At Home on the Earth: Becoming Native to Our Place: A Multicultural Anthology

"The physical earth is clearly under unprecedented siege--heated, toxified, scraped. But almost as if they were antibodies, the finest nature writers of any era have come forward to help in the fight. This anthology collects many of the most important, at their most eloquent. May it ring and echo and do some good!"--Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

"This is a stunning collection of vivid writing about landscapes and the people who inhabit them. The diverse narratives gathered here do more than describe hawks diving and twigs snapping, although the book has its share of moving accounts of the natural world. A concern to live responsibily in nature runs through this evocative anthology like a subterranean stream, and that moral impulse, together with the lively prose, makes this the best collection of nature writing I've seen."--Thomas A. Tweed, editor of Retelling U.S. Religious History

David Landis Barnhill is Director of Environmental Studies and Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.

Preface

Introduction, David Landis Barnhill

PART ONE: LIVING IN PLACE

Americans Native to this Land

A First American Views His Land, N. Scott Momaday

Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination, Leslie Marmon Silko

The Loss of Place

from A Native Hill, Wendell Berry

Touching the earth, bell hooks

Shadows and Vistas, John Haines

The Possibility of Place

from A Native Hill, Wendell Berry

Settliing Down, Scott Rissell Sanders

from The Place, the Region, and the Commons, Gary Snyder

The Hudon River Valley: A BioregionalStory, Thomas Berry

Native Cultures and the Search for Place

Becoming Métis, Melissa Nelson

A Sprig of Sage, terry Tempest Williams

The Gifts of Deer, Richard K. Nelson

PART TWO: PLACE TO LIVE

Homesteading

from The Writer as Alaskan: Beginnings and Reflections, John Haines

Ranching

The Subtlety of the Land, Sharon Butala

A Storm, the Cornfield, and Elk, Gretel Ehrlich

The Smooth Skull of Winter, Gretel Ehrlich

Farming

Learning to Fail, David Mas Masumoto

from A Country year: Living the Questions, Sue Hubbell

Living Between City and Country

On Willow Creek, Rick Bass

Ceremonial Time, John Hanson Mitchell

Into the Maze, Robert Finch

Urban Living

Water under American Ground: West 78th Street, Peter Sauer

from This Place on Earth: Home and the Practice of Permanence, Alan Thein Durning

Nothing Lasts a Hundred Years, Richard Rodriguez

Fantsasy of a Living Future, Sarhawk

Coda

The Rediscovery of Turtle Island, Gary Snyder

The Universe Responds: Or, How I Learned We Can Have Peace on Earth, Alice Walker

Dwellings, Linda Hogan