Description: I. NATURE: "OUT THERE." 1. Encounters with the Otherness of Nature. Matthew A. Henson, From A Black Explorer at the North Pole. Rachel Carson, The Marginal World. John Janovy, Jr., Tigers and Toads. Robert Finch, Very Like a Whale. Annie Dillard, Living Like Weasels. David Quammen, The Face of a Spider. 2. Fecundity and Mortality. Mary Austin, The Scavengers. Lewis Thomas, Death in the Open. Annie Dillard, From Fecundity. Stephen Jay Gould, Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of Dinosaurs. Stephen Harrigan, The Secret Life of the Beach. John Daniel, Some Mortal Speculations. 3. Birds and Beasts. Sally Carrighar, From Wild Heritage. Edward Hoagland, Dogs, and the Tug of Life. Peter Matthiessen, From The Snow Leopard. Scott Russell Sanders, Listening to Owls. Sue Hubbell, A Country Year. Alice Walker, Am I Blue? 4. Weather and Seasons. May Sarton, Mud Season. Joan Didion, Los Angeles Notebook. John Hay, A Season for Swallows. Gretel Ehrlich, A Storm, the Cornfield, and Elk. Chet Raymo, The Blandishments of Color. Annie Dillard, From An American Childhood. II. HUMAN VISITORS. 1. Walking: On the Trail and Off. Henry David Thoreau, From Walking. David Black, Walking the Cape: A Distance Measured in Time. Barry Lopez, The Image of the Unicorn. Betsy Hilbert, Disturbing the Universe. David Brendan Hopes, Crossings. Linda Hogan, Walking. 2. Floating: Water Narratives. Edward Abbey, Floating. Ann Zwinger, Fort Bottom to Turks Head. John Tallmadge, In the Mazes of Quetico. Rick Bass, From River People. Eddy L. Harris, From Mississippi Solo: A River Quest. Gretchel Ehrlich, From Islands, the Universe, Home. 3. Climbing: Mountain Narratives. Isabella Bird, A Lady''s Life in the Rocky Mountains: Letter VII. John Muir, Prayers in Higher Mountain Temples, or A Geologist''s Winter Walk. Jack Kerouac, From The Dharma Bums. David Roberts, Five Days on Mount Huntington. Arlene Blum, From Annapurna: A Woman''s Place. Scott Russell Sanders, Cloud Crossing. 4. Wilderness Journals. Henry David Thoreau, October 1-20,1853. John Muir, Yosemite Falls: Journal Entry (April 3,1871); Letter to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr (April 3, 1871); An Unexpected Adventure (1912). Edwin Way Teale, From October. Ursula K. LeGuin, Riding Shotgun. Stephen J. Pyrne, Monsoon Lighting. III. BELONGING TO THE WORLD. 1. Nearby Nature. Henry David Thoreau, From Walden. Sandra Cisneros, Four Skinny Trees. Maxine Kumin, Menial Labor and the Muse. John Elder, The Plane on South Mountain. Michael Pollan, Why Mow? The Case Against Lawns. David Quammen, The White Tigers of Cincinnati: A Strabismic View of Zookeeping. 2. A Sense of Place. Eudora Welty, Some Notes on River Country. Edward Abbey, The Great American Desert. Wendell Berry, A Country of Edges. Terry Tempest Williams, Yucca. Gloria Anzaldu, El retorno. William Least Heat-Moon, Atop the Mound. Visual Representations of Nature: Landscape Painting and Photography. Frederic Edwin Church, Mt. Ktaadn (1853). Julius Schrader, Baron Alexander von Humboldt (1859). Georgia O''Keeffe, From the Plains (1919). Joel Meyerowitz, Porch, Provincetown, (1977). 3. Spiritual and Aesthetic Responses to Nature. Georgia O''Keeffe, Letter to Anita Pollitzer (September 11, 1916). Loren Eiseley, The Flow of the River. Rudolfo Anaya, From Bless Me, Ultima. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, Manzanar, U.S.A. Larry Littlebird, The Hunter. Susan Mitchell, Dreaming in Public: A Provincetown Memoir. IV. ABSTRACTIONS: THINKING ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT. 1. Nature and the Mind. Loren Eiseley, The Winter of Man. Barry Lopez, Children in the Woods. Leslie Marmon Silko, From Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination. Gary Soto, Blue. Randall Kenan, From A Visitation of Spirits. John Daniel, The Impoverishment of Sightseeing. 2. Public Statements: Polemics, Conjectures, Records of Conflict. N. Scott Momaday, An American Land Ethic. William Kittredge, From Owning It All. Joseph Meeker, Nuclear Time. Scott Russell Sanders, The Singular First Person. Joy Williams, Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp. David Quammen, Dirty Word, Clean Place. 3. Global Thoughts, Local Actions. Jonathan Weiner, From The New Question. Richard Nelson, Oil and Ethics: Adrift on Troubled Waters. John Nicols, Keep It Simple. Baruch Fischhoff, Report from Poland: Science and Politics in the Midst of Environmental Disaster. Wangari Maathai, Foresters Without Diplomas. Paul DiPerna, Truth vs. "Facts." Glossary of Critical Terms.

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