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Bringing the Mountain Home

Name: Bringing the Mountain Home
Author: SueEllen Campbell
ISBN: 9780816516179

by SueEllen Campbell

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Overview

"We like to think that in the wilderness we escape streets and signs. We venture beyond familiar places where everything has been named, made human, possessed, where all paths are known, mapped, set in concrete or ink.. A wilderness is roadless, both by agreement and by law. Surely this should also mean trailless, signless, mapless, nameless: no trace of human writing on the land, nothing to say that we have inscribed this place as ours. An absence that signals the purity of the land, an absence at the center of our desire. Maybe we should go to the wilderness to get lost, to lose the familiar way of cities and towns, to let loose of our everyday sense of our place, and find another way of being in the world. Lost, amazed, I might forget myself and find myself, a creature among other creatures, a reed in the wind, fed by sunlight, dead plants and animals, minerals from the mountains crumbling at my feet." --SueEllen Campbell, from Bringing the Mountain Home A deeply loved landscape holds us fast to the planet, says SueEllen Campbell in this engaging exploration of our relationships with wild places. What lies at the core of such love? What draws us to a windblown mountaintop, the slickrock desert, the crash and roar of a whitewater river? What desires shape our wilderness journeys--backpacking, rafting, hiking--and what events, emotions, and ideas shape the stories we tell about them? Campbell explores these questions through personal narratives that float between memoir and meditation, nature essay and adventure story. She travels to a remote spot in Kenya, where thousands of flamingos "encircle the geysers and carpet the glassy lake. In therain forests of Dominica, she marvels at parrots as bits of green forest tipped with scarlet and given wing. But always she returns to the intimate landscapes of her home in the Rocky Mountain and desert West. There, a trudge into the Grand Canyon becomes a pilgrimage into the earth’s immensity. Layers of personal grubbiness offer an introduction to geology, and a comical obsession with equipment hints at how to live in the moment. A climb up a familiar mountain turns into a brush with death. By turns celebratory, funny, lyrical, and down-to-earth, Campbell’s is an exuberant new voice that will appeal to many readers. Lovers of the outdoors, armchair travelers, and students of nature writing will find in this book a field guide to the emotions and ideas set loose in us by wild places.

About the Author, SueEllen Campbell

SueEllen Campbell teaches at Colorado State University and writes about American nature and wilderness narratives, and twentieth-century literature and theory. A fifth-generation Coloradan, she has traveled widely throughout the United States and

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Campbell, an English teacher at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, sets the gentle tone and pace of this paean to wilderness when she makes clear that "in wild places I'm just about the slowest traveler I know." Everything that lures her outdoors disappears when she has to rush. In the fullest sense of this spirit-building book, she's a natural. "Reading, walking, dreaming, on a trail, on unmarked ground, I follow the landwriting and find my way." Precise attention to detail sharpens her focus on the landscape, be it Boundary Waters of Minnesota and Canada, the Grand Canyon or her beloved Rockies. Wildflowers remind her of the link between beauty and transience. She suffers the metropolitanism of backcountry camping with brie and freeze-dried chocolate fondue and wants none of the urbane, eco-gourmet business. Going into the wild intensifies the ultimate relief of trudging on as she gathers wild lupine seed to take home. A woman who knows what she wants, she seeks not only roadless wilderness but also signless, trailless, mapless, nameless sites"an absence that signals the purity of the land." Often afraid in cities and almost never in wild places, Campbell shows readers where her serenity lies. That she offers reassurance to readers that they, too, can go fearless into the wild is a major charm of this endearing guidebook into the delights of nature. (Oct.)

Library Journal

Campbell has spent years hiking the Colorado Rockies and other wilderness areas during her extensive travels, which are reflected in this work of journal-like excerpts. Each short chapter explores a different concept such as grandeur, fear, paying attention to detail, and abundance while displaying a passion for the land akin to that of Terry Tempest Williams and a bent toward the philosophical reminiscent of Annie Dillard. As a skillful nature writer must, Campbell evokes all the senses. Long, descriptive passages bring to life the gamut of outdoor experiences for backpackers and nonbackpackers alike. Both will be equally amused by her account of a week in Chaco Canyon, where the "equipment almost devoured [the] trip," and her creative comparison of body grit to geological processes. Fast and entertaining reading; recommended for public libraries and general collections.Maureen Delaney-Lehman, Lake Superior State Univ. Lib., Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.