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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Natural New England: then, now, & all points in-between, December 3, 2004
Henry David Thoreau was intrigued by the natural world around Concord, Massachusetts, and a few other favorite New England sites. And whenever he was interested in something or wanted to mull over something, he jotted his findings and his musings in his journals. David Foster has analyzed the journal entries and has compared all the descriptions of Thoreau's New England landscape of the 19th century with our present-day environment. The result is a marvelous insight into the complex intertwinings of natural succession and human land use over several centuries.
At first glance, you might think this book is just another mere compilation of quotes from Thoreau's journals. Nothing could be further from the truth! The chapters address a variety of aspects of the landscape. Each chapter begins with Foster's original explanation of the topic, and he backs up his interpretations with Thoreau's dated journal entries. We are fortunate to have these daily observations and to be able to see the pond of "Walden" fame as a microcosm of the 19th-century New England landscape. For while Thoreau wrote that he "went to the woods," the place he went to was a far cry from what we would now typically call "wooded." Foster says, "It is ironic to recognize today, when a high value is placed on nature, wilderness, and old-growth landscape, that America's premier nature writer and propounder of conservation and wilderness values lived at a time when the New England landscape was arguably the most tamed and most dominated by human activity in its entire history." (p. 222)
And while the writings of Thoreau are generally approached through American literature classes, we've been remiss in not giving more credence to the *science* in his observations. He had ideas about sustainability that were unusual and ahead of his time, and we are gradually coming to realize that his notes make perfect sense today. "More than half a century after Thoreau laid out the story of succession in painstaking detail in his journals, his lessons had to be relearned by the forest ecologists at Harvard." (p. 226) David Foster has the benefit of being able to draw on both knowledge bases: Thoreau's and his own, and he can easily compare the two in this volume. Indeed, this is exactly the kind of book that Thoreau would have read and would have been captivated by, for he was forming his own theories about the trends he found in Nature.
In this volume, Foster puts a new spin on the concept of conservation, preservation, and exactly what is "native" or "a natural state." Every inch of our world has been affected by some sort of human activity. "We are caught in a cultural dilemma in which we seek to maintain what we know and what is becoming rare even though it is largely the consequence of intense human activity." (p. 225)
The text is accompanied by the beautiful pen-and-ink illustrations of Abigail Rorer, who has done similiar work for other "Thoreau books." Foster's additional bibliographic essay provides documentation and the processes he went through to conduct his research. A list of sources plus a 10-page bibliography cap off this work.
While this is an easy enough book to read, Foster's narrations and conclusions take time to digest. They must be savored and absorbed. The reader needs time to stop and think about what he/she's just read. So while this is a worthwhile read, it isn't necessarily a quick one. Recommended for Thoreauvians (of course!), and should also be mandatory study for land managers throughout New England, the Northeast, and in other North American regions. Even lifelong New England residents will learn something new here.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Terrific book, very well written, May 21, 1999
By A Customer
A must read for people interested in the environment and how to interpret their surroundings. Beautifully written, thoughtful and intelligent. One of the best books I've read.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating, February 13, 2008
This review is from: Thoreau's Country: Journey through a Transformed Landscape (Paperback)
This book is an analysis of Thoreau's observations of the New England forest and its changes. Early in his own career, Foster noted that the landscape described by Thoreau was not the landscape he encountered in his own New England experiences. Although Thoreau made a few journeys to the Maine wilderness, most of his writings were set in the environs of Concord, Massachusetts, an area that was well settled and extensively used for agriculture. Even the woods where Thoreau roamed were not wild, but mainly woodlots around Concord. In this book, Foster collates Thoreau's descriptions and observations of a variety of topics concerning daily life, types of woodlands, forest fauna, and ecology and uses these to provide a window into the world as Thoreau saw it, a world whose appearance is very different today.
Foster points out that the migration from New England farmlands was already happening in Thoreau's time. He argues that this migration wasn't necessarily to richer farmlands in the Midwest, but rather to manufacturing jobs in cities, and that transportation improvements such as the new railroads were the main impetus for the migration. The abandonment of farmlands was followed by a transformation of the landscape, from the cleared fields and heavily used woodlots of Thoreau's youth to the second growth forests punctuated with housing developments found today. Hence, what Thoreau saw and described in his journals is quite different from the scenes one would find today in the same locations.
Since Thoreau covered so many different topics in his journals, from spirituality to bird sightings to politics and friendship, it can be difficult to focus on Thoreau's detailed observations of the environment when reading his journals. Foster provides focus here by selecting several topics concerning land usage and forests, and then collating excerpts from Thoreau's journals relating to those topics. Concentrated in this manner and organized by topic, the excerpts demonstrate the astuteness of Thoreau's observations, and how valuable they can still be today for those interested in understanding the land and forests. Foster points out that in addition to coining the term "succession" as regards to forest change, Thoreau had also noted the unlikelihood of successfully growing a new pine forest where one had just been cut; had foresters of the early 20th century studied Thoreau's journals, they could have saved themselves decades of fruitless efforts in ill-conceived reforestation programs.
Foster argues that one of the most important lessons that can be drawn from Thoreau's observation is the inevitability of change. Thus, he notes "It must be recognized that if we set out with expectation of protecting and preserving any landscape as it is today, we are certain to be frustrated, for it will inevitably continue to change." Foster stresses the contradiction between Thoreau's modern image as a wilderness proponent, and the fact that "Thoreau lived in a landscape where the woods were relatively few and heavily cut, where fields and farms predominated, and where people were actively and incessantly working the entire countryside for all available natural resources." Yet "Thoreau was able to find wildness in a thousand scenes, each one shaped by human activity." Thus, Foster concludes "Wilderness and perhaps all possible experiences in life can be found inside oneself." And, "Every landscape has been touched by people, and we can use [Thoreau's] approach to appreciate, understand, and conserve our countryside today.
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