Customer Reviews

This Grand and Magnificent Place: The Wilderness Heritage of the White Mountains (Revisiting New England)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am about halfway through reading this book, which is a new purchase for the Wentworth Library in Sandwich, NH. After all the books that have been written about White Mountain history and background, I found this new work intriguing in its depth and excellence. I first came across much of the legend and lore portrayed in here while attending the last UNH Forestry Camp at Passaconaway in 1964. We were too rowdy a bunch for this institution to continue further, but it introduced me to the beauty of these unique mountains and Doc Stevens fascinated me with their stories. I climbed Mt. Trypyramid with Keith Kidder as my first 4,000 footer, clambering up the slide to the Middle Peak as described herein by pioneer trampers. Later, I would work at Mizpah Hut for the AMC and pack to many of the huts in the summer of 1965. I missed the mountains like crazy while in the Army, so convinced my friend Fred Stetson to accompany me on a week long trip in the Pemi following Flight School. He has been visiting and writing about this mountainous area ever since, too. Efforts to describe and paint the experience of the White Mountains continue to produce historic memories of the past, and this book indeed does the job. I especially like the portrayals of Thomas Cole and Hawthorne, and how the region has stimulated considerable aesthetic reflections and deep intelligent regard. There is something truly inspirational here, and I enjoy introducng my friends from afar with why I am stuck on the place. It is grand in its magnificence; nothing compares to it, despite attempts to try. I am too old now to climb all like I used to, but I can still read about these summits and regain the reasons I originally chose to live out my life here. This book will be a keeper to relish this wild region so special to us....

This is a gem of a book for anyone interested in wilderness, history, exploration and the evolution of land use in one of this country's greatest mountain areas: the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Chris Johnson did exhaustive research into the history, exploration, settlement, development, exploitation and eventual protection of this area. The depth of his research is impressive! He explores the influence of the White Mountains on art, recreation, economic development and the eventual legislation that has impacted wilderness across the U.S.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is familiar with the White Mountains or anyone who has interest in the history of U.S. settlement, land use, recreation or wilderness protection.