|
Books > Sport & Leisure > Natural history, country life & pets
|
Buy Now
Thoreau's Country - Journey through a Transformed Landscape (Paperback, New edition)
Loot Price: R1,043
Discovery Miles 10 430
|
|
|
Thoreau's Country - Journey through a Transformed Landscape (Paperback, New edition)
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
|
In 1977 David Foster took to the woods of New England to build a
cabin with his own hands. Along with a few tools he brought a copy
of the journals of Henry David Thoreau. Foster was struck by how
different the forested landscape around him was from the one
Thoreau described more than a century earlier. The sights and
sounds that Thoreau experienced on his daily walks through
nineteenth-century Concord were those of rolling farmland, small
woodlands, and farmers endlessly working the land. As Foster
explored the New England landscape, he discovered ancient ruins of
cellar holes, stone walls, and abandoned cartways--all remnants of
this earlier land now largely covered by forest. How had Thoreau's
open countryside, shaped by ax and plough, divided by fences and
laneways, become a forested landscape? Part ecological and
historical puzzle, this book brings a vanished countryside to life
in all its dimensions, human and natural, offering a rich record of
human imprint upon the land. Extensive excerpts from the journals
show us, through the vividly recorded details of daily life, a
Thoreau intimately acquainted with the ways in which he and his
neighbors were changing and remaking the New England landscape.
Foster adds the perspective of a modern forest ecologist and
landscape historian, using the journals to trace themes of
historical and social change. Thoreau's journals evoke not a
wilderness retreat but the emotions and natural history that come
from an old and humanized landscape. It is with a new understanding
of the human role in shaping that landscape, Foster argues, that we
can best prepare ourselves to appreciate and conserve it today.
From the journal: "I have collected and split up now quite a pile
of driftwood--rails and riders and stems and stumps of
trees--perhaps half or three quarters of a tree...Each stick I deal
with has a history, and I read it as I am handling it, and, last of
all, I remember my adventures in getting it, while it is burning in
the winter evening. That is the most interesting part of its
history. It has made part of a fence or a bridge, perchance, or has
been rooted out of a clearing and bears the marks of fire on
it...Thus one half of the value of my wood is enjoyed before it is
housed, and the other half is equal to the whole value of an equal
quantity of the wood which I buy." --October 20, 1855
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
|
You might also like..
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
(4)
(2)
(5)
