LEADER 04758nam 2200673Ia 450 001 9910820943003321 005 20240416151458.0 010 $a0-674-03715-4 024 7 $a10.4159/9780674037151 035 $a(CKB)1000000000786738 035 $a(DLC)98039531 035 $a(StDuBDS)AH23050691 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000258994 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11204438 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000258994 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10274307 035 $a(PQKB)10490656 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL3300492 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10318486 035 $a(OCoLC)923112049 035 $a(DE-B1597)574462 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780674037151 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC3300492 035 $a(EXLCZ)991000000000786738 100 $a19980729e20011999 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aur||||||||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aThoreau's country $ejourney through a transformed landscape /$fDavid R. Foster 205 $a1st ed. 210 $aCambridge, Mass. $cHarvard University Press$d2001,c1999 215 $a1 online resource (xiv, 270 p. )$cill 300 $aBibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph 311 $a0-674-88645-3 311 $a0-674-00668-2 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references (p. [250]-259) and index. 327 $tFrontmatter -- $tContents -- $tPreface -- $tPrologue: One Man?s Journal -- $tThree Landscapes in New England History -- $tThe Cultural Landscape of New England -- $tA Natural History of Woodlands -- $tThe Coming of the New Forest -- $tLosses and Change -- $tStepping Back and Looking Ahead -- $tBibliographic Essay -- $tBibliography -- $tIndex 330 $aIn 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 606 $aAuthors, American$y19th century$vBiography 606 $aLandscape changes$zNew England 606 $aNatural history$zNew England 607 $aNew England$xIntellectual life$y19th century 607 $aNew England$xDescription and travel 615 0$aAuthors, American 615 0$aLandscape changes 615 0$aNatural history 676 $a818.309 676 $aB 700 $aFoster$b David R.$f1954-$01648444 701 $aThoreau$b Henry David$f1817-1862.$0132500 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910820943003321 996 $aThoreau's country$94070096 997 $aUNINA