In Water Brings No Harm, Matthew V. Bender explores the history of community water management on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Kilimanjaro's Chagga-speaking peoples have long managed water by employing diverse knowledge: hydrological, technological, social, cultural, and political. Since the 1850s, they have encountered groups from beyond the mountain--colonial officials, missionaries, settlers, the independent Tanzanian state, development agencies, and climate scientists--who have understood water differently. Drawing on the concept of waterscapes--a term that describes how people "see" water, and how physical water resources intersect with their own beliefs, needs, and expectations--Bender argues that water conflicts should be understood as struggles between competing forms of knowledge. Water Brings No Harm encourages readers to think about the origins and interpretation of knowledge and development in Africa and the global south. It also speaks to the current global water crisis, proposing a new model for approaching sustainable water development worldwide.

In early 1978, an extraordinary new invention for rock climbers was featured on the BBC television science show Tomorrow's World. It was called the 'Friend', and it not only made the sport safer, it helped push the limits of the possible. The company that made them was called Wild Country, the brainchild of Mark Vallance. Within six months, Vallance was selling Friends in sixteen countries. Wild Country would go on to develop much of the gear that transformed climbing in the 1980s. Mark Vallance's influence on the outdoor world extends far beyond the company he founded. He owned and opened the influential retailer Outside in the Peak District and was part of the team that built The Foundry, Sheffield's premier climbing wall - the first modern climbing gym in Britain. He worked for the Peak District National Park and served on its board. He even found time to climb eight-thousand-metre peaks and the Nose on El Capitan. Diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in his mid fifties and robbed of his plans for retirement, Vallance found a new sense of purpose as a reforming president of the British Mountaineering Council. In Wild Country, Vallance traces his story, from childhood influences like Robin Hodgkin and Sir Jack Longland, to two years in Antarctica, where he was base commander of the UK's largest and most southerly scientific station at Halley Bay, before his fateful meeting with Ray Jardine, the man who invented Friends, in Yosemite. Trenchant, provocative and challenging, Wild Country is a remarkable personal story and a fresh perspective on the role of the outdoors in British life and the development of climbing in its most revolutionary phase. Mark Vallance (1945-2018), the man who made Friends.

Outwardly, 'Britain's most experienced teenage Alpinist' is a brave young mountaineer. But he's not experienced at all, at least not in the way he really wants to be. Behind his death-defying climbs there lurks a great deal of fear - fear of the opposite sex, fear of failure, fear of not being 'man enough'. He seeks manhood in the mountains, yet he believes he will only truly gain it by losing something. Harrowing escapades in Scotland, the Alps and Alaska are interspersed by excruciating sexual encounters and unsettling hitch-hiking rides. When the mountains fail him, he seeks meaning with a religious cult in Colorado. Eventually he succeeds in his quest, only to find that he's lost more than he bargained for. Virgin on Insanity by Steve Bell is a coming-of-age story of high adventure, youthful insecurity and immature love. The situations might be extreme, but the deeper issues will be familiar to many.

The Patagonian Sublime provides a vivid, accessible, and cutting-edge investigation of the green economy and New Left politics in Argentina. Based on extensive field research in Glaciers National Park and the mountain village of El Chalten, Marcos Mendoza deftly examines the diverse social worlds of alpine mountaineers, adventure trekkers, tourism entrepreneurs, seasonal laborers, park rangers, land managers, scientists, and others involved in the green economy. Mendoza explores the fraught intersection of the green economy with the New Left politics of the Nestor Kirchner and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner governments. Mendoza documents the strategies of capitalist development, national representation, and political rule embedded in the "green productivist" agenda pursued by Kirchner and Fernandez. Mendoza shows how Andean Patagonian communities have responded to the challenges of community-based conservation, the fashioning of wilderness zones, and the drive to create place-based monopolies that allow ecotourism destinations to compete in the global consumer economy.

This text is a valuable source of information about the Magaliesberg, including the history of man in the area; from archaeological evidence thousands of years ago, to the battles fought between different groups in more recent times. The portrayal of humankind s history in the Magaliesberg is fascinating, but it does not dominate the book to the detriment of environmental issues.The extensive descriptions of the fauna and flora of the area inspire the reader to consider the impact that man has on his environment. An entire chapter is devoted to birds and the checklist of birds in the Magaliesberg makes this book essential for all birders. The chapters on trees, mammals, reptiles and amphibians also contain extensive checklists, indicating both the scientific as well as common names. The Magaliesberg is almost 100 times older than Everest, and the chapter on the geology of the area describes how these mountains started to take shape 2,300 million years ago. Carruthers eloquent writing style is easy to read and grabs the reader s attention from the start. The comprehensive book is based on sound research and is complemented by numerous illustrations and full-color photographs throughout. Carruthers s love for the area is obvious and he describes the Magaliesberg as a priceless national asset, which he hopes to preserve with the help of this book. The many full-color and black and white photographs, as well as detailed illustrations are found on every page throughout the book, adding value to the book, making it a publication that appeals to those readers who are academically inclined, as well as those who are amateur environmentalists or historians."

Bristol takes readers on a journey through the history of Glacier National Park, beginning over a billion years ago from the formation of the Belt Sea, to the present day climate-changing extinction of the very glaciers that sculpted most of the wonders of its landscapes. He delves into the ways in which this area of Montana seemed to have been preparing itself for the coming of humankind through a series of landmass adjustments like the Lewis Overthrust and the ice ages that came and went. First there were tribes of Native Americans whose deep regard for nature left the landscape intact. They were followed by Euro-American explorers and settlers who may have been awed by the new lands, but began to move wildlife to near extinction. Fortunately for the area that would become Glacier, some began to recognize that laying siege to nature and its bounties would lead to wastelands. Bristol recounts how a renewed conservation ethic fostered by such leaders as Emerson, Thoreau, Olmstead, Muir, and Teddy Roosevelt took hold. Their disciples were Grinnell, Hill, Mather, Albright, and Franklin Roosevelt, and they would not only take up the call but rally for the cause. These giants would create and preserve a park landscape to accommodate visitors and wilderness alike.

THE NEW AWARD-WINNING INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER BY THE AUTHOR OF THE MOUNTAIN "Can be compared (with no fear of hyperbole) to Stephen King and Jo Nesbo" - Massimo Vincenz, La Repubblica. "D'Andrea piles on the action and the atmosphere with the panache of a seasoned writer" Marcel Berlins, The Times. Marlene Wegener is on the run. She has stolen something from her husband, something priceless, irreplaceable. But she doesn't get very far. When her car veers off a bleak midwinter road she takes refuge in the remote home of Simon Keller, a tough mountain man who lives alone with his demons. Here in her high mountain sanctuary, she begins to rekindle a sense of herself: tough, capable, no longer the trophy on a gangster's arm. But Herr Wegener does not know how to forgive, and in his rage he makes a pact with the devil. The Trusted Man. He cannot be called off, he cannot be reasoned with and one way or another he will get the job done. Unless, of course, he's beaten to it . . . Translated from the Italian by Howard Curtis and Katherine Gregor

In Water Brings No Harm, Matthew V. Bender explores the history of community water management on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Kilimanjaro's Chagga-speaking peoples have long managed water by employing diverse knowledge: hydrological, technological, social, cultural, and political. Since the 1850s, they have encountered groups from beyond the mountain--colonial officials, missionaries, settlers, the independent Tanzanian state, development agencies, and climate scientists--who have understood water differently. Drawing on the concept of waterscapes--a term that describes how people "see" water, and how physical water resources intersect with their own beliefs, needs, and expectations--Bender argues that water conflicts should be understood as struggles between competing forms of knowledge. Water Brings No Harm encourages readers to think about the origins and interpretation of knowledge and development in Africa and the global south. It also speaks to the current global water crisis, proposing a new model for approaching sustainable water development worldwide.

This book chronicles and explains the role of suburbs in North American cities since the mid-twentieth century. Examining fifteen case studies from New York to Vancouver, Atlanta to Chicago, Montreal to Phoenix, The Life of North American Suburbs traces the insightful connection between the evolution of suburbs and the cultural dynamics of modern society. Suburbs are uniquely significant spaces: their creation and evolution reflect the shifting demographics, race relations, modes of production, cultural fabric, and class structures of society at large. The case studies investigate the place of suburbs within their wider metropolitan constellations: the crucial role they play in the cultural, economic, political, and spatial organization of the city. Together, the chapters paint a compelling portrait of North American cities and their dynamic suburban landscapes.

Facing droughts, floods, and water security challenges, society is increasingly forced to develop new policies and practices to cope with the impacts of climate change. From taken-for-granted values and perceptions to embodied, existential modes of engaging our world, human perspectives impact decision-making and behaviour. The Wonder of Water explores how human experience - including our cultural paradigms, value systems, and personal biases - impacts decisions around water. In many ways, the volume expands on the growing field of water ethics to include questions around environmental aesthetics, psychology, and ontology. And yet this book is not simply for philosophers. On the contrary, a specific aim is to explore how more informed philosophical dialogue will lead to more insightful public policies and practices. Case studies describe specific architectural and planning decisions, fisheries policies, urban ecological restorations, and more. The overarching phenomenological perspective, however, means that these discussions emerge within a sensibility that recognizes the foundational significance of human embodiment, culture, language, worldviews, and, ultimately, moral attunement to place.

Winner, 2020 Al Lowman Memorial Prize for Best Book on Texas County or Local History There is a deep and abiding connection between humans and the land in Pinto Canyon—a remote and rugged place near the border with Mexico in the Texas Big Bend. Here the land assumes a certain primacy, defined not by the ephemera of plants and animals but by the very bedrock that rises far above the silvery flow of Pinto Creek— looming masses that break the horizon into a hundred different vistas. Yet, over time, people managed to survive and sometimes even thrive in this harsh environment. In the Shadow of the Chinatis combines the rich narratives of history, natural history, and archeology to tell the story of the landscape as well as the people who once inhabited it. Settling the land was difficult, staying on it even more so, but one family proved especially resilient. Rising above their meager origins, the Prietos eventually amassed a 12,000-acre ranch in the shadow of the Chinati Mountains to become the most successful of Pinto Canyon’s early settlers. But starting with the tense years of the Great Depression, the family faced a series of tragedies: one son was killed by a Texas Ranger, and another by the deranged son of Chico Cano, the Big Bend’s most notorious bandit. Ultimately, growing rifts in the family forced the sale of the ranch, marking the end of an era. Bearing the hallmarks of an epic tragedy, the departure of the Prieto family signaled a transition away from ranching towards a new style of landownership based on a completely different model. Today, Pinto Canyon’s scenic and scientific value increasingly overshadows the marginal economics of its past. In the Shadow of the Chinatis reveals a rich tapestry of interaction between humans and their environment, providing a unique examination of the Big Bend region and the people who call it home.

Many historians and political scientists argue that ties between Canada and Latin America have been weak and intermittent because of lack of mutual interest and common objectives. Has this record of diverging paths changed as Canada has attempted to expand its economic and diplomatic ties with the region? Has Canada become an imperialist power? Canada's Past and Future in Latin America investigates the historical origins of and more recent developments in Canadian foreign policy in the region. It offers a detailed evaluation of the Harper and Trudeau governments' approaches to Latin America, touching on political diplomacy, bilateral development cooperation, and civil society initiatives. Leading scholars of Canada-Latin America relations offer insights from unique perspectives on a range of issues, such as the impact of Canadian mining investment, security relations, democracy promotion, and the changing nature of Latin American migration to Canada. Drawing on archival research, field interviews, and primary sources, Canada's Past and Future in Latin America advances our understanding of Canadian engagement with the region and evaluates options for building stronger ties in the future.

Facing droughts, floods, and water security challenges, society is increasingly forced to develop new policies and practices to cope with the impacts of climate change. From taken-for-granted values and perceptions to embodied, existential modes of engaging our world, human perspectives impact decision-making and behaviour. The Wonder of Water explores how human experience - including our cultural paradigms, value systems, and personal biases - impacts decisions around water. In many ways, the volume expands on the growing field of water ethics to include questions around environmental aesthetics, psychology, and ontology. And yet this book is not simply for philosophers. On the contrary, a specific aim is to explore how more informed philosophical dialogue will lead to more insightful public policies and practices. Case studies describe specific architectural and planning decisions, fisheries policies, urban ecological restorations, and more. The overarching phenomenological perspective, however, means that these discussions emerge within a sensibility that recognizes the foundational significance of human embodiment, culture, language, worldviews, and, ultimately, moral attunement to place.

Though it remains by far the world's most famous mountain, in recent years Everest's reputation has changed radically, with long queues of climbers on the Lhotse Face, lurid tales of frozen corpses and piles of high altitude trash. It wasn't always like this though. Once Everest was remote and inaccessible, a mysterious place, where only the bravest and most heroic dared to tread. The first attempt on Everest in 1922 by George Leigh Mallory and a British team is an extraordinary story full of controversy, drama and incident, populated by a set of larger than life characters straight out of Boys Own and Indiana Jones. The expedition ended in tragedy when, on their third bid for the top, Mallory's party was hit by an avalanche that left seven men dead. Using diaries, letters, published and unpublished accounts, Mick Conefrey creates a rich character driven narrative, exploring the motivations and private dramas of key individuals and detailing the back room politics and bitter rivalries that lay behind this epic adventure.

From fiddle tunes to folk ballads, from banjos to blues, traditional music thrives in the remote mountains and hollers of West Virginia. For a quarter century, Goldenseal magazine has given its readers intimate access to the lives and music of folk artists from across this pivotal state. Now the best of Goldenseal is gathered for the first time in this richly illustrated volume. Some of the country's finest folklorists take us through the backwoods and into the homes of such artists as fiddlers Clark Kessinger and U.S. Senator Robert Byrd, recording stars Lynn Davis and Molly O'Day, dulcimer master Russell Fluharty, National Heritage Fellowship recipient Melvin Wine, bluesman Nat Reese, and banjoist Sylvia O'Brien. The most complete survey to date of the vibrant strands of this music and its colorful practitioners, Mountains of Music delineates a unique culture where music and music making are part of an ancient and treasured heritage. The sly humor, strong faith, clear regional identity, and musical convictions of these performers draw the reader into families and communities bound by music from one generation to another. For devotees as well as newcomers to this infectiously joyous and heartfelt music, Mountains of Music captures the strength of tradition and the spontaneous power of living artistry.

The changing climate, the warming of the world and acid rain are among the greatest problems facing us at the end of the twentieth century. This book describes, for the first time, the effects of these phenomena on the high mountains and the forests of Europe. Mountains and the frozen regions (the cryosphere) not only play a major part in our climatic system, but are also central to our water supplies. Yet our glaciers are shrinking, our lakes and soils are becoming acidified, our forests are damaged and the whole fragile ecosystem of ranges like the Alps and the Caucasus is threatened. Nilsson and Pitt present the evidence and assess the probable effects of these changes on mountain society, tourism, water, flora and fauna. They also examine the uncertainties. Above all they look, too, at the best possible strategies in response to What is happening and at what the next steps should be. Originally published in 1991

This book brings together scientists and practitioners from six continents to present their experience in undertaking activities that contribute to our understanding and informed management of mountain areas. In particular, they address the challenges of working in interdisciplinary teams and of effectively involving stakeholders.A comprehensive introduction covers the challenges in mountain area research and management and the need for integrated approaches. This is followed by chapters that look at key areas of mountain research and management over the past 25 years, covering inter- and trans-disciplinary research, subsistence cultures and sustainable development, innovations in watershed management and biodiversity conservation. Subsequent chapters cover key areas of research and management, presenting interdisciplinary case studies from Australia, Canada, the US, Sweden, India, Colombia and Tanzania with a focus on comparison of common challenges and solutions across regions. The concluding chapter brings these experiences together. The result is a powerful book that integrates research from different disciplines in the natural and social sciences, and in some cases indigenous knowledge, to address the question of how knowledge is gained about mountain areas and how can it be integrated and used in effective management.This volume provides an indispensable tool kit for all researchers and professionals undertaking research and management in mountain and other environments, including local and regional authorities, planners, park and protected area managers, tourism operators, and communities involved in resource extraction, watershed management, agriculture and forestry.

Each year, thousands of tourists visit Mount Mitchell, the most prominent feature of North Carolina's Black Mountain range and the highest peak in the eastern United States. From Native Americans and early explorers to land speculators and conservationists, people have long been drawn to this rugged region. Timothy Silver explores the long and complicated history of the Black Mountains, drawing on both the historical record and his experience as a backpacker and fly fisherman. He chronicles the geological and environmental forces that created this intriguing landscape, then traces its history of environmental change and human intervention from the days of Indian-European contact to today. Among the many tales Silver recounts is that of Elisha Mitchell, the renowned geologist and University of North Carolina professor for whom Mount Mitchell is named, who fell to his death there in 1857. But nature's stories - of forest fires, chestnut blight, competition among plants and animals, insect invasions, and, most recently, airborne toxins and acid rain - are also part of Silver's narrative, making it the first history of the Appalachians in which the natural world gets equal time with human history. It is only by understanding the dynamic between these two forces, Silver says, that we can begin to protect the Black Mountains for future generations.

This book breaks the ground in Geographical texts by transcending a strictly regional or topical focus. It presents the opportunities and constraints that mountains and their resources offer to local and global populations; the impacts of environmental and economic change, development and globalisation on mountain environments. Part of the Ecogeography series edited by Richard Hugget

Mountain regions encompass nearly 24 percent of the total land surface of the earth and are home to approximately 12 percent of the world s population. Their ecosystems play a critical role in sustaining human life both in the highlands and the lowlands.

During recent years, resource use in high mountain areas has changed mainly in response to the globalization of the economy and increased world population. As a result, mountain regions are undergoing rapid environmental change, exploitation, and depletion of natural resources leading to ecological imbalances and economic unsustainability. Moreover, the changing climatic conditions have stressed mountain ecosystems through higher mean annual temperatures and the melting of glaciers and snow. Altered precipitation patterns have also had an impact.

This book addresses these critical issues and looks at ways to stop the downward spiral of resource degradation, rural poverty, and food and livelihood insecurity in mountain regions. The book also discusses new and comprehensive approaches to mountain development that are needed to identify sustainable resource development practices, how to strengthen local institutions and knowledge systems, and how to increase the resilience between mountain environments and their inhabitants."

Every year around the globe, people cross paths with avalanches--some massive, some no deeper than a pizza box--with deadly results. Avalanche expert Jill Fredston stalks these so-called freaks of nature, forecasting where and when they will strike, deliberately triggering them with explosives, teaching potential victims how to stay alive, and leading rescue efforts when tragedy strikes. In "Snowstruck," Fredston draws on decades of personal experience to take "avalanches out of the statistical realm and into the human one" ("Skiing Magazine"): a skier making what may prove his final decision, a victim buried so tightly that he can't move a finger, rescuers racing both time and weather, forecasters treading the line between reasonable risk and danger. Fredston brings to life the awesome forces of nature that can turn the mountains deadly--and the equally inexo-rable forces of human nature that lure us time and again into treacherous terrain.

A new form of strip mining has caused a state of emergency for the Appalachian wilderness and the communities that depend on it-a crisis compounded by issues of government neglect, corporate hubris, and class conflict. In this powerful call to arms, Erik Reece chronicles the year he spent witnessing the systematic decimation of a single mountain and offers a landmark defense of a national treasure threatened with extinction.

This comprehensive guidebook provides a detailed description of every official National Park Service trail along the Blue Ridge Parkway. But that's just the beginning: veteran hiker Leonard M. Adkins includes information on every trail that touches the parkway, including the Appalachian Trail and other public pathways on national park, state park, national forest, municipal, and private lands, along with citations for the Mountains-to-Sea Trail. Far more than a guide to the trails, this book will help you plan your whole trip. It's the perfect companion for your next parkway adventure. Includes: every public trail along the parkway GPS coordinates and 72 maps 255 total trails, including 12 new trails since the last edition trail length and difficulty points of interest wheelchair accessibility a short history of the parkway and region campgrounds and lodges public restroom locations elevation change charts for cyclists tunnel heights for RVs wildflower bloom calendar selected sightseeing information on nearby towns