A fine Thoreauvian ramble through the changing landscapes of a
single patch of land in northeastern Massachusetts: from the wild
hunting grounds of the Paleo-Indians to the trim desolation of the
Beaver Brook Industrial Park. Mitchell is Director of Publications
for the Massachusetts Audubon Society, and he catalogues the flora
and fauna of "Scratch Flat" with the precision of a trained
naturalist and the graceful, unassuming prose of a born writer. But
the key to his free-floating meditations is their combination of
local piety - Algonquin legends, tales of 18th-century witchcraft,
chronicles of homesteading and dairy-farming, the losing battle
against suburban development - with a cosmic sweep, from the last
Ice Age (20,000 years ago) to the prospective next. From the
standpoint of linear time, the history of Scratch Flat has been a
fairly steady devolution: native cultures destroyed, landmark
buildings bulldozed or burned down, pine woods flattened and
topsoil swept away. But from the vantage of geological time, all
the human abuse of nature (including other humans) looks like a
petty affair: before too long Route 495 and all the hi-tech
companies it feeds into may be buried beneath a mile deep ocean of
ice. In the meantime Mitchell finds wisdom and comfort in
cultivating his sense of "ceremonial time," the primitive awareness
of past, present, and future events fusing together in the eternal
now of sacred space. Mitchell is initiated into this vision by a
Wampanoag medicine woman, a part-Micmac, part-Mohawk man, and any
number of (usually eccentric) residents of Scratch Fiat, living and
dead; and he has a few eerie experiences when spirits, animal,
human, or divine, seem to be haunting him on lonely hikes. Readers
can make of this what they will, and some of Mitchell's lovingly
detailed inventory of Scratch Flat is less than dramatic stuff. But
the book has real beauty and quiet power: a worthy continuation of
the Thoreau-Muir-Leopold-Krutch et al. tradition. (Kirkus Reviews)
Ceremonial time is the moment when past, present, and future can be
perceived simultaneously. Usually experienced only during ancient
dances or rituals, this escape from time is the theme of this book,
which traces the life on a single spot in New England from the last
ice age through years of Indians, shamans, and bears, to the
colonists, witches and farmers, and now the encroaching parks.
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!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
