. Porter, 65. 16. Porter, 66–67. 17. Frost, 723. 18. Lakoff and Johnson, 5. 19. Lakoff and Johnson, 4. 20. Johnson, 81. 21. Eagleton, 88. 22. Sanders, 127. 23. Heft, xiii (emphasis in original). 24. Heft, xxii. 25. Abram, 77. 26. Friend, 3. 27. See Zimmer and “Are Dogs People Too?” 28. Abram, 21. 29. Abram, 37. 30. Finch, 19. 31. Parini, 181–182. 32. Parini, 224. 33. Frost, 20. 34. Frost, 209–210. 35. Frost, 209–210. 36. Harvey, 2. 37. Harvey, 2. 38. Finch, 15. 39. Harvey, 5. 40. Abram, 46. 41. Eagleton, 88. 42. Thoreau, 70.

References

Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a MoreThan-Human World. New York, 1997. Ackerman, Diane. A Natural History of the Senses. New York, 1990. “Are Dogs People Too?” Economist 375 (February 26–March 4, 2005): 79. Bass, Rick. The Hermit’s Story. Boston, 2002. Douglas, William O. Of Men and Mountains. New York, 1950. ———. My Wilderness: East to Katahdin. Garden City, NY, 1961. Eagleton, Terry. “I Am, Therefore I Think: The Plight of the Body in Modern Thought” (review of Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason). Harper’s 308 (March 2004): 87–91. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Essays and Lectures, edited by Joel Porte. New York, 1983.

in aw e of the body  •  245 Finch, Robert. Outlands: Journeys to the Outer Edges of Cape Cod. Boston, 1986. Friend, Tim. Animal Talk: Breaking the Codes of Animal Language. New York, 2004. Frost, Robert. Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays, edited by Richard Poirier and Mark Richardson. New York, 1995. Harvey, Elizabeth D. Sensible Flesh: On Touch in Early Modern Culture. Philadelphia, 2003. Heft, Harry. Ecological Psychology in Context: James Gibson, Roger Barker, and the Legacy of William James’s Radical Empiricism. Mahwah, NJ, 2001. Independent Media. “Protest Against Environmental Effects of Victoria’s Secret Catalogs.” http://www.indybay.org/archives/archive_by_id.php ?id=2718&category_id=14, accessed February 20, 2005. Johnson, Mark L. “Embodied Reason.” In Perspectives on Embodiment: The Intersections of Nature and Culture, edited by Gail Weiss and Honi Fern Haber, 81–102. New York, 1999. Kingsolver, Barbara. Small Wonder. New York, 2002. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York, 1999. Limited Brands. “About Our Company.” http://www.limitedbrands.com/ about/index.jsp, accessed June 2009. Northern Forest Alliance. “About NFA.” http://www.northernforestalliance .org/about-nfa.html, accessed May 11, 2009. Parini, Jay. Robert Frost: A Life. New York, 1999. Porter, Roy. Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of Body and Soul. New York, 2004. Rogers, Pattiann. Firekeeper: New and Selected Poems. Minneapolis, 1994. Sanders, John T. “An Ecological Approach to First Philosophy.” In Perspectives on Embodiment: The Intersections of Nature and Culture, edited by Gail Weiss and Honi Fern Haber, 121–142. New York, 1999. Thoreau, Henry David. “Journal Passages on the Art of Writing.” American Transcendentalism website, http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendental ism/authors/thoreau/hdt-art.html, accessed July 24, 2004. ———. The Maine Woods, edited by Joseph J. Moldenhauer. Princeton, NJ, 1972. Wilderness Society. “Mission Statement.” http://www.wilderness.org/about-us, accessed June 2009. Williams, Terry Tempest. “Yellowstone: The Erotics of Place.” In An Un spoken Hunger: Stories from the Field, 81–87. New York, 1995. Wilson, Edward O. The Human Bond with Other Species. Cambridge, MA, 1984. Zimmer, Carl. “Looking for Personality in Animals, of All People.” New York Times March 1, 2005, D1+.

Claiming Maine Acquisition and Commodification in Thoreau’s The Maine Woods L or i a nne DiSabato

I

n the opening chapter of Walden — significantly titled “Economy” — Henry David Thoreau describes his literary endeavor in economic terms: “I have thought that Walden Pond would be a good place for business, not solely on account of the railroad and the ice trade; it offers advantages which it may not be good policy to divulge; it is a good port and a good foundation.”1 In Walden, Thoreau borrows the language of capitalistic enterprise to describe his literary task in order to mock the overly acquisitive habits of his money-minded neighbors. In The Maine Woods Thoreau’s use of the language of economic acquisition and commodification is more problematic. In this work, a posthumous collection of three travel narratives, Thoreau once again mocks his money-minded contemporaries: in this case, those who claim Maine in order to log its forests and harvest its wildlife. However, in The Maine Woods, Thoreau’s critique of his fellows’ economy (literally, house-keeping) is problematized by his own lack of householding: he speaks as a visitor to the Maine woods rather than as a resident. In denouncing the loggers, hunters, and speculators who venture into the Maine wilderness only to

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reap monetary profit, Thoreau incriminates himself for his practice of venturing into the wild only to reap literary profit. In his discussion of the Thoreauvian literary excursion, Lawrence Buell asserts, “It was a succession of confrontations with nature, from each of which the observer is expected to extract as much as he can.”2 Buell’s word choice is suggestive. To describe the writers of nineteenthcentury travel narratives as confronting nature and to suggest that these writers extracted meaning from the landscapes they described makes their literary task seem more exploitative than is commonly believed. To apply such terminology to a writer such as Thoreau seems particularly ironic. That the writer who railed in Walden against a neighbor for exploiting his land by thinking “only of its money value”3 should have himself confronted nature in order to extract value from it is more than a bit surprising. However, Buell is not alone in seeing themes of acquisition in the writings of nineteenth-century American Romantics. In American Romanticism and the Marketplace, for example, Michael Gilmore notes the “commodified thinking concealed in symbolization.”4 According to Gil­ more, both writer and speculator see natural objects on two levels: as what they are and as what they betoken. What Thoreau condemns in his neighbor is the fact that “the something else has totally displaced the concrete reality”5; in other words, money matters more than nature. However, Thoreau himself can also be criticized for overlooking nature; although his writing is filled with intricately detailed observations of the natural world, one could argue that the natural world is important to him mainly as a conduit whereby he receives poetic inspiration and finds the raw material for his writing. Thoreau began writing the first essay in The Maine Woods, “Ktaadn,” during his stay at Walden Pond and continued working on it while finishing the second draft of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and the first draft of Walden.6 The essay was first published as “Ktaadn, and the Maine Woods” in New York’s Union Magazine, where it appeared in five monthly installments from July through November 1848. According to Steven Fink, “Ktaadn, and the Maine Woods” was “Thoreau’s longest and most important publication before A Week.”7 Thoreau’s diatribe against the economic exploitation of the Maine wilderness begins very early in “Ktaadn.” Having introduced his readers to his 1846 excursion to Mount Ktaadn and the other explorers who

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had published accounts of expeditions there, Thoreau considers the falls of Penobscot “which furnish the principal power by which the Maine woods are converted into lumber.”8 Thoreau rails against loggers and the figure of “Mr. Sawyer,” the men who through their business turn trees into “lumber merely”: “Mr. Sawyer marks off those spaces which decide the destiny of so many prostrate forests.”9 In his marking off of destinies, Mr. Sawyer dares to take up the work of God, measuring and deciding the fate of logs brought to him for judgment. Yet in assuming this role, Mr. Sawyer and his fellows are diabolical: “The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver-swamp and mountain side, as soon as possible.”10 Thoreau is upset not merely by the loggers’ destruction but also by the use to which the trees are put. For Thoreau, it is criminal that the great woods should be transformed into the building parts of civilization. By converting the Maine woods to “boards, clapboards, laths, and shingles,” the logging industry belittles nature: the enormity and grandeur of what Thoreau earlier calls the “primitive forest” is being transformed into mere commodity.11 Considering a mighty white pine, Thoreau is similarly outraged that its beauty is destroyed in order to make match sticks. Although Thoreau condemns the activities of the New England Friction-Match Company, his negative comments seem ironic in light of his family’s pencil-making business; it is interesting to note that Thoreau deleted from “Ktaadn” a passage in which he called himself a “pencil maker” and criticized a Maine pencil manufacturer not for its ignoble use of natural resources but instead for its shoddy workmanship.12 Thoreau’s stance toward industrial enterprise in general and logging in particular was complex. Leo Stoller notes, for example, the irony of Thoreau’s vocation as a surveyor, an occupation in which he acted as “an instrument to certify ownership in transactions aimed at making money.”13 Thoreau the surveyor often marked off wood lots for auction to lumber dealers, and it was part of his duty to estimate the land’s yield in cords.14 As marker of wood lots, Thoreau had more in common with Mr. Sawyer, the marker of board feet, than he probably cared to admit. Thoreau’s condemnation of the loggers at the beginning of “Ktaadn” can also be read as the comments of a jealous businessman. As a writer of travel narratives, Thoreau converted the Maine woods into discourse.

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Thoreau begins his narrative with a mention of the expeditions of explorers who went before him: Professor Bailey, Dr. Jackson, and “two young men from Boston.”15 All of these men, Thoreau notes, wrote narratives of their experiences. In noting these earlier explorers along with the handful who made the trip after him, Thoreau acknowledges the competition he faces: he is not the first to describe this land. The market appeal of  Thoreau’s narrative is that it is somehow unique. As long as Mount Ktaadn and the Maine woods remain remote and relatively inaccessible, Thoreau’s narratives will have an audience and a market: the stories he tells will be unique even though similar ones have been told before. The industrious loggers, however, threaten Thoreau’s artistic livelihood. If the loggers cut down the woods or make the area accessible to all, the appeal of Thoreau’s narratives as anything other than historical artifacts will be lessened or even destroyed. Thoreau sees these loggers, then, not only as destroyers of poetic natural beauty but also as real threats to his literary enterprise. In “Ktaadn,” Thoreau is not without acquisitive desire; he simply defines his acquisitiveness in metaphorical rather than literal terms. Later in the essay, Thoreau jests about his lack of material property. After several of his fellow travelers find logs with marks identifying them as their property, Thoreau muses, “Methinks that must be where all my property lies, cast up on the rocks on some distant and unexplored stream, and waiting for an unheard-of freshet to fetch it down. O make haste, ye gods, with your winds and rains, and start the jam before it rots!”16 The tone of this passage is wonderfully ironic. By this point in the essay, readers of “Ktaadn” have discovered Thoreau’s dislike of economic enterprise and acquisitiveness; certainly the man who railed against turning the Maine woods into match sticks isn’t now longing for a wealth of pine logs to float into his hands. The reader smiles at the absurdity of Thoreau praying for material possessions and immediately translates the passage into figurative terms by reading the logs as “emblems of [Thoreau’s] spiritual life.”17 However, Thoreau’s prayer for an influx of “property” is even more suggestive as a metaphor for literary inspiration. His fellows, as they travel down the river, find riches they didn’t know they had. Thoreau, also traveling down the river, is looking for poetic raw material, the stuff of literature. Once again Thoreau appropriates the language of material acquisition to describe his search for poetic material.

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What is significant in this passage is the concept of marking. Thoreau’s fellows are able to claim as their property only those stray logs bearing their identifying mark or brand. Thoreau too must mark his literary “property” by signing his name to it. Likewise, Thoreau’s project of observing, naming, and describing the Maine woods in his narrative is an act of metaphorical branding: Thoreau’s desire to learn the Indian names of plants, animals, and places is an act of intellectual appropriation through which he makes the wilderness his own. For Thoreau, the practice of writing is the means by which he asserts this claim. Language is also the means by which Thoreau leaves his mark on the landscape. Partway into the journey, Thoreau notes that he and his fellows found an entire brick at an old logging camp; of this brick Thoreau comments, “Some of us afterward regretted that we had not carried this on with us to the top of the mountain, to be left there for our mark.”18 This desire to leave one’s mark is pervasive. While Thoreau does not plant a flag wherever he goes, he does use the written word to commemorate his travels and to mark his inclusion in the ranks of those who have explored Mount Ktaadn. Years later, in the expedition recounted in the “The Allegash and East Branch” portion of The Maine Woods, the Penobscot Joe Polis would show Thoreau an inscription bearing his family’s sign that marked the site of an earlier encampment.19 Although Thoreau has no similar inscription to show Polis, he does produce a corpus of travel writings that among literate men at least serves a similar purpose. There is a point in “Ktaadn” where Thoreau feels unable to name or claim the Maine landscape. In the famous “Burnt Lands” passage, Thoreau encounters a landscape that is utterly alien. Thoreau notes “this was primeval, untamed, and forever untameable,” then he adds, “or whatever else men call it.”20 This “whatever else men call it” is the locus of  Tho­ reau’s struggle: in attempting to describe this landscape, Thoreau searches for a name which adequately fits the reality he is trying to express. Even the name “Burnt Lands” is a misnomer — Thoreau is puzzled that this area “showed no recent marks of fire, hardly so much as a charred stump, but looked rather like a natural pasture for the moose and deer.”21 Thoreau is at a loss to decide whether this “pasture” is owned by the moose or deer or someone else. Hitherto a welcomed visitor to the Maine wilderness, suddenly Thoreau feels like a trespasser: these are not public lands but lands already owned. Here for Thoreau the landscape is not merely uninhabited but potentially inhospitable and thus unknowable.

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In their inapproachability, the Burnt Lands are tantamount to the divine; in the fashion of mysticism’s via negativa, Thoreau tries to describe or name the Burnt Lands in terms of what they are not: “Here was no man’s garden, but the unhandselled globe. It was not lawn, nor pasture, nor mead, nor woodland, nor lea, nor arable, nor waste-land.”22 Flicking through his mental thesaurus of words used to name landscapes, Thoreau discovers there is no word to describe the area. The Burnt Lands exist apart from humanity’s ability to delineate them precisely because they resist being commodified: “man may use it if he can.”23 As Steven Fink notes, the lesson Thoreau learned was that “nature cannot be appropriated” because “our relation to nature is one of mystery rather than mastery.”24 In encountering the Burnt Lands, Thoreau confronts one of Western civilization’s most nagging questions: if, according to the JudeoChristian creation myth, this earth was created for human use and enjoyment, why does earthly creation often resist human control? In an essay which repeatedly laments humanity’s defacement of the natural landscape, Thoreau here notes humanity’s inability to leave even the smallest mark on that which is truly wild: “here not even the surface had been scarred by man, but it was a specimen of what God saw fit to make this world.”25 Ultimately it is the physical reality of the earthly landscape that causes Thoreau to doubt humanity’s ultimate efficacy as industrious creatures: “rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?”26 In September 1853, seven years after his first trip to Maine, Thoreau once again traveled north. Although Thoreau began composing his account of the trip, “Chesuncook,” in 1853, the essay wasn’t published until after Thoreau’s third trip to Maine when it appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in three installments the summer of 1858. Although not as commercially popular as “Ktaadn,” “Chesuncook” earned Thoreau $198: an amount originally withheld from Thoreau by James Russell Lowell, editor of the Atlantic Monthly, after an altercation over a sentence Lowell deleted from Thoreau’s manuscript.27 In “Chesuncook,” Thoreau continues the diatribe he began in “Ktaadn,” aiming at those who seek profit from the wilderness. Although Thoreau is still troubled by the way the logging industry enables those who don’t live in the wild to profit from it — he laments, for example, “How far

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men go for the material of their houses!”28— the main tragedy of this trip is his fellows’ killing of a moose. Initially, Thoreau seems ambivalent toward the moose hunt and claims he participates out of scientific curiosity. In calling himself a reporter or chaplain to the hunters, however, Thoreau complicates the issue; although reporters and chaplains are supposed to remain impartial, they profit from the events that surround them. In this case, Thoreau profits from the killing of the moose because it gives him more raw material for his writing. Here again Thoreau is concerned with naming nature, and his enterprise is more scientific than literary, the work of a naturalist rather than a poet.29 Thoreau spends much of this expedition botanizing; before the party bags its moose, he busies himself with the riverside flora, admitting that he “frequently made Joe [Aitteon, the Indian guide] turn aside for me to pluck a plant, that I might see by comparison what was primitive about my native river.”30 Although picking a flower is not the same as shooting a moose, it is a predatory harvest: to know a specimen, Thoreau must name and pluck it. That this fervent critic of loggers and hunters never apologizes for his botanical collecting is ironic.31 After the hunting party shoots a moose, Thoreau’s scientific curiosity once again comes into play. Instead of merely naming the moose, Thoreau measures it because he “did not wish to be obliged to say merely that the moose was very large.”32 Although there is no economic motive behind his measuring — Thoreau does not measure the moose as a butcher would measure cuts of beef or as Mr. Sawyer would measure board feet — once again Thoreau is gleaning an intellectual harvest. Having wanted to “see a moose near at hand,”33 Thoreau now has the opportunity to examine a carcass as he never could a living animal. Thoreau maps the moose’s body by measuring it. Thoreau calls the afternoon’s main event a “tragedy” even though it isn’t necessarily the killing that bothers him. Although Thoreau admits that “Every creature is better alive than dead,”34 he also claims, “I think that I could spend a year in the woods, fishing and hunting, just enough to sustain myself.”35 What bothers Thoreau is acquisitiveness: he condemns those who hunt moose not for sustenance but for sport or profit. What bothers Thoreau is the commodification of the wild by those who take more than what they need for sustenance.

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The word Leo Stoller uses to describe the hunters and lumbermen Thoreau despises is “mercenary.”36 In Thoreau’s eyes, woodsmen who transform the wild into a commodity through which they may profit are mere “hirelings” with “no more love for wild nature than woodsawyers for forests.”37 What is important for Thoreau is the motive which draws humans to the wild: the economic motives of most are “base” and “coarse,”38 and what Thoreau prefers are “employments perfectly sweet and innocent and ennobling.”39 Thoreau doesn’t call for an end of employment; what he instead advocates is enterprise motivated by nonacquisitive love. Here again Thoreau’s passion for flower picking shows: he urges that “our life should be lived as tenderly and daintily as one would pluck a flower.”40 Returning to the subject of logging, Thoreau discusses the uses of pine trees. In “Chesuncook” Thoreau condemns “petty and accidental uses” of living creatures; 41 near the essay’s beginning, he notes that there must be better reasons for killing moose than making hat racks of their horns.42 Turning pine trees into lumber, Thoreau claims, is a low use. It is not the lumberman who truly knows and understands the pine, nor the tanner who uses its bark; instead, Thoreau maintains, “it is the poet . . . who makes the truest use of the pine.”43 Thoreau mourns the supplanting of wilderness in favor of commercial human activity. Near the end of the essay, he laments that “Maine, perhaps, will soon be where Massachusetts is.”44 Thoreau is pained that the Maine woods’ poetic beauty is being destroyed for economic gain. However, Thoreau’s tone is curiously ambivalent. Although he doesn’t want Maine to follow Massachusetts’s industrial lead, he nevertheless is relieved to return home: “For a permanent residence, it seemed to me that there could be no comparison between this and the wilderness, necessary as the latter is for a resource and a background, the raw material of all our civilization.”45 Here Thoreau chooses the civilized life and implies that the wild is important merely as a “resource” and “raw material” to be utilized for intellectual, poetic, and artistic enrichment. That Thoreau considers the civilized comfort of Massachusetts more fit than the wilds of Maine for his “permanent residence” is significant. Just as he felt like a trespasser in the Burnt Lands, at the end of “Chesuncook” Thoreau realizes he is not “at home” in the Maine woods. This

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admission on Thoreau’s part is significant in light of his objection that the Indian guide Joe Aitteon is not able to live in the woods without provisions.46 In “Chesuncook” as well as elsewhere in The Maine Woods, Thoreau admires men who are “at home” in the wild. Partway into their journey, Thoreau and his companions paddle by the camp of two explorers whose motives seem to be purely economic. Although he presumably disapproves of the economic motives behind their exploring, Thoreau admires the men’s lifestyle: they, unlike either Joe Aitteon or himself, are truly “at home” in the Maine woods. While Thoreau only occasionally plays Indian, the two explorers regularly venture out into the wilderness and succeed in making a living at it. The “solitary and adventurous life” the explorers lead is the kind of life Thoreau admires but feels unable to lead himself. Continuing this theme of being “at home” in the wilderness, Thoreau in his third and final essay in The Maine Woods, “The Allegash and East Branch,” turns his focus to the expert woodcraft of Joe Polis. Based upon Thoreau’s 1857 expedition to Maine, “The Allegash and East Branch” was not published in Thoreau’s lifetime47 and is the longest and perhaps most candid of Thoreau’s Maine narratives. In “The Allegash and East Branch,” Thoreau’s preoccupation with economic issues is embodied in Joe Polis, his expedition’s Penobscot guide who is perfectly at home in the wilderness. While in “Ktaadn” and “Chesuncook” Thoreau was fascinated with how commodification corrupts the poetic worth of the Maine wilderness, in “The Allegash and East Branch” Thoreau is fascinated by how European civilization — including economic enterprise — affects Maine’s native human inhabitants. Earlier in The Maine Woods, Thoreau expressed an interest in how civilization — including money — affected the Indians of  New England. In “Ktaadn,” for example, Thoreau equates degraded, drunken Indians with the economic downtrodden: “Met face to face, these Indians in their native woods looked like the sinister and slouching fellows whom you meet picking up strings and paper in the streets of a city.”48 Later in “Chesuncook,” Thoreau encounters Indian children in Oldtown begging for pennies and notes how ironic it is that Indians, “the Hunter Race,” should be left to beg from Europeans, the very people who drove the game off their land.49 In “The Allegash and East Branch,” Thoreau befriends his Penobscot

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guide Joe Polis; through this friendship Thoreau begins to see Indians as individuals rather than as members of a homogenous, generalized mass. Initially Polis’s worth is figured in wholly economic terms: Thoreau and his companion are looking for a good Indian guide and are referred to Polis, who is said to demand a great price for his services. Although Polis originally asks for two dollars a day, Thoreau and his partner successfully hire him for a dollar and a half a day plus fifty cents a week for the use of his canoe: a figure that Thoreau notes not only within the essay itself but also in the section of the appendix recording his “Outfit for an Excursion.”50 Thoreau seems surprised that an Indian could possess such economic worth: he notes Polis’s reputation as a hunter and adds that he is “said to be worth $6,000.”51 This statement is a curious one: that Thoreau would place a price tag on a human being seems strangely out of character. Yet the $6,000 figure etches itself in Thoreau’s consciousness; later in the trip when Joe Polis suffers a bout of colic, Thoreau wryly comments, “You would not have thought, if you had seen him lying about thus, that he was . . . worth $6,000.”52 Robert Sayre suggests that Thoreau was struck by the incongruity of an Indian being successful in Euro-American economic terms: in Sayre’s words, “A man who is so rich — probably richer than Thoreau — and so well regarded in the white culture and still so Indian . . . is a paradox.”53 Polis’s economic worth is not the only thing that surprises Thoreau; that the Indian is a devout Christian likewise runs counter to his expectation. Feeling akin to Native American religious beliefs — Sayre notes that Thoreau had for twenty years “taken the Indian side against the missionaries”54 — Thoreau is mortified to discover that Polis is a strict Christian, praising those explorers, for example, who cease their travels on Sunday to hold prayer services.55 Thoreau cannot resist noting the inconsistencies in Polis’s beliefs; for example, when Polis comments that if he works without pay on the Sabbath his actions will be without sin, Thoreau remarks, “I noticed that he did not forget to reckon in the Sundays at last.”56 Perhaps the biggest surprise for Thoreau, however, is Joe Polis’s participation in economic enterprises. Although Polis, unlike Joe Aitteon, is able to live directly off the land, he participates in money-making endeavors, supporting himself by hunting, curing moose hides, and serving as a guide. Polis also buys land, which apparently surprises Thoreau.57 In

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these economic activities, Polis exhibits the greatest difference between himself and Thoreau: as Sayre notes, Thoreau went to Maine to escape civilization and to embark on a “spiritual quest”; Polis, on the other hand, “earned his wealth hunting, [and] was in the woods for food and pay.”58 Judging from Thoreau’s account, Polis’s economic endeavors are varied and genuinely resourceful. Earning his living through hunting, Polis makes seven to eight dollars for each dressed moose hide — up to 50 to 60 dollars a day.59 Polis also earns money by scavenging; at one point during the trip he gleefully reports a great treasure he has found — “fifty, sixty dollars worth” of steel traps hidden under a log, each worth three dollars.60 In addition, Polis saves money by making supplies that other men buy ready-made: for example, he splits his own spruce root thread, a commodity that costs half a dollar for the amount needed to lace a canoe.61 That Thoreau notes these prices suggests the impression Polis’s resourcefulness makes on him. Polis serves as a foil to the “helpless multitudes” in civilized towns who “depend on gratifying the extremely artificial wants of society and are thrown out of employment by hard times!”62 Able to track a moose, administer herbal remedies, and make candles and pipes out of birch bark, Polis is the ultimate self-reliant man. Unlike the helpless townspeople Thoreau disparages, Polis can survive anywhere; in Thoreau’s words, Polis is “an Indian availing himself cunningly of the advantages of civilization, without losing any of his woodcraft, but proving himself the more successful hunter for it.”63 In short, Polis is much the man Thoreau himself would like to be. Thoreau denounces capitalistic enterprise for separating men from their labor; as Leo Stoller notes, “It seemed to Thoreau that the ‘complex’ way of earning a living (as he was later to call it) introduced between a man and the goods and services he actually needed a whole series of unnecessary intermediate activities.”64 Indians such as Joe Polis, on the other hand, come closer to Thoreau’s ideal in the immediacy of their life: not subject to the whims of the marketplace, Indians such as Joe Polis can travel lightly throughout life, carrying only the clothes on their back, a blanket, and a handmade canoe. According to Thoreau, such simplicity is evident in Indian languages: instead of subscribing to a heavily symbolic and hence commodifying system of discourse, the Indians prefer to speak of tangible rather than abstract realities.65 Despite his admiration for the simple tangibility of Indian ways of

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thinking and speaking, however, Thoreau himself is relatively abstract, a contrast which is evident in the way he reckons the worth of the expedition recounted in “The Allegash and East Branch.” Joe Polis calculates the worth of the trip in economic terms: he is satisfied to have acquired a moose hide and the aforementioned abandoned steel traps to sell. For Polis, the trip has been worthwhile because he has made money from it. Thoreau’s motivations, however, are less tangible. He explores the wilderness with the eyes of a naturalist and writer, but it isn’t clear exactly what he is looking for until he finds the object of his quest in the form of some phosphorescent wood near the party’s campfire.66 Thoreau as scientist closely examines the glowing wood in elaborate detail, trying to ascertain the source and nature of the mysterious white light he sees near the campsite. Thoreau is so fascinated by the phenomenon that he cuts off some pieces of the wood and takes them back to the tent to show his companion; with almost childlike glee Thoreau notes, “I was exceedingly interested by this phenomenon, and already felt paid for my journey.”67 Thoreau’s quest in visiting the Maine woods isn’t an economic one: he needn’t find gold to feel “paid” for his efforts. Instead, Thoreau is looking for new scientific phenomena that he can explore, examine, and try to understand. Thus something as simple (and economically useless) as a bit of glowing wood can make him feel satisfied about the worth of his endeavor. As a writer and thinker, however, Thoreau’s motivation is even more abstract. Thoreau feels that the discovery of the phosphorescent wood has ultimately been worth his time and energy because it teaches that the woods are “choke-full of honest spirits.”68 Thoreau defines the “worth” of the glowing wood in metaphysical, Transcendental terms. The phosphorescent moosewood is worthwhile because it reminds Thoreau that the physical world is inhabited by mysterious spiritual entities with which he can commune. Thus in “The Allegash and East Branch” section of The Maine Woods, Thoreau comes full circle. While in the “Burnt Lands” passage of “Ktaadn” Thoreau was stunned by the utter strangeness of a landscape uninhabited by man, in his discovery of the phosphorescent moosewood Thoreau learns that the landscape is never uninhabited. The tragedy of acquisition and commodification is that it destroys for economic profit the natural world that is home to many creatures. In Thoreau’s mind, the reality that the Maine woods and all wilderness are populated by living

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beings is evident to those who, like Joe Polis, are at home in the wilderness. Perhaps the truly Thoreauvian solution to the commodification of the wild would be for civilized persons to learn how to be more “at home” in the wild and how to be neighborly to the other creatures who dwell there: in other words, to return the “eco” (“home”) to “economy.”

Notes

1. Thoreau, 339. 2. Buell, 202 (emphasis mine). 3. Thoreau, 479. 4. Gilmore, 41. 5. Gilmore, 41 6. See Adams and Ross, 2, 16–17, 64–75. 7. Fink, 157. 8. Thoreau, 594. 9. Thoreau, 594. 10. Thoreau, 595. 11. Thoreau, 594. 12. Neufeldt, 42–43. 13. Stoller, 54. 14. Stoller, 73; Worster, 73. 15. Thoreau, 593. Steven Fink notes that Dr. Charles T. Jackson was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s brother-in-law while the “two young men from Boston” were Edward Everett Hale and William Francis Channing (160). 16. Thoreau, 631. 17. Fink, 173. 18. Thoreau, 626. 19. Thoreau, 745. 20. Thoreau, 645. 21. Thoreau, 645. 22. Thoreau, 645. 23. Thoreau, 645 (emphasis mine). 24. Fink, 183 (emphasis in original). 25. Thoreau, 646. 26. Thoreau, 646 (emphasis in original). 27. Fink, 273–274. The sentence Lowell deleted was one in which Thoreau celebrates a pine tree: “It is as immortal as I am, and perchance will go to as high a heaven.” 28. Thoreau, 675. 29. See Adams and Ross, 195. 30. Thoreau, 673. 31. Both Leo Stoller and Donald Worster discuss how Thoreau’s study of forest succession — what Stoller calls Thoreau’s “economic botany” — contributed

cl a iming m a ine  •  259 knowledge to the science of forest management, a science used in turn by the lumber industry. See “The Union of Principle and Expediency” in Stoller (71–107) and “A Naturalist in Concord” in Worster (59–76). 32. Thoreau, 679. 33. Thoreau, 667. 34. Thoreau, 685. 35. Thoreau, 683. 36. Stoller, 105. 37. Thoreau, 683–684. 38. Thoreau, 683. 39. Thoreau, 684. 40. Thoreau, 684. 41. Thoreau, 685. 42. Thoreau, 659. 43. Thoreau, 685. 4 4. Thoreau, 710. 45. Thoreau, 711. 46. Thoreau, 674. 47. Thoreau chose not to publish “The Allegash and East Branch” out of consideration of Joe Polis, who Thoreau was afraid might read it and object to Thoreau’s depiction of his character. 48. Thoreau, 651. 49. Thoreau, 704. 50. Thoreau, 714 and 840. 51. Thoreau, 717. 52. Thoreau, 817. 53. Sayre, 174. 54. Sayre, 177. 55. Thoreau, 741–742. 56. Thoreau, 742. 57. Thoreau, 725. 58. Sayre, 178. In early versions of “The Allegash and East Branch,” Thoreau included an account of an encounter between him and Polis regarding the latter’s moose hunting: “I had a short talk with him about killing moose for their hides in which he used the common white man’s argument about the necessity of one supporting his family” (quoted in Adams and Ross, 207). Presumably Thoreau’s complaint against “the common white man’s argument” is its reliance upon the “white” economic system of buying and selling: in Thoreau’s mind, red men kill moose to feed their families while white men kill moose to sell their hides to earn money to feed their families. 59. Thoreau, 799. 60. Thoreau, 804. 61. Thoreau, 750.

260  •  nat ur e a s c ommodit y 62. Thoreau, 781. 63. Thoreau, 747. 64. Stoller, 13. See also Gilmore, 5. 65. Thoreau, 700. 66. Thoreau, 730–732. 67. Thoreau, 731. 68. Thoreau, 732.

References

Adams, Stephen, and Donald Ross, Jr. Revising Mythologies: The Composition of Thoreau’s Major Works. Charlottesville, VA, 1988. Buell, Lawrence. “Thoreau and the Literary Excursion.” In Literary Transcendentalism: Style and Vision in the American Renaissance, 188–207. Ithaca, NY, 1973. Fink, Steven. Prophet in the Marketplace: Thoreau’s Development as a Professional Writer. Princeton, NJ, 1992. Gilmore, Michael T. American Romanticism and the Marketplace. Chicago, 1985. Neufeldt, Leonard N. The Economist: Henry Thoreau and Enterprise. New York, 1989. Sayre, Robert F. Thoreau and the American Indians. Princeton, NJ, 1977. Stoller, Leo. After Walden: Thoreau’s Changing Views on Economic Man. Stanford, CA, 1966. Thoreau, Henry David. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers; Walden, or, Life in the Woods; The Maine Woods; Cape Cod, edited by Robert F. Sayre. New York, 1985. Worster, Donald. Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas. Cambridge, MA, 1977.

So Much Beauty Locked Up in It Of Ecocriticism and Axe-Murder M at thew Bolinder

I

was flipping through a holiday issue of Down East —“The Magazine of Maine”— when I came across a special section containing “a collection of mail-order items from the Pine Tree State.” As usual, my Christmas shopping had been slow to happen, and so I perused the ads hoping to find something interesting and expedient. While I didn’t find a gift to order amid the predictable (a full third of the ads were selling either images of lighthouses or Maine lobsters “delivered to your door”) and the odd (“Dishwater Kleen: Don’t be embarrassed by rust in your dishwasher or toilet bowls”), I did find an ad that gave me pause, and a chuckle. The small ad read, in bold print, “Maine Fireplace Logs,” and contained within it a still smaller photograph of a few birch logs neatly, yet somehow also casually, arranged on the forest floor. They sat beneath what appeared to be a hemlock branch, with greenery and leaves scattered about them. Oddly enough, a maple leaf rested on the pile’s top, perhaps because paper birch leaves are not so easily recognizable as its bark and certainly lack the more archetypal form of its maple or oak counterparts. In any case, the details of the scene created an impression of pleasant discovery, as if the logs were merely happened upon during a stroll through some wooded northern landscape. “Add a piece of Maine

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to your hearth, fireplace, or woodstove for the holidays,” it suggested. “Beautiful 12–14 inch paper-birch logs sustainably harvested from the Maine woods. Each 15-lb. Box contains a mix of split and round logs. A portion of the proceeds goes toward the protection of Maine forestland. $39.95 ppd. Visa and Mastercard accepted.” A phone number and web address followed. I marveled at this display of Yankee ingenuity. Paper birch is near the bottom of the list of hardwoods that anyone would want to heat their home with, and yet these clever folks were managing to cull their woodpile and get approximately $2,400 per cord for it in the process. More BTUs would be consumed in their transport than the logs actually contained beneath their bark. Though there are some paper birch logs in my own woodpile — the resident beaver population took a few of them down in back of my house last winter — I considered ordering a box myself, if only for the experience of opening it, perusing the literature accompanying it, and perhaps most tellingly, writing about it. But the oddly industrial-sounding “Maines Tree Works” (“Maines” being the last name of the proprietors) failed to survive the dotcom bubble, saving me from a 40-dollar anecdote I could ill afford anyhow. How might we make sense of such a text? In thinking about this ad, I recalled another portrayal of firewood that I had come across, written by the early-twentieth-century Maine historian and woman of letters Fannie Hardy Eckstorm, and began to consider its seeming contrast. In an essay entitled “Poverty, Kindling Wood, and Philosophy,” Eckstorm writes about a canoe trip she takes with her father in which they trace a route that he had taken a number of times before. Though he enthusiastically recounts his memories of many places they glide past, he is eager to camp at one particular spot, and one day at two in the afternoon  — quite early to stop their paddling — they head for shore. “The fact is,” writes Eckstorm, “that five years before he had hidden here some favorite kindling wood, fat pine the like of which never had been seen in all the country, so black without, so yellow within, so pitch-imbrued that even the heat of the sun drew from it great resinous drops; and he had always wanted to go back just to burn that wood. With such an attraction there was nothing to do but camp.”1 When the canoe touches the shoreline, Eckstorm’s usually methodical father shirks his camp duties, instead heading into the woods in order to find his stash; he emerges, Eckstorm relates amusedly, with “a piece of the shell of an old pine, five feet long

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perhaps and an inch or two thick, black and mossy and as heavy as if it has lain at the bottom of the lake for the last century.” “He was proud of it,” Eckstorm states, “but a more unprepossessing piece of timber never was seen.”2 They end up staying at this particular camp site for days, mostly because of a continuous rain, but “Like [their] kindling wood,” Eckstorm notes, “it looked a good deal worse on the outside than it really was.”3 She remarks that they rather enjoyed their time, for all of the dismal weather and their lack of supplies. After ruminating about the merits of traveling lightly, Eckstorm returns to the logs her father had laid up. “The kindling wood which we had on the island was more satisfactory property than government securities,” she writes. “It had given us the pleasure of anticipation in the winter evenings at home when Father told us how he had hidden it against his ever going there again — he has many a cache of that kind or some other through the State, and many of them moldered years ago, though he could still find the places; then the pleasure of discovery, to find it still there after these years; of satisfaction because it was better than had been boasted; of pure aesthetic gratification because it had so much beauty locked up in it.”4 While Eckstorm isn’t sure whether making the trip with more readymade supplies, such as “patent candles,” would have changed their camping experience for better or worse, she notes that the wood her father had stowed years before transcended the “humble tasks” of utility; it held a magical quality that “quite transformed our meager belongings with the graciousness of its company, cheered us by its geniality, took to philosophizing occasionally on its own account, and sometimes lectured on life, art, and ethics, to those of us who cared to listen.” She says they burned it “sparingly, but not stingily,” “as if its right to existence was as good as our own; watched the dense, black smoke, the fierce, yellow flame and the pitch frying out of it, watched it and spoke often of its beauty and good qualities, and no one ever hinted the remark had not all the charm of novelty.”5 Why am I drawn to this text, while my first reaction to the ad for birch logs is a cynical chortle? Eckstorm’s writing does have much to recommend it. As in most of her work, she charms with her pleasantly understated tone, the text’s wisdom and graceful tenor the product of a knowledge earned both by moving about the interior of her home state and staying put at her scholar’s desk. But I think also it’s partly attributable to the escalator of history, as Raymond Williams calls it: when it

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comes to our interaction with “nature,” things always appear better in the olden days.6 If Eckstorm’s portrait seems more real and immediate than the advertisement, both texts actually figure “use.” And, for a twenty-first-century ecocritic like myself, the advertisement — even as, and perhaps because, the primary use it suggests is symbolic — is probably the more important of the two. What keeps the irony of the ad’s calorically challenged fireplace logs from being realized is the larger postmodern oddity of using a hearth not as a place for food preparation, or a source of heat, or even company, as in Eckstorm’s text, but as a kind of rustic display case. I assume that most people would not have their purchase shipped by parcel post only to immediately burn it, though such a fire would most certainly contribute to holiday festivity. (In commenting on the decline of wood-burning households, Maine historian Philip Coolidge suggested some time ago that “There should be a society to encourage hearth fires,” with “white birch edgings” notable for “giv[ing] a prompt cheery fire.”7 Even if they were burned, the relatively short-lived fire they provided would accentuate the logs’ symbolic as much as their material worth. The flames would constitute a special occasion, perhaps a ritual — or, at the very least, 40 bucks going up the chimney. I imagine, then, the Maineses knew they were not selling firewood so much as a feeling — a perceived connection or a desire. We do need to pay attention to the physical object itself. The sensory qualities of the paper birch are notable and contribute to its being an object worthy of commerce. My field guide calls it “one of the most beautiful native trees,” and describes the bark as “chalky to creamy white; smooth, thin, with long horizontal lines; separating into papery strips to reveal orange inner bark; becoming brown. Furrowed, and scaly at base; bronze to purplish in varieties.”8 Paper birch bark invites touch, its smoothness and refinement offering a stark contrast to the rough scaliness of the pines and hemlocks or the bumpy stickiness of the spruces that can often be found growing nearby. Its brightness, especially in landscapes predominated by dark browns and greens — a common term for Maine’s spruce stands is “black growth” — makes it particularly striking. These distinctive characteristics of the birch tree would certainly carry over to a living room. Even if the logs were not handled once placed inside the confines of a fireplace, their clean lines, compact form, and fresh-sawn fragrance would nevertheless offer a pleasing counterpoint

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to the assemblage of mass-produced bawbles and gewgaws that we often utilize in decorating the rooms we inhabit.9 “What man but a philosopher,” Thoreau asks, “would not be ashamed to see his furniture packed in a cart and going up country exposed to the light of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly account of empty boxes?”10 No shame in paper birch logs. But this “sensory pole,” admirable as it is, tells only a part of what I take to be the significance of these Maine birch logs; it’s the “ideological pole,” as framed by anthropologist Victor Turner in his study of ritual objects, that I think makes them particularly interesting and important as objects both of commerce and of interpretation.11 As any stopover at a roadside giftshop in Maine attests, there are a variety of “pieces of Maine” that one might purchase to commemorate the state’s interior. But there is nothing about T-shirts printed in New Jersey or ceramic moose figurines manufactured in China that provides any kind of inherent identification with the state. Indeed, such souvenirs function on the premise that one pays no attention to or forgets about the tag on the neck or sticker on the base identifying an actual place of origin. However, the dispersal of paper birch trees is limited. Someone needs to saw them, of course, but birch logs depend for their existence not upon the pluck of a producer but upon certain ecosystemic requirements. The ideological value of these paper birch logs, as I understand it, comes from their natural beginnings, their literally having been rooted at one time in Maine itself.12 The logs are a kind of acquisitive synecdoche, standing in for the larger forest and state from which they come. Their very existence calls a viewer’s attention elsewhere. If we apply Dean MacCannell’s structural triad of touristic experience (sight-marker-tourist) to them, however, the logs don’t actually “mark” or identify the forested landscape of “Vacationland,” as Maine calls itself on its license plate, as much as become a sight themselves.13 Like pieces of moon rock in the Smithsonian, a viewer requires a marker of another kind (in the case of the birch logs, perhaps the sales receipt, or a holiday host’s comment that “those logs are from Maine”) in order to confirm their identity and significance. And even then, a marker, or explanation, doesn’t necessarily designate the logs as an “attraction” worthy of mention, unless a visitor who happened to see the logs in the fireplace had some kind of attachment to or interest in Maine him or herself. (Of course, the “attraction” could end up being a homeowner’s

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extravagance — or lunacy — for having 15 pounds of wood shipped from Bangor to Dubuque.) Ironically, their ideological potency — their ability to signify or conjure a consumer’s interest in or preoccupation with a region or place — stems from their ecological displacement, their no longer being in Maine’s forests. But this is merely a particular example of the larger American investment in the idea of “nature.” As William Cronon summarizes the familiar condition, “For many Americans wilderness stands as the last remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease, has not fully infected the earth. It is an island in the polluted sea of urbanindustrial modernity, the one place we can turn for escape from our own too-muchness.”14 The logs, severed from their ecological community and planted in a new environment, merely enact and embody this paradox, their “differentiation” from their new surroundings, to use MacCannell’s phrase, constituting their very attraction.15 If these logs do transubstantiate the living forests of Maine, perhaps the most significant irony we might consider is that in those forests, paper birch are not necessarily revered; in fact, they are often considered a nuisance. At present, approximately 80 percent of the ten million acres of Maine’s wooded interior is subject to corporate ownership and the market, with a remarkable seven million acres having changed hands in just the last seven years.16 As undesirable hardwoods that choke out conifer seedlings, birches and other deciduous trees are routinely killed with herbicides as a practice of industrial forest management. What’s more, paper birch grows only in areas in which the forest canopy has been opened. As a “frontier” species, birch fills in voids created by ecological disturbances such as fire and wind, but in Maine those disturbances are most often the cutting practices of the forest products industry itself. These facts, along with the more obvious one of the logs actually being dead trees, makes the ambiguity of the ad’s statement that “A portion of the proceeds goes toward the protection of Maine forestland” particularly interesting — not because of the emptiness of the signifier “portion” (I think it’s safe to assume that we’re talking a buck or two, if that) but because of the vacuity of “protection.” What, precisely, does it mean to “protect Maine’s forestland,” given the nature of the product for sale and the place from which it comes? And, placed in the larger context of American nature interests and environmentalist value, how do we make sense of our need to use (and tendency to abuse) the nonhuman

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world, even as we call for its “protection”? The ad, even if unintentionally, suggests that our most common values and frameworks lack the subtlety to reckon with the complexities of use. Logs and those who make them have provided particularly inflammatory material for the environmental movement, perhaps because of the simplicity of the physical transaction and seemingly facile legibility of the practice. While we cannot, for example, see groundwater being contaminated, register its effect in any immediate way, or sometimes even definitively locate its source, there is no mistaking the encounter that leads to a tree stump and the change that results. We can hold those who kill trees to account, and do so with enthusiasm and moral fervor, because we know we are not loggers. A passage from Dobbs and Ober’s The Northern Forest illustrates this tendency to vivid effect. In it, a progressive Maine landowner and woodcutter recounts the reaction of an environmental ethics class upon seeing what he considered to be his company’s exceptional forestry in action. While one student “admitt[ed] that the logging job looked much better than others he had seen,” “Another student snapped back, ‘Yeah, and if you put a drunk driver next to an ax-murderer, the drunk driver probably looks pretty good. But that doesn’t make it right.”17 Tough crowd, when even low-impact woodlot management is equated with operating a vehicle while intoxicated. But if its analogy is unreasonable, I don’t think its spirit is uncommon. Indeed, historically speaking, this student is in prestigious company, taking his or her place in a line of luminaries who have used loggers as their ecological whipping boys. I think of Thoreau, who liked and appreciated the simple virtue of his woodcutter neighbor at Walden, but ultimately found him wanting in intellect and imaginative capacity. And woodcutters receive more scathing treatment in “Chesuncook”: Is it the lumberman, then, who is the friend and lover of the pine, stands nearest to it, and understands its nature best? . . . No! no! it is the poet; he it is who makes the truest use of the pine, — who does not fondle it with an axe, nor tickle it with a saw, nor stroke it with a plane, — who knows whether its heart is false without cutting into it,— who has not bought the stumpage of the township on which it stands. All the pines shudder and heave a sigh when that man steps on the forest floor. No, it

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is the poet, who loves them as his own shadow in the air, and lets them stand.”18

And Thoreau, of course, was echoing Emerson. In “Nature,” you’ll recall, Emerson notes “the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the woodcutter from the tree of the poet.” The landscape may be a patchwork of farms, Emerson continues, but the farmers do not own the landscape itself. “There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.”19 As with Thoreau, in Emerson’s view a tree is best appreciated and respected in its entirety. While a logger’s vision is inevitably fragmentary, as a log can only “impress” a portion of a tree, the poet perceives wholes  — sees not only the entire tree, but also the larger landscape to which it belongs. It is this larger wooded landscape which Emerson goes on to praise effusively and which leads to his infamous declaration of being a “transparent eyeball”: In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance . . . I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.20

He also goes on to note that what these interactions suggest is “an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged,” Emerson declares. “They nod to me, and I to them.”21 If you’re like me — as well as many other Americanists — you find this a puzzling passage, syntactically and philosophically. But more impor-

so much be au t y l o ck ed u p in it  •  269

tant, when I compare his description of the forest with my own experience in northern Maine, I find it puzzling referentially. When I enter the woods, I am often euphoric, but I’m also a bit nervous. I don’t usually feel young, even though I am; more likely, I feel kind of old, relatively speaking: my muscles tighten and my heart pumps a little more quickly than it used to. Unlike Emerson, I feel as though all sorts of things might “befall” me. Not fantastical stuff, like being attacked by a black bear, but more mundane, yet just as problematic, things: getting lost, slipping on a streamside rock and breaking my ankle, getting a flat tire in a little car that has no business being as far from a paved road as it sometimes is. And those moments in which I feel my “head bathed by the blithe air” are not as common as I’d like them to be. If I can see the sky in those areas of the Maine woods I often frequent, there’s a good chance I’m in an ugly clearcut; if I can’t, I’m probably feeling a little claustrophobic, picking my way through plantations not of God, but of Plum Creek Timber or the J. D. Irving Corporation, the vegetables not quite nodding to me so much as trying to rip holes in my pants or scrape my eyes out of my face with their prickly appendages. I don’t want to ride Emerson too hard here, or have too much fun at his expense. I don’t doubt that Emerson walked among trees and experienced such feelings; likewise, I acknowledge that my own response to the woods is at least in part attributable to individual neuroses and mediocre woodcraft. My point is not that this seminal essay, with its poetic anticipation of ecological concepts, is only so much Transcendental nonsense but that an ecocritic needs to reckon with it first, and perhaps foremost, as a limited response to a particular landscape at a particular time. On the one hand, this certainly allows us to read Emerson (and Thoreau, for that matter) appreciatively. From the time he was a teenager to the composition of “Nature,” he would have seen approximately 1,500 acres of woodland, or about 12 to 15 percent of Concord’s entire acreage, converted to open space of some kind; by the time Thoreau wrote Walden, another 500 acres of woodland vanished.22 Likewise, the ecosystemic composition of Concord’s forests in the mid nineteenth century would have differed substantially from those of northern Maine in the twenty-first. But, removed from this context and applied cookie-cutter fashion to any and every forest encountered, an Emersonian perspective becomes problematic. As inspirational and conceptually perceptive as the

270  •  nat ur e a s c ommodit y

essay may be, a spiritually-inflected, capitalized “N” Nature is not located, and as such doesn’t contribute much to understanding the particular environments in which we move, let alone the larger connections between “wilderness” and “streets and villages,” servants and masters, which dictate nature’s form today. These are not “trifles and disturbances” but our messy reality. Of course, Emerson’s later statements about nature being “thoroughly mediate,” “made to serve,” “receiv[ing] the dominion of man as meekly as the ass on which the Savior rode”23— that is, the “bad” Emerson whom ecocritics often too simply understand Thoreau as having supplanted  — are equally problematic, not just because of their untruthfulness but because of the overly simplified, bipolar perspective such declarations would seem to sustain: nature either as spiritual refuge or as so much material to exploit as one will. Unfortunately, it’s a schizophrenic stance — one part John Denver, one part Gale Norton — that still largely characterizes how our culture understands its relationship to the non­ human world. Neither pole satisfactorily engages the question of use, or as Wendell Berry phrases it, “What are people for?”24 We might consider one of Emerson’s poet contemporaries for an alternative perspective on humanity’s use of and connection to trees — one that would seem to bring the two poles closer together. Whereas Emerson notes of the various uses to which nature is put that “there is no need of specifying particulars. . . . The catalogue is endless, and the examples so obvious, that I shall leave them to the reader’s reflection,”25 in “Song of the Broad Axe” Walt Whitman takes up this task of specification. Where Emerson acknowledges utility but ultimately favors poetry, elevating idea over substance, Whitman makes utility itself poetic: The Axe leaps! The solid forest gives fluid utterances, They tumble forth, they rise and form, Hut, tent, landing, survey, Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade, Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable, Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-house, library, Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, turret, porch, Hoe, rake, pitchfork, pencil, wagon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet, wedge, rounce,

so much be au t y l o ck ed u p in it  •  271

Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor, Work-box, chest, string’d instrument, boat, frame, and what not, Capitols of States, and capitol of the nation of States, Long stately rows in avenues, hospitals for orphans or for the poor or sick, Manhattan steamboats and clippers taking the measure of all seas.26

“The shapes arise!” the persona sings. The larger poem outlines a vaguely progressive, developmental catalogue, moving from crudity to cultivation. But rather than listing increasingly refined knick knacks, or serving as a jingle for the forest products industry, the axe’s song articulates a larger “whole.” Like Emerson’s essay, Whitman’s poem imagines that all things are connected, but Whitman finds this connection in the material and prosaic rather than in the sublime. He provides a catalogue of wooden objects, certainly, but also the larger “shapes” of culture itself. It is, ultimately, the shape of Democracy — “silent,” “possess’d of herself.”27 The main shapes arise! Shapes of Democracy total, result of centuries, Shapes ever projecting other shapes, Shapes of turbulent manly cities, Shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth, Shapes bracing the earth and braced with the whole earth.28

I like to read the poem as being more about the generosity of trees —  their ability to “speak” culture, as “fluid utterances” suggests — than about humanity’s dominion over them. In Whitman’s text, logging itself becomes a kind of poetry.29 On the one hand, Whitman’s celebration of material use and connection provides a check to Transcendental texts like “Nature” as well as to the environmentalist — and, unfortunately, even ecocritical — tendency to equate all axe-wielding with axe-murder, by advocating solely on behalf of passive, nonconsumptive appreciation. (It would be difficult for an environmentalist to trump “hospitals for orphans.”) And Eckstorm’s aesthetics of firewood offers an alternative to the apparent postmodern poverty of ads for fireplace logs — ads that would seem to exhibit the same kind of dualism as “Nature” itself. And yet, these contrasts are not transparently pedagogical. How does Whitman speak to our contemporary moment, in which our lives are

272  •  nat ur e a s c ommodit y

filled with more petroleum-derived objects than wooden ones — objects whose proliferation seems to reinforce imaginary detachment as much as it does connection? What relevance does Eckstorm’s campfire hold in a culture where we don’t cut and stash kindling away for future enjoyment, but instead we make an electronic payment and it comes to us? (Not to mention that, were many folks to cancel their oil and natural gas accounts and instead burn logs — even if as appreciatively as Eckstorm  — as a primary heat source, vast landscapes would become largely treeless, as they were in Eckstorm’s time.) That is, acknowledging the value of use, especially in texts as aesthetically pleasing as Whitman’s and ethically satisfying as Eckstorm’s, is well and good, and is certainly something that environmentalism and ecocriticism needs to do more of. But in our current climate, the “use” of nature is exceptionally complicated, rarely staying contained within a tidy fire ring. Of course, this was as much the case in Whitman’s and Eckstorm’s time as it is in our own, and the texts of Emerson and Thoreau were just as historically embedded as this one purports to be. Maine’s forests have been spilling outside of their imaginary borders for centuries: as masts, supporting sails and England’s colonial ambition; as containers, housing the products of West Indian slave labor; as logs, heating homes surrounding Walden Pond itself; and now, as L.L. Bean catalogues, circulating a nostalgia for an ideal their very pages ensure remains fictitious. But this is our world, and in it a “dream of deep ecology” as Jonathan Bate phrases it30 — we might paraphrase it in popular environmentalist idiom as a “dream of a world without loggers” — seems to me misguided and potentially disabling.31 By placing humankind as always already falling short, theoretically utopian — that is to say, unlocated — environmental perspective cannot envision human beings living well, or as best we can. Strictly speaking, this dream cannot take a text like Whitman’s or Eckstorm’s into account; it cannot appreciate the beauty of a shingle or a stick of firewood — a beauty which, “locked up” in nature, only emerges through material use. More important, a criticism emerging from the deep ecological dream doesn’t offer much in the way of interpreting contemporary texts like the ad for Maine Birch Logs, in which notions of use and location become even more fuzzy. Certainly, the ecological axiom that everything is connected to everything else is a truism, but it’s by no means a simple one. That trees in the Northern Forest and bees in Durham, North Carolina,

so much be au t y l o ck ed u p in it  •  273

are now more closely connected than ever is more a social than an ecological phenomenon.32 As we continue in the important task of making sense of how human beings have situated themselves in relation to specific places like the Northern Forest, and as we plan how we might continue to do so in the future, I think we need to pay less attention to the “occult relation[s] between man and vegetable” and more to teasing out the vexed meanings of the social and material ones. In a climate in which the natural world is increasingly and skillfully represented in ideologically charged ways, and in which those representations reinforce diverse human interaction with and exploitation of the nonhuman, we need to make sure that our interpretive and critical practices are sufficiently agile, keeping them from becoming merely a form of hypocritical and largely irrelevant nay-saying or of imaginary consciousness raising.

Notes

1. Eckstorm, 29. 2. Eckstorm, 29. 3. Eckstorm, 30. 4. Eckstorm, 30. 5. Eckstorm, 31. 6. Williams, 9. 7. Coolidge, 434. 8. Little, 368. 9. I’ve lifted the terms “gewgaw” and “bawble” from Thoreau because I like them. See Walden, 25–26. Thoreau, of course, objected even to “three pieces of limestone” on his desk, “terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily” (24). 10. Thoreau, Walden, 44. 11. In looking at the significance of a different kind of tree — the mudyi, or “milk tree,” as it is called in Ndembu culture — anthropologist Victor Turner suggests that ritual symbols (of which I’m including these paper birch logs) exhibit a “polarity of meaning.” According to Turner, such symbols have what he terms a “sensory pole,” in which “the meaning of the content is closely related to the outward form of the symbol,” and an “ideological pole,” “a cluster of significata that refer to components of the moral and social orders” and the “principles of social organization, to kinds of corporate relationship” (28). If they lack the kinds of “gross,” to use Turner’s term, qualities, and thus associations, which an object like the milk tree possesses (Turner notes, for example, that the liquid the mudyi secretes references basic “desires and feelings” [28] on the part of Ndembu tribespeople), then the sensory qualities of birch logs nevertheless contribute to their significance.

274  •  nat ur e a s c ommodit y 12. Birch trees, of course, grow in many places outside of Maine, and are fairly common throughout the northern half of the United States. For maps indicating species dispersal, see the USDA’s PLANTS database (http://plants.usda.gov/). For another perspective on ecological patterning, see Bailey’s Ecoregions. 13. See MacCannell, especially 39–56. MacCannell notes that “no naturalistic definition of the sight is possible,” in that sights require markers in order to designate and affirm their significance. 14. Cronon, 69. 15. MacCannell, 13. 16. Lansky, 2; Natural Resources Council of Maine. Bernd Heinrich suggests that, based on informal seedling counts on cleared portions of his own land in western Maine, “for every one tree [industrial landowners] plant — and they plant only species selected for their immediate commercial potential — they may have to destroy more than eight thousand seedlings first.” “[P]lanting trees in this forest,” writes Heinrich, “is akin to sprinkling a lake to keep it wet” (14–15). 17. Dobbs and Ober, 155. 18. Thoreau, Maine Woods, 164. 19. Emerson, 23. 20. Emerson, 24. 21. Emerson, 24. 22. Donahue, 205. 23. Emerson, 38. 24. For one comprehensive and darkly entertaining example of nature’s intractability, see Mike Davis’s exploration of greater Los Angeles in Ecology of Fear; for a perspective critical of environmentalism’s often leisured, white-collar perspective, see White. Berry’s question comes from a very brief essay of the same title, in which he questions the rationale for the state-sanctioned exodus of farmers, “replaced by machinery, petroleum, chemicals, credit, and other expensive goods and services from the agribusiness economy” (123), from the countryside. Given these circumstances, Berry suggests the unfortunate answer to his question is “obsolescence.” “One would conclude so from our attitude toward work, especially the manual work necessary to the long-term preservation of the land, and from our rush toward mechanization, automation, and computerization” (125). 25. Emerson, 26. 26. Whitman, 155. 27. Whitman, 158. 28. Whitman, 157. 29. Whitman’s relationship to both labor and the social and environmental implications of “the axe” is more ambivalent than my very brief mention might make it seem. Alan Trachtenberg for example suggests that while

so much be au t y l o ck ed u p in it  •  275 Whitman identified with blue-collar populism, workers often function primarily as “literary figure[s]” or “trope[s] of possibility” in his work (123). His “utopian politics” of “aesthetic exchange, a bartering of being for being” contains no economy proper, making him “less [laissez-faire’s] critic than its great poet” (130). According to Trachtenberg, “The social logic of the wage system escaped him” (131). Betsy Erkkila makes a similar observation, noting that Whitman does not often struggle with the problematic paradoxes of activities such as western expansion but rather “seems content to be the poet of public policy” (287). 30. Bate, 37. 31. In his excellent book The Song of the Earth, Bate acknowledges that “Central to the dilemma of environmentalism is the fact that the act of identifying the presumption of human apartness from nature as the problem is itself a symptom of that very apartness” (37). Bate therefore positions the dream of deep ecology not as a politically extremist position that allows for more moderate action, or compromise, but as an example of utilizing language in order to challenge this perceived gap. For Bate, it is a potentially rehabilitative “thought experiment” (37). It is my suspicion, however, that by eliding use, such a position inevitably bolsters imaginative “apartness.” 32. I am referring to cofounder and CEO Roxanne Quimby’s moving of Burt’s Bees, a natural facial products company, from Guilford, Maine to North Carolina in 1994, and her subsequent purchases of Maine land. Quimby sold 80 percent of her company to an investment firm for over $175 million in 2003; in the last five years, she has spent over $20 million for roughly 40,000 acres of Maine woodland. Her latest acquisition is an entire 24,000 acre unorganized township — T5R8 — east of Baxter State Park. Quimby hopes to donate her land to a new Maine Woods National Park.

References

Bailey, Robert G. Ecoregions. New York, 1998. Bate, Jonathan. The Song of the Earth. Cambridge, MA, 2000. Berry, Wendell. What Are People For? San Francisco, 1990. Coolidge, Philip. History of the Maine Woods. Bangor, ME, 1963. Cronon, William. “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” In Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, edited by William Cronon, 69–90. New York, 1995. Davis, Mike. Ecology of Fear. New York, 1999. Dobbs, David, and Richard Ober. The Northern Forest. White River Junction, VT, 1995. Donahue, Brian. The Great Meadow. New Haven, CT, 2004. Eckstorm, Fannie Hardy. Tales of the Maine Woods: Two Forest and Stream Essays, edited by Pauleena MacDougall. Orono, ME, 1999.

276  •  nat ur e a s c ommodit y Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Nature.” In Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Stephen E. Whicher, 21–56. New York, 1957. Erkkila, Betsy. Whitman the Political Poet. New York, 1989. Heinrich, Bernd. The Trees in My Forest. New York, 1997. Lansky, Mitch. Beyond the Beauty Strip. Camden East, Ontario, 1993. Little, Elbert L. National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Trees: Eastern Region. New York, 1997. MacCannell, Dean. The Tourist. Berkeley, CA, 1999. Natural Resources Council of Maine. Major Land Sales and Conservation in Maine Since June 3, 1998. http://www.nrcm.org/land_sales.asp, accessed June 19, 2009. Thoreau, Henry David. The Maine Woods. New York, 1988. ———. Walden and Resistance to Civil Government, edited by William Rossi. New York, 1992. Trachtenberg, Alan. “The Politics of Labor and the Poet’s Work: A Reading of ‘A Song for Occupations.” In Walt Whitman: The Centennial Essays, edited by Ed Folsom, 120–132. Iowa City, IA, 1994. Turner, Victor. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, NY, 1967. White, Richard. “Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?” In Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, edited by William Cronon, 171–185. New York, 1996. Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. Boston, 1904. Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. New York, 1973.

Contributors

Larry Anderson is a freelance writer and independent scholar who lives in Little Compton, Rhode Island. He is the author, in 2002, of Benton MacKaye: Conservationist, Planner, and Creator of the Appalachian Trail. Matthew Bolinder earned a Ph.D. in American literature at Boston College and has presented and written extensively on ecocritical issues. His dissertation, “Solid Forests and Fluid Utterances: Reading the Maine Woods,” addresses the interplay of language and place in northern Maine. He has recently manifested his convictions about sustainability and local products in a new business venture, Matt’s Wood Roasted Organic Coffee, in Pownal, Maine. Pavel Cenkl is dean of academics and a professor of humanities and re­ gional studies at Sterling College in Vermont. His recent scholarship focuses on intersections of literature, culture, and environment in New England and on issues of work and place. He is particularly drawn to teaching courses that connect students with community memory and the rural working landscape. He is the author, in 2006, of This Vast Book of Nature: Writing the Landscape of New Hampshire’s White Mountains, 1784–1911. Natalie Coe is an associate professor of genetics and biochemistry at Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont, where she is currently the program director for biology and the division chair for sciences and outdoor leadership. She enjoys teaching and working with students both in the laboratory and in the field. She lives in Fair Haven, Vermont, with her husband and two young sons. Kathleen Osgood Dana has lived her life in the Northern Forest, whether right in its heart in central Vermont or at its very edge in Lapland. Her intellectual interests have sought to connect these realities through comparative literature, especially that of northern native peoples. A teacher at the University of the Arctic, Dana interacts on a daily basis with the young northerners whose future will lie in the circumpolar world, some of it in the boreal forest that is the subject of this volume.

278  •  c on tr ibu t or s Lorianne DiSabato is an English instructor at Keene State College, where she teaches writing and American literature. She also teaches online courses through Southern New Hampshire University and Granite State College. In addition to her college teaching, she is also a senior dharma teacher in the Kwan Um School of Zen. In her free time, she maintains a daily blog, “Hoarded Ordinaries,” which investigates in word and image the minute natural details of the two towns she calls home: Keene, New Hampshire, and Newton, Massachusetts. John Elder has taught English and environmental studies at Middlebury College since 1973. His three most recent books, Reading the Mountains of Home, The Frog Run, and Pilgrimage to Vallombrosa, have all combined description of Vermont’s landscape, personal memoir, and discussion of literary and environmental issues. With his wife and sons, he operates a sugarbush in the hills of Starksboro, Vermont. Robert G. Goodby has over 20 years of experience working on Native Amer­ ican archaeological sites in northern New England. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from Brown University in 1994 and has been on the faculty of Franklin Pierce University since 2000. He directs the Monadnock Archaeological Project, a long-term study of Native American history in southwestern New Hampshire, and is on the executive board of the Monadnock Institute of Nature, Place and Culture at Franklin Pierce. John R. Harris is director of the Monadnock Institute of Nature, Place and Culture at Franklin Pierce University and a faculty member in the environmental science and American studies departments. He received his B.A. in zoology and Ph. D. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His work on the study of place in the Monadnock region has appeared in Where the Mountain Stands Alone (2007), Teaching North American Environmental Literature (2008), and in Orion magazine. Catherine Owen Koning is a professor of environmental science at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, New Hampshire. She received her B.A. in biology and environmental studies from Bowdoin College, her M.S. in ecology from the University of California at Davis, and her Ph.D. in environmental studies from the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Koning’s interests are in wetland ecology, conservation biology, and sustainability. On the Franklin Pierce campus, she co-coordinates the environmental science program and directs campus sustainability efforts, most recently focusing on working towards climate neutrality. Daniel S. Malachuk teaches literature and the humanities at Western Illinois University–Quad Cities. His research interest is nineteenth-century literature in relation to social, political, and ecological theory. His earlier work on William James includes “Walt Whitman and the Culture of Prag-

c on tr ibu t or s  •  279 matism” in the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review (November 1999) and “Loyal to a Dream Country: Republicanism and the Pragmatism of William James and Richard Rorty” in the Journal of American Studies (April 2000). He is the author of Perfection, the State, and Victorian Liberalism (2005), a book on the importance today of nineteenth-century liberalism, and he is currently completing a manuscript on the American Transcendentalists, human rights, and “higher law.” Terence D. Mosher teaches environmental literature, American poetry, and English education at State University of New York–Fredonia. His research interests include Thoreau and his New England heirs, ecocriticism, and American agrarianism. In his spare time, he gardens, studies birds and butterflies, and rides a quarter horse. Jill Mudgett earned her M.A. in American and New England studies from the University of Southern Maine, where she studied with Kent Ryden. She received her Ph.D. in American history from the University of Massachusetts, for which she completed a dissertation on “The Hills of Home: Environmental Identity in the Rural North, 1815–1860.” She lives with her family in northern Vermont.  Onno Oerlemans is a professor of English at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. He published a book on Romantic period attitudes to the natural world called Romanticism and the Materiality of Nature in 2002. He has also published articles on Wordsworth, Whitman, Henry James, Coetzee, and Gowdy. He is currently working on a book on the representation of animals in twentieth-century poetry. Richard Paradis directs the Natural Areas Center and is a faculty member of the environmental program at the University of Vermont. His research and teaching interests center around comparative landscape studies with a particular focus on land conservation, stewardship, and restoration. Rick pursues his field studies in the mountain landscape of his native northern New En­ gland and in other locations of vertical terrane. Priscilla Paton grew up on a Maine dairy farm and has hiked throughout New England. Her works include a children’s book, Howard and the Sitter Surprise, essays on nature in literature and art, and Abandoned New England: Landscape in the Works of Homer, Frost, Hopper, Wyeth, and Bishop. She is a visiting scholar in English and environmental studies with St. Olaf College and Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. Currently she is writing on human/animal interactions. Patrick D. Reynolds is an evolutionary biologist who studies invertebrates, particularly molluscs. While primarily working in marine systems, with field work from Moorea to Antarctica, he has become increasingly interested in the ecology of the Northern Forest through coteaching a course on “The

280  •  c on tr ibu t or s Cultural and Natural Histories of the Adirondack Park” in recent years. He is currently a professor of biology and acting dean of faculty at Hamilton College in upstate New York, and is editor-in-chief of the scholarly journal Invertebrate Biology. Timothy Stetter manages the environmental education programs at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, located on the University of Washington campus in Seattle. Prior to his position with the museum, he worked as an environmental educator for state and city parks, outdoor education centers, and colleges and universities. He first learned the plant twinflower in 2003 while on a backpacking trip in the White Mountains with Antioch New England Graduate School, from which he earned an M.S. in environmental studies. Jim Warren has taught nineteenth-century American literature, environmental literature, and literary theory at Washington and Lee University for 25 years. He has published three critical books and numerous articles. Recently he completed The Road to the Spring: Mary Austin’s Collected Poems. His current research focuses on Barry Lopez. Ernest H. Williams studies the population biology, chemical ecology, and conservation of butterflies. His most recent book, The Nature Handbook: A Guide to Observing the Great Outdoors, was released in 2005; it is a field guide to patterns in nature. He is currently the Christian A. Johnson Professor of Biology at Hamilton College, where he teaches courses in ecology, evolutionary biology, environmental studies, and the Adirondacks.

Index

Abbot, Jacob, 111 Abenaki, 135, 139–140, 142, 215 abolitionist activity, 86, 94 Aboljacknagesic stream, 215 Abram, David, 237, 242 Acadia National Park, 54 Ackerman, Diane, 20, 231, 234 Adirondack High Peaks region, 87– 89; Adirondack Park, 9, 12, 77, 83, 90; Adirondack region, 81, 86, 92; Adirondacks, 3, 77–97, 175; “The Adirondacks” (Burroughs essay), 220–221; farming, 88 Agassiz, Louis, 84–86 agriculture, 57, 63, 88, 135, 137, 194, 199, 209, 216 Airline Trail, 207 Aitteon, Joe, 252, 254 Alaska, 18, 36 Allegash, 34 Allen, Paula Gunn, 68 alpine zone, 17 American naturalists, 127n38 Ammonoosuc Ravine, 193 anadromous fish, 140 animal communication, 236 antifoundationalist, 173–174 Antioch New England Graduate School, 137, 145 Appalachia, 207; Appalachia, 203; Appalachian chain, 63, 91; Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC),

1, 5, 6, 11, 161–166, 188, 190, 191, 195, 203, 208; Appalachian Trail, 10, 21, 153–170, 188, 190–191, 204, 237; Appalachian Trail Conference, 155, 168n14; southern Appalachians, 214 arctic, 3, 21, 25, 33, 63 Ashuelot River, 140–141 Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), 6, 167n1 ballad, 100–102, 126n11 balsam fir, 17, 25, 28, 194, 207, 230 Banks, Russell, 9, 84, 86, 88–89, 94–95 Bass, Rick, 233–234 Bate, Jonathan, 272, 275n31 Bauhin, Caspar, 21 Baxter, Percival, 4; Baxter Peak, 214, 216; Baxter State Park, 29, 275n32 Bear Swamp, 64–65 Beaver Brook Trail, 158 Beckley, Hosea, 98–100, 104, 116 beech buds, 57; beech scale, 52–53; beech stand, 55; beech tree mast, 51 Bering Strait, 22 Berry, Wendell, 181, 270 birch logs, 261–263, 265, 272, 273n11; birch trees, 265, 274n12 black fly, 6, 92, 228 Blake, Harrison, 100–101

282  •  inde x blue heather, 70 Blue Line, 90–91 body-consciousness, 237 Body for Nature, 228, 243 Bolles, Frank, 5, 171; Bolles Brook, 156 Bonta, Marcia, 25 boreal forest, 2, 8, 9, 18, 24, 29, 33, 34, 63, 233 Boston Society of Natural History, 106, 110 Brody, Hughs, 69, 74 Brower, Rueben, 40–41, 46 Brown, Dona, 7, 181 Brown, John, 86–87, 94–95 Brown, Owen, 94 Bryce, James, 199, 210n17 buckthorn, 137 Buell, Lawrence, 181, 247 Burlington, Vermont, 103; Burlington Natural History Society, 107 Burnt Lands, 214–216, 250–251, 253, 257 Burroughs, John, 8, 11, 20, 22, 23, 25, 213–224; “The Adirondacks,” 220, 221; “Birch Browsings,” 220, 221; “Emerson and His Journals,” 222; “The Halcyon in Canada,” 220, 221–222; “In the Hemlocks,” 220–221; “Pepacton,” 220, 222 Burt’s Bees, 275n32 Butterick Dress Pattern Company, 147 Cadillac Mountain, 54 Cairngorm Mountains, 193 California, 23, 24 Cambridge Village, 20 camp community, 154 Camp Moosilauke, 153–154, 156–157, 165 Canada, 2, 19, 22–24, 87, 233 Cape Cod, 33, 231 Carr, Jeanne, 23

Carter, William Lorenzo, 102 Cartesian dualism, 235 catastrophe species, 88–89 Cathedral of the Pines, 147 Catskills, 221 Caucomgomoc River, 34 census records, 145, 148n7 Center Cemetery, 99 Center for Northern Studies, 62–63 Chamberlain Lake, 34–35 Champlain Valley, 34 Channing, Francis William, 258n15 Cheshire County, 139; Cheshire Place, 147 Chesuncook Lake, 30 Chittenden, Alfred, 159, 163 Chocorua, New Hampshire, 10, 171 Chocorua Lake, 176, 184n17 circumboreal, 22–23, 25 cirques, 194 civic virtue, 179, 181 Civil War, 88, 147, 231 Clifton Forge, 214 Clingman’s Dome, 17 Coe, Kenneth, 55 Cole, Thomas, 81 Colter, John, 82 Columbus, Ohio, 232 Concord, Massachusetts, 19, 30, 31, 32, 34, 84, 215, 217, 269 Connecticut River, 119–120, 165 conservation, 3, 4, 5, 11, 90, 107, 125, 138, 143, 155, 157, 159, 160, 162, 167, 180, 188–189, 191–192, 194, 197, 200, 204, 206, 208n5, 209n10, 209n11, 210n20, 229, 233 consumer culture, 232 Cook, Reginald, 43, 45 Coolidge, Philip, 264 Countryside Act, 210n20 Craftsbury Common, Vermont, 63 Crag Camp, 207 Crawford, Ethan Allen, 163, 191 Crawford Notch, 5, 7, 163, 167n3,

inde x  •  283 190–191, 198, 208n3; Crawford Path, 163, 191, 193, 200, 201 Cronon, William, 90, 266, Curtis, William, 164, 169n35 Danby, Vermont, 54 Deane Preserve, 55–56 deep ecology, 272, 275n31 Delaware River, 220, 222 Dena’Ina, 18, 22 Descartes, Rene, 235 Dillard, Annie, 36, 143 Douglas, William O., 229, 243 Downeast Maine, 28, 34, 49, 54 Downing, Jack, 102 Dublin Art Colony, 143 Durham, Knowlton, 156 Dutch Elm Disease, 51 Dyer Bay, 28 Eagle Lake, 54 Eagleton, Terry, 236, 242 East Branch of the Penobscot River, 161–162, 166, 214 Eaton, Stephen, 45 Eckstorm, Fannie Hardy, 262–264, 271–272 Ecological Conscience Initiative, 136 ecological psychology, 235–236 Edinburgh, Scotland, 178, 199, 205, 210n16 Elder, John, 5, 40, 42 Ellison, Walter, 44 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 8, 9, 79, 84, 86, 90, 94, 227, 230, 233, 234, 258n15, 269–272; “The Adirondacs,” 84, 85, 92; “Nature,” 93, 268; transparent eyeball, 79, 268 Endangered Species Act, 155 English settlers, 139–140 environmental movement, 167, 171, 180, 267 environmentalism, 12, 172, 173, 178, 183n10, 195, 272, 274n24, 275n31

Europe, 21–22, 25, 49, 52, 108–109, 127n38, 178, 185n31, 205, 219 European beech trees, 50, 52 experiential knowledge, 64, 109–110 experiential teaching, 135 farming, 1, 3, 5, 6, 37, 62, 81, 88, 99, 108, 115, 124, 205; subsistence, 65, 202 farms, 6, 37–39, 41, 62, 84, 88–89, 134, 158, 173, 214, 268; abandoned, 37, 41–42, 84, 88, 158 fashion, 102–104, 106, 115–117, 123, 125, 128n60, 128n66, 251, 269 Fay, Charles, 203 Finch, Robert, 32, 33, 34, 146, 237, 241 Fink, Steven, 247, 251, 258n15, 258n27 Finland, 9, 22 fir waves, 193 forest ecology, 9, 83–84, 89, 214; forest fires, 179, 184n24; forest preserve, 3, 84, 218; Forest Service, 50, 154, 155, 159 Foster, David, 37 Franconia, New Hampshire, 3, 160, 162, 187, 198, 238 Franklin, Benjamin, 111 French and Indian Wars, 139–140 Frost, Robert, 1, 8, 11, 29, 43, 46, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67, 72, 228, 230, 238, 240–243; “Come In,” 41–43; “Into My Own,” 238; “Mending Wall,” 1; “The Need of Being Versed in Country Things,” 37–41; “The Oven Bird,” 44–45; “The Pasture,” 65–66; “To Earthward,” 242; “West Running Brook,” 39 Fuller, Margaret, 176 Gibbs Brook, 191 Gilmore, Michael, 247 glaciation, 78, 80, 86 glaciers, 2, 23, 63, 194 Glencliff Trail, 158

284  •  inde x global warming, 55, 78 globalization, 233 Gould, Stephen Jay, 85 Grand Canyon, 179, 184n24 Grand Hotels, 191 Gray, Asa, 23–24 Great Gulf Wilderness, 201 Great Lakes, 2, 20, 23 Greely Ponds, 187 Green Mountain College, 56 Green Mountains, 9, 63, 108, 126n27 Greenland, 218 Grenville orogeny, 79 Gronovius, Jan Frederik, 21 Gulfside Trail, 201 Hall, Samuel, 107, 111 Harper’s Ferry, 87 Hart, Albert Bushnell, 160 Harvard University, 20, 85, 86, 156, 157, 160, 161, 176 Harvey, Elizabeth, 240 Heft, Harry, 236 Heinrich, Bernd, 29, 274n16 hermit thrush, 28, 29, 36, 37, 40, 43 Hetch Hetchy Dam, 180 hiking, 36, 88, 153–156, 158, 161–163, 188, 190–193, 200–201, 206, 227 hill towns. See Vermont, hill towns home geography, 108, 126n29 Homer, Winslow, 82 Hooker, Joseph, 23 Horace Mann School, 157 Houston, David R., 54 Ingold, Tim, 68 interdisciplinarity, 78–83. See also multidisciplinarity Inuit, 69 invasive species, 52, 137 Iroquois, 77, 79 J. E. Henry & Sons, 159 James, William, 154, 171–186; lec-

tures, 173, 182; luxury, 180; pragmatism, 172–175, 182–183; “Vacations,” 177 Johnson, Mark, 235 Kancamagus Highway, 161 Keats, John, 34, 37 Keene State College, 137 Kent, Rockwell, 82 King Ravine, 207 Kingsolver, Barbara, 234 Kinsman Notch, 158 Krummholz, 18, 216, 217 L. L. Bean, 233, 272 Lafayette, Mount, 3, 19 Lake Placid, 87 Lakes of the Clouds Hut, 164, 191, 193, 195–196, 203 Lakoff, George, 235–236 Land Reform Act of 2003, 243, 244, 251, 263 Lapland, 9, 21, 24, 65, 70, 73. See also Sámi leave-no-trace principles, 196 Leopold, Aldo, 134, 155, 168n5 liberal education, 56, 109, 110, 121, 144 liberalism, 127n39 Limited Brands. See Les Wexner Lincoln, New Hampshire, 159–160 Linnaeus, Carl, 20–24 Liu, Alan, 90 Livermore, New Hampshire, 162 Locke, John, 109–110, 112 loggers, 12, 92, 160, 219, 246, 248–249, 252, 267–268, 272 logging, 3, 5, 10, 12, 52, 57, 82, 84, 92, 145, 146, 156, 159–160, 162, 208n9, 214–215, 217, 219–222, 237, 251, 253, 267, 271 loons, 32–35, 92 Lowell, James Russell, 251, 258n27

inde x  •  285 MacCaig, Norman, 198 MacCannell, Dean, 265–266, 274n13 Madison Spring Hut, 165, 166, 191, 202–204, 206 Maine, 2, 4, 6, 13n5, 28, 30, 32, 34, 46, 49, 50, 52–54, 100, 102, 190, 192, 204, 215–220, 222, 246–258, 261–275 Mansfield, Howard, 144 Marsh, George Perkins, 3 Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 238 Miller, Henry, 187, 208 Mitchell, John Hanson, 143 Monadnock Institute of Nature, Place, and Culture, 133–134, 137, 138, 142–144, 147–148 Morse, Jedidiah, 109, 127n32 Mount Adams, 17, 202–203, 207 Mount Eisenhower, 192–193 Mount Holyoke College, 165 Mount Jefferson, 18, 202 Mount Katahdin, 4, 214–216, 230, 242 Mount Madison, 165, 202–203, 206 Mount Mansfield, 63–65 Mount Marcy, 178 Mount Monroe, 195 Mount Moosilauke, 156–158 Mount Passaconaway, 156 Mount Pierce, 192 Mount Shasta, 23 Mount Tahawas, 87 Mount Washington, 34, 164, 187, 191, 192, 195, 201, 206 Mount Whiteface, 87 mountain sandwort, 205 Moxie Lake, 20 Muir, John, 8, 23–24, 171, 180, 210n20 multidisciplinarity, 79–80, 134. See also interdisciplinarity Murray, William, 9, 90, 92 Museum of Comparative Zoology, 86 National Science Foundation, 56 National Trails System Act, 155, 168n14

National Trust for Scotland, 208n5, 210n20 nationalism, 108, 127n32 Native Americans, 26n16, 68, 139, 140–142, 255 natural history, 5, 20, 45, 106–107, 109–111, 118–119, 124, 127n38, 188 Nature Conservancy, 55 Ndembu, 273n11 Nectria fungi, 52–53 Nelson, Richard, 36–37, 40 New Hampshire, 167, 171, 188, 192, 198, 201, 228; logging, 159–160 New York, 2, 5–6, 12n4, 28–29, 38–39, 44, 91, 100–103, 121, 123–124 Niagara Falls, 176 North Elba, 87, 94–95 North Pawlett Hills Preserve, 55 North Woodstock Improvement Association, 159, 168n18 Northern Forest Alliance, 229, 243n9 Norway, 21 Nova Scotia, 52 Nuttall, Thomas, 20, 22, 24 Ohio River valley, 214 Olympic Mountains, 181 Ormsbee, Allen, 164, 169n35 paper birch, 89, 261–262, 264–266, 273n11 Parkman, Francis, 160 pastoral, 10, 178, 180, 181, 185n35 patriotism in nature, 182, 185n40 Paul Smith’s bogs, 34 Pemigewasset region, 159, 161; river, 159, 162 Penobscot River, 214, 248, 250, 254 Perkins, Nathan, 105, 125 Perry, Ralph Barton, 171–172 Peterson, Roger Tory, 43 Petit Manan Point, 28 Philosophers’ Camp, 85–86 phragmites, 52

286  •  inde x Pine Mountains, 221 pine warbler, 29–31, 46 Pisgah State Park, 137–138 Plum Creek Timber, 269 Polis, Joe, 250, 254–258, 259n47, 259n58 Porter, Roy, 235 pragmatism, 172–175, 182, 183, 183n10, 184n14 Pray, James Sturgis, 161–162, 169n27 preservation, 3, 4, 10, 77, 91, 114, 143, 154, 167, 174, 180, 274n24 Presidential Range, 187–212 Prettyman, Virgil, 157 Puget Sound, 181 Quebec, 37, 91, 220–221 Quimby, Roxanne. See Burt’s Bees Ramblers Association, 199 Randolph, New Hampshire, 153, 188, 202 Randolph Mountain Club, 207 reindeer, 65, 70–73; herding, 67–69 Rice, Sally, 124–125, 129n92 Rindge, New Hampshire, 135–136, 144–147; Rindge Historical Society, 146 Rogers, Pattiann, 234 Romanticism, 93 Roosevelt, Theodore, 157, 171 Rorty, Richard, 174 Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, 208n5 rural economy, 5, 99; culture, 9, 103, 105; communities, 6, 115, 209n11; refinement, 117; village balls, 103; youth, 103–104, 124 Ruskin, John, 198 Russell, Bertrand, 172, 182, 242 Russell, Ernest, 159 Ryden, Kent, 7, 213 Sámi culture, 64–65, 70; ecology, 90 San Francisco earthquake, 179

Sandwich Range, 162, 187 Sargent, Charles S., 160 Sawyer River Railroad, 162–163 Sawyer’s Crossing, 140–142 Sayre, Robert, 255–256, 259n58 Schneider, Paul, 78, 85 Scotland, 198, 200, 203, 207; land use policy, 189–194, 202, 206, 208n5, 209n11, 210n20; recreation, 190–199; landscape, 11, 202 screech owl, 31–32 sense of place, 9, 54, 73, 83, 87, 90, 96, 107, 116–117, 121, 124, 219, 222 shadbush, 45 Shaffer, Earl V., 167, 169n42 Shasta, Mount, 23 Sierra Nevada Mountains, 23 Simo, Melanie, 156, 158 Sloane, Sanderson, 147 Smith, Seba, 100, 102, 124, 126n11 Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, 160, 197, 208n5, 209n9 spring beauties, 29, 45 Sterling College, 6, 7, 9, 62–63 Stevens, Candace, 117 Stevens, Henry, 117–118, 128n65 Stillman, William James, 9, 84–85 Stoller, Leo, 248, 253, 256, 258–259n31 stone walls, 1–3, 7, 37, 39, 143, 145, 197, 214 Stratton Mountain Tragedy, 100 succession, 38, 78–79, 84, 88–89, 219, 221, 247, 258n31 sugar maple, 53, 54, 87–88 Swanzey, New Hampshire, 139–140, 142 Sweden, 21 Swift River, 161–162 Switzerland, 92 Tait, Arthur Fitzwilliam, 81–82 tanning industry, 84, 87, 200, Tattered Ten, 188, 201, 221, 253

inde x  •  287 Terrie, Phil, 78, 83 Thompson, Daniel Pierce, 112–118, 127n48, 128n52, 128n64, 128n66 Thompson farm, 114, 115 Thompson, Zadock, 106, 110, 115–116, 126n23, 126n27, 127n33 Thoreau, Henry David, 3, 8, 19, 22– 23, 25, 29, 40, 46, 49, 181, 185n40, 213–223, 227–229, 231, 237–238, 241– 243, 246–260, 265, 267–70, 272, 273n9; “The Allegash and East Branch,” 218–219, 250, 254, 257, 259n58; “Chesuncook,” 217–219, 251, 253, 254, 267; “Ktaadn,” 214, 216, 227–229, 237, 242, 247–251, 254, 257; Maine Woods, 214, 217, 220, 223, 227, 246–260; Walden, 31–32, 35, 39, 181, 228, 231, 246–247, 269, 273n9; “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,” 247 timber industry. See logging Tongass National Forest, 36 tourism, 7, 86, 92, 156, 168n5, 185n27, 191, 199 Trachtenberg, Alan, 274–275n29 traditional ecological knowledge, 70 Transcendentalism, 234, 235 Trust for Public Land, 206 Tuckerman’s Ravine, 187 tundra region, 33, 63, 67, 68, 70 Turner, Victor, 265, 273n11 United States Forest Service, 50, 154– 155, 159 United States Forestry Commission, 181 Valkeapää, Nils-Aslak, 64–73 Vermont, 1–3, 6, 36, 54, 99, 102–103, 156, 184n17, 188; forest, 2, 4, 13n5, 44, 56; hill towns, 98–99, 105; landscape, 2, 63; residents, 99–100, 105, 111–118, 127n48

Walden Pond, 35, 246, 247, 272 Walker, Joshua, 3, 145 warbler, 43, 44, 46 Waterman, Guy, 158, 165, 169n27, 169n32, 210 Waterman, Laura, 165, 169n27, 169n32 Webster, Noah, 108–109 Weeks Act, 3, 155, 161, 169n25, 192, 209n10 Wessels, Tom, 38, 145, 213–215, 217–220, 223 Western literature, 61, 69, 70 Westmoreland, New Hampshire, 143 Wexner, Les, 232 Whipple Paleo-Indian Site, 139–141 white birch, 87, 89, 264 White Mountain National Forest, 3, 155, 158, 192, 197, 198, 206, 209n9, 209n10; White Mountain tourists, 7; White Mountains, 3, 5, 7, 8, 11, 17, 19, 25, 153–154, 156, 158–164, 166, 168n12, 169n25, 169n27, 177, 178, 182, 184n15, 184n17, 187–188, 204, 208n3, 208n9, 228 white pine, 30, 38, 87, 88, 214, 216, 218, 221, 248; white pine weevil, 214 white-throated sparrow, 18, 28, 30 Whitman, Walt, 94, 228, 231, 241, 270–272, 274–275n29 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, 155 Wilder, Jones Warren, 147 wilderness, 3, 12, 29, 34, 35, 63, 65, 73, 77–78, 82, 90–95, 99, 105, 138, 154–156, 160–162, 167, 168n5, 179, 188, 202, 216, 218–219, 221–222, 229, 237, 246, 250–251, 253–254, 257, 258, 266, 268, 270 Wilderness Act, 155, 161 Wilderness Society, 155, 161, 167, 168n5 Willey Station, 163 Williams, Terry Tempest, 234

288  •  inde x Wilson, Edward O., 236 Winooski River, 99 wood frog, 24–25 wood sorrel, 45, 70–71 woodland birds, 45 Wordsworth, William, 37, 45, 182, 183, 198, 235 World War I, 154, 167

World War II, 147, 167 Worster, Donald, 258n31 Yard, Robert Sterling, 155 yoiking, 71 Young, Steven B., 71 Zealand, 163