"A sense of place can be a complicated matter," writes James
McVey in the prologue to his new collection of essays, "The Way
Home." Based on twenty years of living and traveling in the West,
the collection includes essays on river running, backcountry
skiing, fly fishing, and backpacking--all describing various
attempts to engage in meaningful contact with the elements of wild
nature, and to have a deep firsthand knowledge of a place. With an
essayists breadth McVey engages ecology, geology, anthropology,
psychology, and history as well as his own personal outdoor
experiences to peer into the particulars of living in as
complicated a place as the West. While the essays function within
the tradition of western nature writing, they transcend regional
issues insofar as they maintain a broader philosophical context
that accounts for such global concerns as mass extinction and
climate change.
The essays use backcountry experiences as occasions for reflection
on such topics as nature and culture, conservation, and the human
relation to the wild. They combine the naturalist's commitment to
landscape with the adventurer's attention to technique and skill.
The outdoor experiences function as ritualized activity, the
purpose of which is to explore a specific relation with a place. As
such, the essays consider certain nonrational ways of knowing the
world, including a perception of aesthetics based on sensory
participation with the more-than-human world. This gets to the
heart of the essential connection in this work between its
adventure themes and nature concerns--a connection very much
concerned with issues of lifestyle and worldview. McVey describes
his own journey in the West, traveling through the varying
philosophical revelations wilderness presents--"a lifetime of
questions"--finally landing on a conservation ethic, a feeling of
home.
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