Summer Reading List… In February!
I know February might seem a little early for a Summer Reading List, but consider it preparation for global warming. Combine the chronologically organized works below with this Greeniacs article, and you will have more than enough books to bury your head into as the summers get longer and hotter…
The list begins with Henry David Thorough’s Walden; Or, Life in the Woods. Written in 1854, Walden documents the two years Thorough spent living in the woods outside the town of Concord, Massachusetts. By retreating from civilization, Thorough wanted to “live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and… learn what it had to teach.”1 Living in a simple log cabin that he built himself, Thorough spent most of his time observing forest life and documenting it with his pen. Part naturalist and part philosopher, Thorough is credited with influencing thinkers including Tolstoy and Ghandi. Walden is an important part of New England Transcendentalism, a literary movement which found religion in nature.
Another work arising from a sojourn in the wilderness is John Muir’s 1894 The Mountains of California. Intended as a tribute to the beauty of the Sierra Nevada Mountains,2 this book mixes descriptions of Muir’s adventures in California’s wilderness with a history of the region and his observations as a naturalist. Like all good naturalists, Muir was careful to document his experiences with a series of illustrations that are included in the book.
Mary Hunter Austin moved a lot in her life, but it was just over the Sierra from Muir, in the Lower Owens River Valley, that she wrote her masterpiece, Land of Little Rain (1903). Austin’s descriptions of the less often celebrated Eastern Sierras “mark a new appreciation for the American ‘wasteland’ of the Southwestern desert.”3 Later in life, Austin became a vocal opponent of the city of Los Angeles’ decision to irrigate itself with water from the Eastern Sierras—in the word’s of one critic, she “foresaw [their] decline.” One essay in Land of Little Rain, titled “Water Boarders,” is a poetic look at the importance of water to the Eastern Sierras.4
Written a year after Land of Little Rain, William Henry Hudson’s Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest (1904) is the story of a white traveler who falls in love with a woman indigenous to the Guyana Jungle of Southern Venezuela. This woman, named Rima, lives in harmony with the animals of the jungle, and is able to communicate with birds and tame venomous snakes. While Hudson imaginatively crafts characters, he also renders the savage jungles of South America with scientific accuracy. It is ultimately this combination of fantasy with realist depiction that makes Green Mansions such a touching book, “a vision of natural beauty and of human life as it might be, quickened and sweetened by the sun and the wind and the rain, and by fellowship with all the other forms of life.”5
Aldo Leopold was a farmer, teacher, and environmentalist, and his A Sand County Almanac (1949) is an attempt to understand the ways in which man and nature interact. Through the course of the book, Leopold works to formulate a “land ethic” for man to abide by, and what he eventually comes up with is this: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”6 Leopold’s reverence for the prairie in his home state of Wisconsin also shows the reader that nature need not be sublime or overwhelming for us to hold a deep appreciation for it.
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) is arguably the most important work of modern environmental literature, as it almost single-handedly launched the environmental movement as we know it. Silent Spring exposed the hazards of DDT, an insecticide that was in wide use because of its affordability and its effectiveness against malarial mosquitoes.7 In hindsight, DDT is easy to criticize, but the Worldwide Health Organization (WHO) does estimate that it has saved more than 25 million lives worldwide.8
In the late 1950s, a study came to light demonstrating that DDT enters the food chain and accumulates in the fatty tissues of animals, including human beings,9 thereby affecting the nervous system and causing tremors.10 Carson used this and other evidence—studies showing that introducing DDT into the diet of a number of different bird species weakened their eggshells and reduced reproductive rates11 —to argue against the use of DDT in the United States. Such a stance was heretical at the time, and even prompted some in the pesticide industry to accuse her of being a communist.12 By 1973 the country had come around and banned the use of DDT, cementing Carson as a cornerstone of the environmentalist movement and proving that ordinary outraged people can make a difference.
Edward Abbey was a rugged individualist molded by the American West, an anarchist who avoided affiliating himself with any environmental groups and who once said, “if a label is required, say that I am one who loves the unfenced country.”13 Abbey hitchhiked west from Appalachia in 1946 and spent time as a forest ranger and fire lookout14 at Utah’s Arches National Monument, an experience that he compresses into a single season in Desert Solitaire. Displaying outrage towards “government and business interests”15 for their treatment of public lands, Desert Solitaire set the tone for what would be Abbey’s best-known work, 1975’s The Monkey Wrench Gang.
The Monkey Wrench Gang is the story of four eco-terrorists as they set out to blow up the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River.16 The message of the novel—that sometimes radical measures need to be taken to preserve the environment—is said to have inspired the radical environmental group Earth First!, along with other, more level-headed, environmental groups. While encouraging eco-terrorism is unjustifiable, Abbey’s ardent love for nature is far from impossible to sympathize with.
Each of these novels contains a distinct voice and represents a different region, but all demonstrate a shared passion for the natural world. If you, too, consider nature to be an important part of life, then check out some of these books and find the writers with whom you best connect!
