Download or read book Singing Wilderness written by Sigurd F. Olson and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2012-05-30 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To do with the calling of loons, with northern lights, and the great silences of land lying northwest of Lake Superior. It is concerned with the simple joys, the timelessness and perspective found in a way of life which is close to the past. I have heard the singing in many places, but I seem to hear it best in the wilderness lake country of the Quetico-Superior, where travel is still by pack and canoe over the ancient trails of the Indians and voyageurs." Thus the author sets the theme and tone of this enthralling book of discovery about one of the few great primitive areas in our country which have withstood the pressures of civilization. Acute natural perceptivity and a profound knowledge of the relationships to be found in nature combine here in vivid evocations of the sights, the sounds, the vast stillnesses, and the events of the wilderness as the seasons succeed each other. But Mr. Olson is not content merely to "describe; he probes for meanings that will lead the reader to a different and more revealing way of looking at the out-of-doors and to a deeper sense of its eternal values. In each of the thirty-four chapters of The Singing Wilderness he has sought to capture an essential quality of our magnificent lake and forest heritage. He shows us what can be read from the rocks of the great Canadian Shield; he offers a delightful essay on the virtues of pine knots as fuel; he writes of the ways of a canoe, of flashing trout in the pools of the Isabella, of tamarack bogs, caribou moss, the flight of wild geese, timber wolves, and the birds of the ski trails. And much more, with something to satisfy every taste for wilderness experience. Superbly illustrated with 38 black-and-white drawings by Francis Lee Jaques, The Singing Wilderness is a book that no lover of nature will want to be without. To anyone who contemplates a vacation in the lake country of northern Minnesota and adjoining Canada, it is the perfect vade mecum.

Download or read book A Private Wilderness written by Sigurd F. Olson and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The personal diaries of one of America’s best-loved naturalists, revealing his difficult and inspiring path to finding his voice and becoming a writer Few writers are as renowned for their eloquence about the natural world, its power and fragility, as Sigurd F. Olson (1899–1982). Before he could give expression to The Singing Wilderness, however, he had to find his own voice. It is this struggle, the painstaking and often simply painful process of becoming the writer and conservationist now familiar to us, that Olson documented in the journal entries gathered here. Written mostly during the years from 1930 to 1941, Olson’s journals describe the dreams and frustrations of an aspiring writer honing his skills, pursuing recognition, and facing doubt while following the academic career that allowed him to live and work even as it consumed so much of his time. But even as he speaks with immediacy and intensity about the conditions of his apprenticeship, Olson can be seen developing the singular way of observing and depicting the natural world that would bring him fame—and also, more significantly, alert others to the urgent need to understand and protect that world. Author of Olson’s definitive biography, editor David Backes brings a deep knowledge of the writer to these journals, providing critical context, commentary, and insights along the way. When Olson wrote, in the spring of 1941, “What I am afraid of now is that the world will blow up just as I am getting it organized to suit me,” he could hardly have known how right he would prove to be. It is propitious that at our present moment, when the world seems once more balanced on the precipice, we have the words of Sigurd F. Olson to remind us of what matters—and of the hard work and the wonder that such a reckoning requires.

Download or read book LISTENING POINT written by Sigurd F. Olson and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2012-07-04 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Listening Point tells of what I have seen and heard on a bare glaciated spit of rock in the Quetico-Superior country. Each time I have gone there I have found something new that has opened up whole realms of thought and interest. From it I have glimpsed the immensity of space and at times the grandeur of creation. “I believe that I have experienced there one of the oldest satisfactions of man; when as he gazed upon the earth and sky, he sensed the first vague glimmerings of meaning in the universe. I know that while we were born with curiosity and wonder, and our early years are full of the adventure they bring, such inherent joys are often lost. I also know that, being deep within us, their latent glow can be fanned to flame again by awareness and an open mind. “Listening Point is dedicated to rekindling that flame by capturing this almost forgotten sense of wonder, and learning from rocks and trees and all the life that surrounds them truths that can encompass all. “I named this place Listening Point because only when one comes to listen, only when one comes sharpens one’s awareness, can one see and hear in the sense in which I use these words. Everyone has a listening point somewhere, some quiet place where he can contemplate the awesome universe. This book is simply the story of what such a place has meant to me. The experiences that have been mine can be known by anyone who will make the effort.” Thus the author of The Singing Wilderness sets the tone of his new book—a book that not only successfully recaptures the to-be-treasured sense of wonder of which he speaks, but also brings to life, in all its essential grandeur, the unparalleled heritage of lakes and rivers and forests we are so fortunate to be able to call our own. Listening Point is a book that will rekindle spirits wearied by the turmoils of twentieth-century living—that will teach us a new way to look at the world around us and to feel the better for it. With 28 magnificent black-and-white drawings by Francis Lee Jacques.

Download or read book Breath of Wilderness written by Kristin Eggerling and published by Fulcrum Publishing. This book was released on 2016-05-25 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Breath of Wilderness is the story of Olson's love for wild places and how that love transformed his life, inspiring him to play a key role in the movement to preserve wilderness throughout North America, including the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, the largest lakeland wilderness in the country.

Download or read book Reflections from the North Country written by Sigurd F. Olson and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2012-04-25 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in the last years of his life, Reflections from the North Country is often considered Sigurd Olson's most intellectually significant work. In an account alive with anecdote and insight, Olson outlines the wilderness philosophy he developed while working as an outspoken advocate for the conservation of America's natural heritage.Based on speeches delivered at town meetings and government hearings, this book joins The Singing Wilderness and Listening Point as the core of Olson's work. Upon its initial publication in 1976, Reflections from the North Country, with Olson's unique combination of lyrical nature writing and activism, became an inspiration to the burgeoning environmental movement, selling over 46,000 copies in hardcover. In this wide-ranging work, Olson evokes the soaring grace of raven, osprey, and eagle, the call of the loon, and the song of the hermit thrush. He challenges the reader to loosen the grasp of technology and the rush of contemporary life and make room for a sense of wonder heightened by being in nature. From evolution to the meaning and power of solitude, Olson meditates on the human condition, offering eloquent testimony to the joys and truths he discovered in his beloved north-country wilderness.

Download or read book Lonely Land written by Sigurd F. Olson and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2012-07-04 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of The Singing Wilderness and Listening Point begins this grand adventure: “There are few places left on the North American continent where men can still see the country as it was before Europeans came and know some of the challenges and freedoms of those who saw it first, but in the Canadian Northwest it can still be done. A thousand miles northwest of Lake Superior are great free rivers, lakes whose horizons disappear, countless unnamed waterways, and ridges and forested valleys still largely unknown.” Into this land of Crees, Chippewyans, Yellow Knives, and Dig Rib Indians had once come the voyageur, the Hudson Bay trader, and a succession of adventurers—gentlemen and otherwise—who used the mighty Churchill River as a major waterway from Hudson Bay to the Mackenzie. “It was the trail of these voyageurs we followed,” says the author, “a trail that led from the height of land where waters flow north to the Arctic and east to Hudson Bay, to Cumberland House five hundred miles away. Every portage, camp site, and rapids, every mile of this waterway of lakes and rivers was steeped in the drama of exploration and trade.” “We traveled as the voyageurs did by canoe, paddled the same lakes, ran the same rapids, and packed over their ancient portages. We knew the winds and storms, saw the same sky lines, and felt the awe and wonderment that was theirs at the enormous expanses and grandeur of a land that was once as strange and challenging to them as to us.” Mr. Olson has illuminated his own cruise with quotations from journals and diaries of such men as George Simpson, David Thompson, Alexander Henry, and Alexander Mackenzie—as well as a host of other explorers-traders whose voices speak from the old Moose Fort Journals of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Mr. Olson serves as the Bourgeois of the party of six—the boss who ran the trip, chose the routes, picked the camp sites. His companions and he relived for all readers of this book what life was then in the wilds of the Canadian Northwest. Mr. Olson combines his inimitable ability to evoke the beauties and wonders of the wilderness—its animals, birds, and its very spirit—with a dramatic talent for taking the reader along the route of the men who pioneered that wilderness. Francis Lee Jacques, whose genius to evoke the wilderness in pen and ink is unchallenged, has illuminated this book by his drawings, as he did The Singing Wilderness and Listening Point.

Download or read book A Wilderness Within written by David Backes and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Of Time and Place written by Sigurd F. Olson and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2012-07-04 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of Time and Place is a legacy from one of the best-loved woodsman writers of our time. To the outdoorsmen who often canoed and portaged with him through the northern Lake country, Sigurd Olson was affectionately known as the Bourgeois—the name that voyageurs gave two hundred years ago to the trusted guides who took them over this same territory. And in this, his last book, completed just before his death in early 1982, Olson is our guide through his wide-ranging memories of a lifetime dedicated to the preservation of the wilderness, especially of his beloved Quetico-Superior country. He recalls his many friendships of trail and woods and portage, his favorite campsites, the stories behind the artifacts and mementos hanging in his cabin at Listening Point. He muses on the fragile beauty of the prairies, on the significance of ancient trails, on the resonance and the origins of place names. Whether he is remembering the day when he caught his first brook trout, or admiring the playful grace of the otter, or pondering the earth’s great cycles of climatic change, these moving and evocative essays reaffirm Audubon magazine’s celebration of Sigurd Olson as “the poetic voice of the modern wilderness movement.”

Download or read book Sigurd F Olson s Wilderness Days written by Sigurd F. Olson and published by Knopf. This book was released on 1972 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the evocative words of one of America's best-loved writers about nature, and in 56 beautiful photographs, this book crystallizes the very essence of that magnificent wilderness with which its author is so deeply identified. In it he has culled from his writings those moments that most vividly summon up the turn of the seasons in the great woodlands and waters of the fabled Quetico-Superior region overlapping the Ontario-Minnesota border.

Download or read book Braving the Wilderness written by Brené Brown and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2019-08-27 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • A timely and important book that challenges everything we think we know about cultivating true belonging in our communities, organizations, and culture, from the #1 bestselling author of Rising Strong, Daring Greatly, and The Gifts of Imperfection Don’t miss the five-part Max docuseries Brené Brown: Atlas of the Heart! “True belonging doesn’t require us to change who we are. It requires us to be who we are.” Social scientist Brené Brown, PhD, MSW, has sparked a global conversation about the experiences that bring meaning to our lives—experiences of courage, vulnerability, love, belonging, shame, and empathy. In Braving the Wilderness, Brown redefines what it means to truly belong in an age of increased polarization. With her trademark mix of research, storytelling, and honesty, Brown will again change the cultural conversation while mapping a clear path to true belonging. Brown argues that we’re experiencing a spiritual crisis of disconnection, and introduces four practices of true belonging that challenge everything we believe about ourselves and each other. She writes, “True belonging requires us to believe in and belong to ourselves so fully that we can find sacredness both in being a part of something and in standing alone when necessary. But in a culture that’s rife with perfectionism and pleasing, and with the erosion of civility, it’s easy to stay quiet, hide in our ideological bunkers, or fit in rather than show up as our true selves and brave the wilderness of uncertainty and criticism. But true belonging is not something we negotiate or accomplish with others; it’s a daily practice that demands integrity and authenticity. It’s a personal commitment that we carry in our hearts.” Brown offers us the clarity and courage we need to find our way back to ourselves and to each other. And that path cuts right through the wilderness. Brown writes, “The wilderness is an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching. It is a place as dangerous as it is breathtaking, a place as sought after as it is feared. But it turns out to be the place of true belonging, and it’s the bravest and most sacred place you will ever stand.”

Download or read book Singing to the Plants written by Stephan V, Beyer and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2010-01-15 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Upper Amazon, mestizos are the Spanish-speaking descendants of Hispanic colonizers and the indigenous peoples of the jungle. Some mestizos have migrated to Amazon towns and cities, such as Iquitos and Pucallpa; most remain in small villages. They have retained features of a folk Catholicism and traditional Hispanic medicine, and have incorporated much of the religious tradition of the Amazon, especially its healing, sorcery, shamanism, and the use of potent plant hallucinogens, including ayahuasca. The result is a uniquely eclectic shamanist culture that continues to fascinate outsiders with its brilliant visionary art. Ayahuasca shamanism is now part of global culture. Once the terrain of anthropologists, it is now the subject of novels and spiritual memoirs, while ayahuasca shamans perform their healing rituals in Ontario and Wisconsin. Singing to the Plants sets forth just what this shamanism is about--what happens at an ayahuasca healing ceremony, how the apprentice shaman forms a spiritual relationship with the healing plant spirits, how sorcerers inflict the harm that the shaman heals, and the ways that plants are used in healing, love magic, and sorcery.

Download or read book Dancing in the Wilderness written by Samanthia Cassidy and published by Creation House. This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Step into this unforgettable narrative with Samanthia Cassidy as she comes of age in the Deep South as part of a dysfunctional family and a “holiness” cult with a pastor who handles snakes and takes indecent liberties with young girls.Your soul will be stirred and your heart warmed as you are drawn irresistibly into a unique time and place in Twentieth-Century Americana. As the author allows you to see through her eyes, you will feel her love and hatred…ecstasy and misery…passion and pain. And you will relish her boldness, courage, tenacity and triumph. In this vivid, unvarnished snapshot of provincial southern life, an intrepid young girl is faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges. Yet despite overwhelming assaults against her childhood trust and innocence, Samanthia’s dauntless spirit, love of family and faith in God transcend every obstacle.You will become part of Samanthia’s big family and experience life in their “Big House.” And you will fall in love with this extraordinary girl who shares her beautiful secret of dancing in the wilderness. About the author: Samanthia Cassidy-singer, songwriter, author-comes from a humble background in the small town of Courtland, Alabama, where she encountered God as a young girl and accepted His call upon her life. She has received a Doctor of Humanities degree from Emmanuel Baptist University and an honorary Doctor of Music degree from Heartland Bible College. As a Gospel singer, she was nominated as one of the top five 1997 soloists at the Gospel Voice Diamond Awards in Nashville, and she is now finishing her fifth music CD. Samanthia has ministered extensively in Nigeria and has had the privilege to sing for presidents, kings and dignitaries from around the world. She plans to take the Gospel to all of Africa, Trinidad, Jamaica and Europe, in addition to churches throughout America. She and her beloved husband, Bill, reside in Corinth, Mississippi.

Download or read book Cabin at Singing River written by Chris Czajkowski and published by Raincoast Books. This book was released on 2002-02-18 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a bestselling account of one woman's journey into remote British Columbia, where she cleared a piece of land and built her own home. Illuminated by the author's own drawings, Cabin at Singing River is an inspiring book, realistic about how beauty can only be appreciated with hard work. The dream of shedding urban responsibilities and returning to nature is universal, and this book will inspire anyone interested in her experience.

Download or read book Singing in the Wilderness written by Wilfrid Mellers and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mellers (composer and professor emeritus, University of York) begins with the confusion of the (unfamiliar) forest within, audible in Wagner's late and Shoenberg's early works, in Delius's A Village Romeo and Juliet, and Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande. The next section, The Forest Without, examines Charles Koechlin's Le Foret Feerique and Milhaud's Le Boeuf Sur le Toit which embrace the real jungle without and the imaginative jungle within. Part 3 shows Villa-Lobos and Carlos Chavez connecting, as Mellers puts it, "the jungle within the mind and the asphalt jungle of a rapidly industrialized metropolis." Part four explores interrelationships between wilderness and machine through the work of Carl Ruggles, Varese, Partch, Reich, and the Australian, Peter Sculthorpe. Finally, the erasure of border between wilderness and civilization is the focus in works by Ellington and Gershwin. Suitable for both musicians and non-musicians. c. Book News Inc.

Download or read book A Cry in the Wilderness written by Keith Green and published by Paternoster. This book was released on 1993-04 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Billionaire Wilderness written by Justin Farrell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Billionaire Wilderness offers an unprecedented look inside the world of the ultra-wealthy and their relationship to the natural world, showing how the ultra-rich use nature to resolve key predicaments in their lives. Justin Farrell immerses himself in Teton County, Wyoming--both the richest county in the United States and the county with the nation's highest level of income inequality--to investigate interconnected questions about money, nature, and community in the twenty-first century. Farrell draws on three years of in-depth interviews with "ordinary" millionaires and the world's wealthiest billionaires, four years of in-person observation in the community, and original quantitative data to provide comprehensive and unique analytical insight on the ultra-wealthy. He also interviewed low-income workers who could speak to their experiences as employees for and members of the community with these wealthy people. He finds that the wealthy leverage nature to climb even higher on the socioeconomic ladder, and they use their engagement with nature and rural people as a way of creating more virtuous and deserving versions of themselves. Billionaire Wilderness demonstrates that our contemporary understanding of the relationship between the ultra-wealthy and the environment is empirically shallow, and our reliance on reports of national economic trends distances us from the real experiences of these people and their local communities"--

Download or read book The Wild Edge of Sorrow written by Francis Weller and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and be stretched large by them. As seen on All There Is with Anderson Cooper Noted psychotherapist Francis Weller provides an essential guide for navigating the deep waters of sorrow and loss in this lyrical yet practical handbook for mastering the art of grieving. Describing how Western patterns of amnesia and anesthesia affect our capacity to cope with personal and collective sorrows, Weller reveals the new vitality we may encounter when we welcome, rather than fear, the pain of loss. Through moving personal stories, poetry, and insightful reflections he leads us into the central energy of sorrow, and to the profound healing and heightened communion with each other and our planet that reside alongside it. The Wild Edge of Sorrow explains that grief has always been communal and illustrates how we need the healing touch of others, an atmosphere of compassion, and the comfort of ritual in order to fully metabolize our grief. Weller describes how we often hide our pain from the world, wrapping it in a secret mantle of shame. This causes sorrow to linger unexpressed in our bodies, weighing us down and pulling us into the territory of depression and death. We have come to fear grief and feel too alone to face an encounter with the powerful energies of sorrow. Those who work with people in grief, who have experienced the loss of a loved one, who mourn the ongoing destruction of our planet, or who suffer the accumulated traumas of a lifetime will appreciate the discussion of obstacles to successful grief work such as privatized pain, lack of communal rituals, a pervasive feeling of fear, and a culturally restrictive range of emotion. Weller highlights the intimate bond between grief and gratitude, sorrow and intimacy. In addition to showing us that the greatest gifts are often hidden in the things we avoid, he offers powerful tools and rituals and a list of resources to help us transform grief into a force that allows us to live and love more fully.