Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

I really should read my own blog.

Come on, man.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Consistently wrong since 2002

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

After roe, women are no longer free.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

I was promised a recession.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Joe Lieberman disappointingly reemerged to remind us that he’s still alive.

A consequence of cucumbers

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Thanks for reminding me that Van Jones needs to be slapped.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

You are here: Home / Medium Cool / Medium Cool with BGinCHI – The World Around Us

Medium Cool with BGinCHI – The World Around Us

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In case you’re new to Medium Cool, BGinCHI is here once a week to offer a thread on culture, mainly film & books, with some TV thrown in.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools unsuffered.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the world of shit falling on our heads daily in the political sphere.

Tonight’s Topic:  The World Around Us

Medium Cool with BGinCHI – The Environment

In this week’s Medium Cool, let’s talk about the environment.

As a city dweller, I find myself often craving the outdoors. And as a Midwesterner, I love the desert, the mountains, and the ocean. Yes, human beings are wrecking the planet. And yes, if we don’t do something about it, the planet is going to get even warmer and less hospitable for life.

What cultural works remind you, or teach you, how valuable and precarious nature is? I don’t necessarily mean documentaries, or Al Gore TED talks, as much as a film or a novel, maybe a painting or photography, that reattaches you to the landscape as a living, precious, vulnerable place.

Reader Interactions

229Comments

  1. 1.

    raven

    Majorie Kinnan Rawlings from Cross Creek

     

    I had become a part of Cross Creek. I was more than a writer. I was a wife, a friend, a part of the earth. Who owns Cross Creek? The earth may be borrowed, not bought, may be used, not owned. It gives itself in response to love and tenderness, offers its seasonal flowering and fruiting. Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time.

  2. 2.

    Kent

    One of the odd cultural phenomena of 21st Century America is that we seem to have two simultaneous and contradictory threads going on right now with respect to the environment.

    There is a lot of writing and commentary about how in our 21st Century digital world, children and young people are become increasingly disengaged from the outdoor environment.  Things like backpacking and skiing  and other outdoor stuff seems to be declining in popularity by some measures.  And there is a whole literature of commentary about how kids don’t spend enough time outdoors anymore in our high tech society.

    At the same time, our wilderness areas and trails seem more crowded than ever. Here in the Pacific Northwest they are contemplating creating limited access use permits for some of the more popular national forest areas due to overcrowding.  And most of the popular hiking trails within an hour or so of my house are over-crowded with bumper-to-bumper crowds every nice weekend.  Parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone are massively congested.

    It can’t be both.

  6. 6.

    geg6

    Never been a Property Brothers fan but I may have to become one.  One of the twins, Jonathan, has made a documentary about solar power and what and who has held back the industry.  It’s getting great reviews and has won some awards, so I’m going to check it out.
    https://youtu.be/MgRa5spkfXw

  7. 7.

    geg6

    As far as a non-documentary that just makes me fall in love with nature in its most glorious, it would have to be Lawrence of Arabia.

  9. 9.

    BGinCHI

    @geg6: We got solar last year.

    Feels good to have pretty much no electricity bill.

    I can’t believe the SW doesn’t have total solar.

  12. 12.

    JanieM

    My short answer: Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer, in which the landscape is, in effect, one of the major characters or presences in the story. The book changed my relationship to the novel, which is without any competition my favorite kind of art. It made me ask different questions of every novel I’ve read since it came out.

  13. 13.

    BGinCHI

    @JanieM: I don’t know her novels as well as I know Louise Erdrich, whose landscapes come alive in their relation to her characters. Especially true in Tracks and the early novels.

  15. 15.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Kent: if I had to guess I’d say the former is your standard handwringing about The Kids These Days, and that’s why it’s not reflective of reality… also, outdoor activities are just way more popular this year everywhere.

    For the blockbuster locations, the relatively recent elevation of millions of Chinese families to middle class world traveler status is also contributing to crowding around the world.

  19. 19.

    BGinCHI

    @John Revolta: 16 panels, 100% offset, 5.28 KW system. We have net metering with ComEd, which means we can roll over the low months into the high months, which helps. Our bill is just a connection fee.

    It’s not 1.21 Jigawatts, but we aren’t trying to go back in time.

  20. 20.

    opiejeanne

    Ansel Adams – photos of Grand Teton.

    What is the painting at the top? It looks very familiar.

  21. 21.

    BGinCHI

    There’s a good little documentary on Nat’l Geo right now called “Lost on Everest.” Search for Mallory and Irvine’s bodies, and the camera they were using.

    Fascinating stuff, and humbling look at the mountain’s formidable power.

  22. 22.

    Wag

    I’m not a fly fisherman, but the final page of A River Runs Through It is some of the most glorious prose ever put to paper

    “Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand in my youth are dead. But I still reach out to them. Of course, now I’m too old to be much of a fisherman. And now I usually fish the big waters alone, even though some friends think I shouldn’t. But when I am alone in the half-light of the canyon, all existence seems to fade to a being of my soul and memories, and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm, and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood, and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
    I am haunted by waters.”

  23. 23.

    WaterGirl

    I swear I could feel summer in the midwest, watching Field of Dreams.  I could feel the hot sun in the daytime and the breeze in the evenings on the baseball field.  I could the ears of corn in the field, the feel of White Sox games in the summer.

    BG and I are about to have our first spat if he mocks me for Field of Dreams.

  27. 27.

    prostratedragon

    @geg6:  My first thought, for narratives. It made the desert seem like too precious a place to try to dominate. Second thought is Twin Peaks, especially the original series, for mountain forests. Interestingly, the forest in the new series seems healthier than in the original –a sign of hope?

    Then there is the world of landscape painting and photography, too rich for me to single out anything at the moment. Also, as someone who likes food and drink it has reached my attention (ahem) that many of the foods we enjoy are very sensitive to land and climatic conditions. Consider a world where much of present-day coffee country is no longer suitable for the varieties used in better coffees.

  28. 28.

    Mary G

    The Sea of Cortez is the most sacred place on the planet for me. I know JR from VW went on a whale cruise there in a small boat; I’ve been with friends and teachers several times and it was always magic.

    The Log from the Sea of Cortez is an English-language book written by American author John Steinbeck and published in 1951. It details a six-week (March 11 – April 20) marine specimen-collecting boat expedition he made in 1940 at various sites in the Gulf of California (also known as the Sea of Cortez), with his friend, the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, who was the inspiration for the Doc character in Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row.”

    I wanted to be a marine biologist when I was younger, and Ed Ricketts wrote the definitive book of that time, Between Pacific Tides, on the tidal pools of California. I was also a huge fan of Steinbeck. To find out that they had gone together on a collecting expedition was a thrill.

    It’s not only the subject matter. the writing is something, here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia:

    The battles with their outboard motor, referred to pseudonymously as the “Hansen Sea-Cow”, which would feature as a humorous thread throughout the journal, began immediately and continued the next day when they moved further round the coast to El Pulmo Reef:

    Our Hansen Sea-Cow was not only a living thing but a mean, irritable, contemptible, vengeful, mischievous, hateful living thing…. [it] loved to ride on the back of a boat, trailing its propeller daintily in the water while we rowed… when attacked with a screwdriver [it] fell apart in simulated death… It loved no one, trusted no one, it had no friends.

    There is a lot of environmental philosophy in it, even though it was written about a trip in 1940. They are horrified by a Japanese fleet dredging up the bottom with huge trawling nets, and Steinbeck correctly predicts what Cabo San Lucas would become:

    Probably the airplanes will bring week-enders from Los Angeles before long, and the beautiful poor bedraggled old town will bloom with a Floridian ugliness.

    I found a copy of the original edition, with lists of species collected, in a thrift shop in 1969. Many of the species are no longer there, but it reminds me of what the world was not that long ago and of the hope that it might be OK again.

    Wiki again:

    The timing of the release of the book did nothing to help sales. It was published in the first week of December: the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the subsequent entry of the United States into World War II focused the attention of the American people elsewhere.

  29. 29.

    debbie

    @SFBayAreaGal: 
    He is a real hero of mine. I keep buying the Ansel Adams wall calendars year after year, even though the photos are repeats. They’re just that beautiful.

    Film-wise, I think the aerial shots in Out of Africa (when Dennis takes Issak up in his plane for the first time) took my breath away.

  30. 30.

    Craig

    John Chiara is a SF photographer that uses giant handbuilt cameras built on trailers, and shoots reversal film  60″x48″ images. Beautiful ghosty landscapes that just take you right to nature. Full disclosure he’s a friend of mine, sometimes I’ll take the day and go along as an assistant to some gorgeous place.

  31. 31.

    Phylllis

    Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray. I grew up amidst pine forests, but really had no appreciation of them until I read this

    ETA The Gulf by Jack Davis. The natural Florida I grew up in has been long gone; Davis’ book had me longing for one I never knew.

  32. 32.

    opiejeanne

    @BGinCHI: I am so annoyed that Sarandon has spoiled for me one of the most quotable baseball movies of all time.

    I loved the writing, the characters, and I loved Costner in it. I loved Sarandon in it until she went full Bernie in a destructive way.

  36. 36.

    debbie

    @BGinCHI:

    Speaking of, Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest by Wade Davis (of the National Geographic) is one of my favorite books. Aside from all the descriptions of the mountain, the elements, the climbers’ WWI experiences (horrifying), Davis details the part of the original expedition that focused on identifying the area’s flora and fauna.

    (I hope what you’re watching doesn’t show them ripping Mallory’s frozen corpse away from the earth.)

  37. 37.

    SFBayAreaGal

    @Craig: Yes, this is a great time of year. I’ve been to Yosemite in all of her seasons. I never get tired of seeing her.

  38. 38.

    JanieM

    @BGinCHI: Yes, I love Erdrich too. Or at least, I love about half of her novels, especially Tracks. The other half I have a harder time getting into.

    @Wag: The first line is memorable too, if in a different way:

    In my family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.

    I could see using “I am haunted by waters” as an epitaph.

  40. 40.

    Keithly

    Aldo Leopold’s ‘A Sand County Almanac’ has been recommended to me many times.  It’s on my to read list.  I’m swiping from the Wiki page here:

    The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land. This sounds simple: do we not already sing our love for and obligation to the land of the free and the home of the brave? Yes, but just what and whom do we love? Certainly not the soil, which we are sending helter-skelter down river. Certainly not the waters, which we assume have no function except to turn turbines, float barges, and carry off sewage. Certainly not the plants, of which we exterminate whole communities without batting an eye. Certainly not the animals, of which we have already extirpated many of the largest and most beautiful species. A land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these ‘resources,’ but it does affirm their right to continued existence, and, at least in spots, their continued existence in a natural state. In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.

  43. 43.

    NotMax

    Brings to mind a snatch of film dialogue. The scene: 18th century, new arrival to a settlement in Peru.

    Townsperson: “So what do you think of the new world?”

    Arrival, slowly looking around at the settlement and looming jungle beyond: “It’ll be nice when it’s finished.”

    ;)

    A few films which spring to mind in which scenery left an impression –

    Fitzcarraldo
    The Gods Must Be Crazy
    This Is Cinerama
    Arctic (2018)
    Last Cab to Darwin

  45. 45.

    grandmaBear

    OT but I wanted to thank whoever recommended the Calleshire Chronicles – British police procedurals that are short, light, often witty with none of the angst or darkness that seems to be too common in mysteries recently and which I couldn’t handle right now. I went through nine of them while waiting for the election and for the few days afterward before a network decision.  I also want to thank whoever recommended The Swerve, about the rediscovery of Lucretius, that I’m reading now. Interesting and well-written. Of course it set me on a frenzied search the other day for my copy of Lucretius, which has apparently disappeared. Had to buy a new one, because although I’d had it for ages, had never gotten around to reading it. Now I have to read that too.

  46. 46.

    opiejeanne

    @debbie: Oh yes, “Out of Africa” showed the environment brilliantly. Possibly my favorite movie, or at least tied with “Tremors”.

    And “Tremors” is not just about the “graboids”, but the terrain in the valley. It was shot not far from Lone Pine, CA. in Darwin, CA. I like “Tremors” not just because of Kevin Bacon but also because, except for one scene, it’s a horror* movie shot entirely in daylight.

    *As horror goes it’s pretty mild compared to “Alien”, so it’s about my speed.

  47. 47.

    frosty

    @BGinCHI:  According to a friend who was working on a solar startup in the southwest, the AZ utilities commission (don’t know the exact name) is bought and paid for by the coal / fossil fuel industry.

    They set up the electricity rates so that all your savings had to be paid to the utilities anyway. Or so I understand it. Hence, no incentive for solar.

    Suzanne might have a more expert take on it.

  49. 49.

    Eric S.

    tI read the first few comments and I was like “Oh yeah, that,” but The first thing that came to my mind is Bob Ross’ happy little trees

    ETA: More recently The Overstory: A Novel made me totally see trees in a different light. My grandmother could identify types of trees on sight. Besides giving me new insight on trees it also gave me many happy memories of her.

  51. 51.

    Yutsano

    Brokeback Mountain. Ang Lee treats the scenery almost like it’s a part of the cast. Which since it was filmed in Alberta probably is.

  52. 52.

    Elizabelle

    @Wag:   “I am haunted by waters.”

    That line has always stayed with me.  Norman Maclean.  Never read his book on firefighting, Young Men and Fire, but that would seem to be highly pertinent these days.

  53. 53.

    Dan B

    My wilderness fragility is the South Cascade Glacier.  I did a solo hike there in the 70’s- horrible Slide Alder and Vine Maple thickets on the rough uncleared trail.  It ended at a Rocky ridge over the mikes long glacier.  The light was magical.  Far out on the ice was a glacier research team in their glacier traversing vehicle.  I took photos but never located the vehicle.  It was too far away.  The glacier was fairly flat and extended a mile beyond the ridge at a turquoise green glacial lake.  Last year I looked it up on Google earth and it had receded past the ridge so a two mile retreat.  Left behind are miles of drab glacial rubble in what was a magical realm of sparkling ice.

    It’s not just melting ice and monster storms it’s places of beauty and spiritual inspiration that are vanishing.

  54. 54.

    JanieM

    @Eric S.:

    I read the first few comments and I was like “Oh yeah, that,”

    Me too. I’m glad I got my mention of Kingsolver off my chest early, or I would have been agonizing over a long list.

    ETA to Eric’s ETA: I read half of Overstory and then had to go traveling and didn’t want to lug it along. Then, when I came home, it seemed like it was heading in a direction that was too depressing for me at that moment. I should get back to it at some point. But that also brings to mind Aminatta Forna’s Happiness, a novel set in London where one of the characters is studying urban foxes. Another angle on the topic at hand, and an echo of Deanna studying coyotes in Prodigal Summer.

  57. 57.

    RSA

    @Wag: Thanks for that. I’ve never read the novel, but I’ll make a point of picking it up now

    ETA: And I discover it’s a novella, which means I have no excuse. :-)

  58. 58.

    raven

    A Naturalist Goes Fishing: Casting in Fragile Waters from the Gulf of Mexico to New Zealand’s South Island

    In the tradition of fishing classics, A Naturalist Goes Fishing combines elements of the triumph between fisher and fish, humor and wit, and a passionate concern for the natural environment.

    James McClintock takes us to some of the most breathtaking waters the world has to offer while capturing the drama and serendipity in the beloved sport of fishing. We follow him and his fishing buddies and professional guides, as he fishes off the marshy barrier islands of Louisiana, teeming with life but also ravaged by recent disasters like the Deepwater Horizon spill. We travel to the remote waters of New Zealand’s Stewart Island, where the commercial fishing industry is fast disappearing; fish for gigantic Antarctic toothfish through a drilled ice hole at McMurdo Station; and scout for spotted bass on Alabama’s Cahaba River, which has the highest diversity of fresh water fish in North America. As we take this global journey, we see how sea level rise, erosion, pollution, water acidification, and overfishing each cause damage.

    This strikingly beautiful narrative is a must read for anglers and nature lovers alike.

  60. 60.

    BGinCHI

    @Delk: I can’t understand why condos don’t do it.

    It would be so much cheaper to split costs, unless there’s something I’m missing…..

  62. 62.

    Benw

    Just a few off the top of my head:

    The Impressionists, particularly Van Gogh’s landscapes.

    Winslow Homer’s American landscapes.

    New Zealand in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

  65. 65.

    Benw

    Since we got a food thread, a fundraising thread and Medium Cool, I’ll just stick this here:

    OT but T-25 minutes or so for the first SpaceX full Crew Dragon launch!!

  66. 66.

    NotMax

    In the Netflix queue but not yet viewed is The 12th Man, in which the scenery is supposed to be spectacular.

  67. 67.

    raven

    The Log from the Sea of Cortez
    John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts

    This book won’t be for everyone. The reader must be patient with the author, who mixes science and travel story and philosophy at his own pace. The travelogue portions are a time capsule of often wry observations of Baja California as it was at the time. Chapter 14 contains Steinbeck’s and likely Ricketts’ thoughts on a universe that is, rather than ought to be. An extended appendix contains Steinbeck’s moving requiem for his longtime friend, who inspired several characters in Steinbeck’s novels over the years. Recommended to Steinbeck’s fans, who may find his non-fiction not so far removed from his fiction.

  69. 69.

    BGinCHI

    @frosty: Yeah, many states have made it really hard to get solar for anyone not wealthy.

    Which really sucks, for so many obvious reasons.

    As AZ turns bluer, maybe that will change…..

  71. 71.

    Craig

    BBC Natural History Unit. So much beautifulness. So many talented patient geniuses. And the ringmaster David Attenborough.

  72. 72.

    Dan B

    My movie inspirations are several but 8n addition to Brokeback Mountain is Days of Heaven, and McCabe and Mrs. Miller.  The landscape and weather echo the storylines.

    I saw McCabe in Louisville after 9 months in Tacoma.  There is no sunshine and I felt very homesick for overcast and drizzle.  Plus I missed the awesome view of Mt. Rainier.

  75. 75.

    Louise B.

    @Wag: It really is glorious – thank you for the excerpt.

    The James Agee poem, Description of Elysium.  Portions of it have been set to music by Samuel Barber and Morton Lauridsen.

  78. 78.

    Benw

    @Kent: I’m watching Discovery Channel, at T-15. Are we really 5 minutes behind?

    ETA: just checked your link (thanks!) and youtube is ~9 sec behind DSC

  79. 79.

    raven

    @Wag:
    James Keelaghan “Cold Missouri Waters”
     
    My name is Dodge but then you know that
    It’s written on the chart there at the foot end of the of the bed
    They think I’m blind that I can’t read it
    I’ve read it every word and every word it says is death
    So confession Is that the reason that you came
    Get it off my chest before I check out of the game
    Since you mention it well there’s thirteen things I’ll name
    Thirteen crosses high above the cold Missouri waters
    August 49 North Montana
    The hottest day on record the forest tinder dry
    Lightning strikes in the mountains
    I was crew chief at the jump base
    I prepared the boys to fly
    Pick the drop zone C47 comes in low
    Feel the tap upon your leg that tells you go
    See the circle of the fire down below
    Fifteen of us dropped above the cold Missouri waters
    Gauged the fire I’d seen bigger
    So I ordered them to side hill we’d fight it from below
    We’d have our backs to the river
    We’d have it licked by morning even if we took it slow
    But the fire crowned jumped the valley just ahead
    There was no way down headed for the ridge instead
    Too big to fight it we’d have to fight that slope instead
    Flames one step behind above the cold Missouri waters
    Sky had turned red smoke was boiling
    Two hundred yards to saftey
    Death was fifty yards behind
    I don’t know why I just thought it
    I struck a match to waist high grass running out of time
    Tried to tell them step into this fire I’ve set
    We can’t make it this is the only chance you’ll get
    But they cursed me
    Ran for the rocks above instead
    I lay face down and prayed above the cold Missouri waters
    Then when I rose like the phoenix
    In that world reduced to ashes
    There was none but two survived
    I stayed that night and one day after
    Carried bodies to the river
    Wondering how I stayed alive
    Thirteen stations of the cross to mark their fall
    I’ve had my say I’ll confess to nothing more
    I’ll join them now those that they left me long before
    Thirteen crosses high above the cold Missouri waters

  82. 82.

    JanieM

    @BGinCHI: I don’t follow the politics of the prizes. Why do you think she doesn’t get mentioned?

    When I first read your question, my brain slid past “Nobel” to “Booker” and my answer was going to be, she’s not edgy enough by a long shot. I don’t make any attempt to read Booker winners systematically, but of the few I’ve tried, some I haven’t finished (e.g., Narrow Road to the Deep North), others I liked and finished but still found very difficult (Enright, I forget which book; Milkman). Maybe I’m just getting old and lazy, but the times we’re living through are bad enough without reading stories that are unrelievedly dark.

  84. 84.

    Goku (Amerikan Baka)

    I recently came across Japanese ukiyo-e art and absolutely love Hokusai’s wooblock print, The Great Wave Off Kanagawa.

    Landscape and nature photography is also something I enjoy doing and appreciating as art. I’ve always liked Bliss, otherwise known as the Windows XP default screensaver/background

    I was surprised to learn it was never digitally manipulated. It’s a genuine photo of a real life place in California: a beautiful verdant green rolling hill. It doesn’t look like that anymore, but if you go that location today, the contour of the hill is the same

  86. 86.

    BGinCHI

    @JanieM: I hear you. I think she’s one of those writers who makes it look easy (it’s not), and so doesn’t get respect.

    That anyone would fawn over Franzen, and not Erdrich, is a crime against humanity.

    Also, I like Marilynne Robinson well enough, but Erdrich is much better.

    All big prizes are politics, but I still don’t get how she’s not more of a national treasure.

  88. 88.

    Yarrow

    Terry Tempest Williams for Utah landscape, particularly Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place.

    Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire for landscape around Arches National Monument.

    Pretty much anything by Wendell Berry.

    James Rebanks’ The Shepherd’s Life for life on a farm in England’s Lake District.

  89. 89.

    RSA

    One book that affected me this way was John Nichols’s novel, The Milagro Beanfield War. My wife and I had just moved from Maryland to Texas, in the mid-1980s, and we made friends with a couple who had come from the opposite direction, New Mexico. This recommendation was one of their gifts to us, along with other observations about the desert, for example that there are subtle differences in red and brown terrain that can make a landscape beautiful—something new to us, having mainly appreciated natural beauty in terms of forests and green mountains. Anyway, Milagro isn’t quite about nature, but if I’m remembering correctly it brings across some of the beauty of the Southwest and certainly human interactions in that context.

  90. 90.

    Spanish Moss

    I have to agree with others that the flight scene in “Out of Africa” is amazing (and so is John Barry’s music), I have watched it over and over again. And I second Yutsano’s characterization of the scenery in “Brokeback Mountain”.

    From a book perspective, there are a couple where I felt the natural world was a character: the North Carolina coastal marshes in “Where the Crawdads Sing”, and the Native American lands on an island off of Massachusetts in “Caleb’s Crossing”.

  91. 91.

    debbie

    The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World by Carl Safina. The author visits a number of endangered sites in the world and his descriptions of the places gave me a real sense of being there with him.

    (from goodreads.com)

    Beginning in his kayak in his home waters of eastern Long Island, Carl Safina’s “The View from Lazy Point” takes us through the four seasons to the four points of the compass, from the high Arctic south to Antarctica, across the warm belly of the tropics from the Caribbean to the west Pacific, then home again. We meet Eskimos whose way of life is melting away, explore a secret global seed vault hidden above the Arctic Circle, investigate dilemmas facing foraging bears and breeding penguins, and sail to formerly devastated reefs that are resurrecting as fish graze the corals algae-free.

    “Each time science tightens a coil in the slack of our understanding,” Safina writes, “it elaborates its fundamental discovery: connection.”

    He shows how problems of the environment drive very real matters of human justice, well-being, and our prospects for peace.

    In Safina’s hands, nature’s continuous renewal points toward our future. His lively stories grant new insights into how our world is changing, and what our response ought to be.

  92. 92.

    dexwood

    @RSA:  Nice. I think, though, place is a character in the book. It shapes the people who have lived in northern New Mexico for generations and it smacks a newcomer between the eyes, adjusting one’s place in the world.

    Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy is similar for me. Identity formed in a barren environment.

  93. 93.

    Steeplejack

    @Phylllis:

    Ecology of a Cracker Childhood is a great book! I read it when it first came out. I should get it on Kindle so I have it on hand.

    I will check out The Gulf.

  94. 94.

    Brachiator

    What cultural works remind you, or teach you, how valuable and precarious nature is?

    I think that nature is valuable, but not precarious. We might destroy ourselves through our stupidity and lack of attention to climate change, but the world itself will go on.

    But I like the question because it reminded me that the films and other works that mean the most to me are about people, and what we do to and for one another.

    But I suppose that a movie which paints a vivid picture of a future world of pollution and squalor is Bladerunner.

     

    ETA: I wonder if the meteor that some conjecture may collide with the Earth in 2068 poses a real threat and what me may need to do about it.

  99. 99.

    Goku (Amerikan Baka)

    @Brachiator:

    But I suppose that a movie which paints a vivid picture of a future world of pollution and squalor is Bladerunner.

    Ah yes. Back when everybody thought Japan was going to take over the world economically, taking America’s place.

    Although, I don’t believe that was commonly thought was going to happen when PK Dick wrote the book, though I never read Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep. I think he did have a fascination with Eastern culture?

  100. 100.

    Tehanu

    Views from the International Space Station of the clouds and storms in the Earth’s atmosphere. My co-worker’s cousin just took off 6 minutes ago from Cape Canaveral in the SpaceX Dragon to rendezvous with the ISS tomorrow — I’m watching it on NASA Live — it is so thrilling and I’m very excited. This is what humans can do at our best, not our worst.

  101. 101.

    kmeyerthelurker

    The final paragraph of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road still haunts me to this day.

    “Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”

  102. 102.

    Yarrow

    @BGinCHI:  Abbey is very difficult for me to read. He’s such an asshole. I only like his descriptions of the land. I’ve actually thrown a book of his across the room I hated what he wrote so much.

  105. 105.

    Dan B

    @BGinCHI: I looked up the making of McCabe.  Interesting story.  Also Beatty’s reluctance to film in the snow seems to show up in the film.  It was a massive pain to get around in it.

  107. 107.

    Goku (Amerikan Baka)

    @Brachiator:

    It’s more likely to hit in later centuries. It’s dangerous enough to destroy a city, much like an analogue to a nuclear explosion. If it exploded over the ocean, it would cause tsunamis that could destroy coastlines thousands of miles away.

    Basically, from what I remember watching of Scott Manley’s video, it would need to pass through a 50 meter wide keyhole to set it on a future collision course with Earth. Something of a 1/2000 chance, I think? Watch the video. The space probe that recently landed on it actually affected it’s orbit slightly. By landing and taking off from it, we already changed it’s course without even really trying

  110. 110.

    RSA

    @dexwood:

    Nice. I think, though, place is a character in the book. It shapes the people who have lived in northern New Mexico for generations and it smacks a newcomer between the eyes, adjusting one’s place in the world.

    Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy is similar for me. Identity formed in a barren environment.

    That’s a great way of putting it. Thanks for the McCarthy recommendation. My first encounter was Blood Meridian, which was too much for me, but I should give him another try.

  111. 111.

    JanieM

    @BGinCHI: Yeah, I’m with you on all of that. I’m not sure I’ve ever finished a Franzen book. The older I get, the more I give myself permission to say: Life is short. Pick something else.

  112. 112.

    dexwood

    @RSA: Blood Meridian is one of the few books in my long life I stopped reading. Tossed it on the floor without feeling guilty.

  117. 117.

    Steeplejack

    It’s hard to pick individual scenes, but Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/​Maturin novels are shot through with observations on and evocations of nature. Maturin is of course a “naturalist” and always wants to do some “botanizing” wherever they touch land.

  118. 118.

    Brachiator

    @Goku (Amerikan Baka):

    Ah yes. Back when everybody thought Japan was going to take over the world economically, taking America’s place.

    I love Bladerunner and have seen various versions numerous times, and while I enjoy the Asian inspired elements of the production design, I never connected it with any paranoia about Japan taking America’s place in the world economy.

    Although, I don’t believe that was commonly thought was going to happen when PK Dick wrote the book, though I never read Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep. I think he did have a fascination with Eastern culture?

    Oddly enough, I have never read any of the PK Dick novels and stories. I enjoy how the work is adapted. But I am strange that way. I love Westerns as movies, don’t give a rat’s ass about any Western novels.

    I like a lot of SF in various genres.

  119. 119.

    BGinCHI

    @Dan B: That they had the town built that way and not as a normal set blows my mind. No one else did shit like that besides Altman.

    Similarly, with MASH, none of the actors know what the movie was doing in terms of plot, and were convinced Altman was batshit crazy. They went to the studio to get him fired.

  121. 121.

    Craig

    @dexwood: I loved it. Read it 3, or 4 times. It helped to read it out loud, but I’d get some weird looks from people walking past my porch.

  122. 122.

    Yarrow

    @BGinCHI:  Lol. Sorry. Strong feelings about Abbey. Really great writer. Total asshole. Cannot really tolerate some of his content but completely appreciate his skill and ability to evoke a sense of place.

  124. 124.

    Salty Sam

    “Farewell To A River”, by John Graves.    One of the most beautiful books I’ve ever experienced.

  125. 125.

    SFBayAreaGal

    Tony Hillerman. His Navajo mystery series with  Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee brought to life the lands of New Mexico and Arizona as well as the customs of the Navajo, Hopi, and Zuni nations.

  127. 127.

    geg6

    @John Revolta:

    I live in the Pittsburgh area and so do my sister and BIL.  It vies with Seattle for city with the fewest sunny days every year. My sister has installed solar in her previous home and her current one.  Cut her bills down to almost nothing.  We have several neighbors with solar, my sister convinced several of her previous neighbors to get it and now that they got it in their current house, neighbors have stopped and knocked on the door to find out about it.  People want this and it doesn’t have to be in Southern California or Arizona for it to work.

  128. 128.

    Steeplejack

    @BGinCHI:

    Perhaps apocryphal story: Ring Lardner Jr. supposedly was pissed at Altman because Altman had the actors talking over one another and ruining Lardner’s wonderful dialogue.

    Altman later: “So you won’t be returning the screenplay Oscar, then?”

  129. 129.

    Quintillian

    I saw a new-to-me view of nature after reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (LINK). Really respect and appreciate  her work and writing a lot

  131. 131.

    Brachiator

    @BGinCHI:

    That they had the town built that way and not as a normal set blows my mind. No one else did shit like that besides Altman.

    I love McCabe and Mrs Miller. I think that this film, and MASH and Three Women, among other Altman masterworks are parables about community.

    In McCabe, in particular, a serpent, the industrialists, inevitably comes into Paradise and threatens to transform it as it disrupts the lives of the people there. I love the restrained performances that Altman got from Beatty and Julie Christie.

    Days of Heaven, of course, riffs on the myth of Abraham and Sarah in Egypt.

    I often recommend Jeremiah Johnson and Gravity as a double feature. Once Jeremiah heads into the mountains, I don’t think he ever is shown in civilization again. Gravity almost exclusively takes place in space and moves further into that hostile environment. It was a very smart and creative decision not to show scenes of the folks back home in Gravity.

  133. 133.

    frosty

    I don’t think this “reattaches me to the landscape” but I’m going to suggest Louis L’Amour. In his bio he said that he’d ridden all over the west and “…if I write about a spring then that spring is there and the water is good to drink.”

    The landscape is one of the characters in his novels. For me, particularly, it was the desert in Mojave Crossing and the Mogollon Rim in Sackett’s Brand.

  134. 134.

    Delk

    I was fortunate and grateful that during my four years at art school I went to the Art Institute at least once a week. The four London paintings by Monet are stunning. The past fog could easily be the future’s smog.

  135. 135.

    Brachiator

    @Steeplejack:

    @BGinCHI:

    Perhaps apocryphal story: Ring Lardner Jr. supposedly was pissed at Altman because Altman had the actors talking over one another and ruining Lardner’s wonderful dialogue.

    There is a great YouTube video of Jack Krugman talking about some TV project he did that was written by Rod Serling. He notes that he and his co-star played the scene laughing about what was happening (maybe an actor and friend reading and reacting to marvelous theater reviews). But they laughed over the written dialog and worried that Serling, who cared as much about the written dialog being said exactly as written as a Sorkin, might hate their interpretation.

    But when Serling saw what they were doing, he was delighted. They got to the heart of the drama, which was more than just the words on the page.

    ETA: the talking over each other dialog in MASH is just as wonderful as the similar handling of scenes in His Girl Friday.

  136. 136.

    Goku (Amerikan Baka)

    @Brachiator:

    Yeah, it’s actually one of the biggest examples of the “Japan Takes Over the World” trope. From TV Tropes:

    • Japan Takes Over the World: Remembered as one of the classic examples, even though the “Asian” culture in the movie wasn’t strictly just Japanese. The building-size geisha advertisement, however, is a classic example of the trope and was more or less the image of how people in The ’80s expected things to go down.

    As that passage notes, the Asian culture wasn’t strictly Japanese, but I assumed it was. Interestingly, I also think you can see a vision of the future that many people had prior to the late-90s that the future of America was going to be one of urban crime, decline, and drugs.

    I remember seeing this trope in Back to the Future Part II, where in 2015 Marty works for a Japanese company with a Japanese boss, which he gets fired from. Marty even wears an “asian” inspired double necktie, which vaguely looks like the Japanese Rising Sun flag

    I’ve only read Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, which I own a copy of. It was sort of confusing to read the way it was written, but a good read overall

  137. 137.

    eponymous

    I’ll put in a recommendation for a musical work, Ralph Vaughn Williams Sea Symphony. It is a choral setting in 6 movements of Walt Whitman poems, and is intensely evocative of the ocean in all its moods. I had no idea of this symphony’s existence, and when we sang it some years ago, it just blew me away.

  138. 138.

    Tehanu

    @Benw: I get emails from NASA whenever the ISS passes over us and is visible (dawn or dusk). Watching it makes me feel like a character in the Robert Heinlein juveniles I loved as a child. This particular launch — well, my co-worker has been telling us all week about his cousin and how proud the whole family is; I feel honored just to know someone involved, even at a couple of degrees of separation; watching it has been amazing and I’m actually kind of tearing up.

  139. 139.

    Steeplejack

    This thread is priming the memory pump.

    Novel: Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country is a great novel where the landscape of deep winter constantly looms in the background.

    Film: The Italian crime series Montalbano (available on the MHz channel on Amazon Prime) does an exceptional job of making Sicily an integral character in the stories.

  140. 140.

    JanieM

    @BGinCHI:

    @JanieM:

    You know, I have no idea who decides who’s a national treasure. I’m not being snarky, and certainly Erdrich is one of my treasures, with several of her books being on my permanent “reread every few years” list. Maybe she does make it look too easy. Also, I suppose it’s harder to be seen as a national treasure if you’re female and Native American, and I wonder if her marriage to Michael Dorris has also complicated some people’s assessment of her. Not that it should, but … it might.

    The thing about her that I think underlies why I like her so much doesn’t have to do with landscape, interestingly enough. It’s how much she seems to love the world and everyone in it. ..

    ETA: Or to put it a different way: she has plenty of reason to dwell on the dark side of things. And there’s plenty of darkness in her stories — Tracks being a perfect example. But the stories are about getting beyond the darkness… ??

  141. 141.

    Dan B

    @geg6:  Seattlites are not convinced Solar works here but there are enough to keep a dozen companies in business.  Our system has paid for itself in 9 years.  Until we dropped Cable we had a great readout of power production.  I’d check it daily.  It was great positive reinforcement and fun to show friends.

    The PV, plus electric car, and ductless heat pump (electric) hearing means we use a lot more electricity than we did but it’s great to use minimal fossil fuel – gas stove and dryer, $17 per month.

  142. 142.

    RSA

    @dexwood:

    Blood Meridian is one of the few books in my long life I stopped reading. Tossed it on the floor without feeling guilty.

    LOL. Ditto, except at that point in my life I did feel guilty about not finishing a serious book.

    Maybe BGinCHI might turn that into a topic—what well-regarded (by critics or in general) book/movie/etc. did you deliberately put aside, and why?

  143. 143.

    NotMax

    While everyone has his or her own reaction to it – each of equal value – the musical composition which most evokes the varied scapes and scope of nature is Beethoven’s Eroica.

  144. 144.

    Brachiator

    @Goku (Amerikan Baka):

    Yeah, it’s actually one of the biggest examples of the “Japan Takes Over the World” trope. From TV Tropes:

    I think that TV Tropes is singularly reductive and stupid. It tends to reduce art to a formula, and also misses the larger connections of metaphors and associations in various forms of literature, art, drama and film.

    As that passage notes, the Asian culture wasn’t strictly Japanese, but I assumed it was. Interestingly, I also think you can see a vision of the future that many people had prior to the late-90s that the future of America was going to be one of urban crime, decline, and drugs.

    Bladerunner presents a variety of globalist culture where the wealthy (who are not shown as being particularly Asian) are very much segregated from the lower classes. A majority may even live off world.

    The lower classes inhabit a mongrel society where the language and culture is a polyglot of Asian and other languages. But there is nothing that suggests that any particular nation is dominating anything that is a recognizable America.

    BTW, there were a subgenre of movies that reflected the idea that some foreign nation was going to dominate the US economy. This reflected paranoia in news stories and was always wrong.

    So, Japan Inc was going to take over. In the real world, Japanese companies got suckered into paying inflated prices for US real estate.

    Later, Arab countries were going to buy out America with petrodollars. Then oil prices collapsed.

    Now you have dopes worrying about China, as though God ordained that the US always be top dog.

  145. 145.

    Dan B

    @NotMax: Also Stravinsky’s Rites of Springband Copland’s Appalachian Spring.  They’re dramatically different interpretations of Spring.

  146. 146.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @JanieM: You’re right about The Overstory. The first half…carefully and beautifully drawn characters and narrative about connectedness, the second half, a plot drives the story and the characters and their acts seemed forced to me.

    The Biggest Little Farm is a great movie about nature’s connections. The movie Witness is beautiful in its nature cinematography.

  147. 147.

    cope

    I would like to add writers John McPhee and Peter Matthiessen to the discussion.

    Musically, how about “City of New Orleans” by Steve Goodman to invoke the feel of a means of travel now lost to us.

    Artistically, our favorite at capturing the desert and mountain views of the West is Ron Hoeksema, a bit of whose work you can see here.

    Edited to add that Hoeksema had to quit doing his signature serigraph prints and now works mostly in oil, I believe.

  150. 150.

    eponymous

    @NotMax: I love, adore and worship Beethoven, but I have not particularly felt that connection with the Eroica. Next time I listen to it, I will keep it in mind, though.

    On the other hand, when I listen to Beethoven’s 6th, I definitely hear the connection with nature. It seems to be inexplicably populated with pastel-colored boy and girl unicorns, however…

    :)

  151. 151.

    BGinCHI

    @Brachiator: Interesting to think of films with that thematic.

    Stalker maybe?

    That Redford movie where he’s solo on the sail boat.

    Not many films can pull it off.

  152. 152.

    J R in WV

    @Mary G:

    We did visit the Sea of Cortez, as well as the bays on the western side of the peninsula. But I am J R in WV, not J R in VW, although we have driven a number of VWs into the ground!

    I agree that the Sea of Cortez and the Baja is a truly amazing place, I don’t know if the Sea or the Land is more amazing. The ship we sailed on was under 90 passengers, so not a big liner. We put out in Zodiak boats to visit the whales, who put their noses into the lap of the Zodiak boat to look at us with eyes 6 inches across…

    Amazing!

  154. 154.

    BGinCHI

    @Steeplejack: One of the reasons I love the Marseilles Trilogy, by Jean-Claude Izzo.

    You will WANT to go to that city right after you start the first novel.

  155. 155.

    BGinCHI

    @JanieM: I think you’re exactly right. Even in the midst of tragedy, it’s the life she’s interested in.

    Another writer who’s like that, for me, is Ernest J. Gaines. So much tragedy, racism, poverty, but so much life, and kindness, and love.

  156. 156.

    Benw

    @Tehanu: every damn time humanity launches some of us into space is inspiring. What fun to have a personal touch with this launch! Congrats

  157. 157.

    BGinCHI

    @Dan B: Your heat is from one of those single units (by Panasonic or someone?)? The ones you see in Europe and Asia?

    We thought about that, but changing over the whole house was gonna cost a fortune, and might not have gotten the job done.

    We got a 98% efficient gas furnace, though, which is really excellent. And new attic insulation.

    9 years payoff pretty good! We’re hoping for 7-8.

  160. 160.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @J R in WV: I hope hope hope to revisit the Sea of Cortez.  Our base was La Paz and we went out snorkeling and diving most every day…Los Islotes, Seamount, etc.  Absolutely dizzying amount of life.  One might think the soft corals of the Caribbean are the most beautiful, but of all the underwater places I’ve been, and there have been a lot, the Sea of Cortez is most memorable.

  161. 161.

    trollhattan

    @Dan B:

    I’m assuming Trump’s bigass tariff on Chinese PV panels is still in place and presuming Biden ends it, panel prices will plunge (they’ve been going down even with the the tariffs).

    This will affect things positively. The other factor is in-home storage, which is benefiting from the surge in EV batteries.

    Things will look up surprisingly quickly.

  162. 162.

    J R in WV

    @frosty:

    They set up the electricity rates so that all your savings had to be paid to the utilities anyway. Or so I understand it. Hence, no incentive for solar.

    Suzanne might have a more expert take on it.

    When we built our tiny house on the tiny ranch we bought in the foothills of the southern end of the  Dragoon Mountains, we were a mile or more from the end of the power grid. It was going to cost on the order of $38,000 to run a line from the Co-Op’s grid up to our house site.

    The installation of the solar system and battery bank was around $28,000, but we also got a check from the Co-Op for not adding to their future power requirement —  $9,000. Then we got a tax credit. And there is no power bill ever, we’re not connected to their grid at all, never were.

    I will confess when I went out last February 2019, the battery bank was expired… the little Honda generator was handy, and started up as soon as we added some fuel and pushed the spark plug connector down onto the plug, which after not being fired up for 2 or 3 years was impressive!!!

    We used my travel headlight the first night, and my cousin’s phone lamp. Bruce brought a new set of batteries out just a couple of days after we called for help, he’s a great guy!

    Solar off the grid is great! Even in Arizona, where I’m sure the power companies are owners of even the sunlight!

  166. 166.

    frosty

    @RSA: Maybe BGinCHI might turn that into a topic—what well-regarded (by critics or in general) book/movie/etc. did you deliberately put aside, and why?

    That’s a great suggestion!

  167. 167.

    BruceFromOhio

    a film or a novel, maybe a painting or photography, that reattaches you to the landscape as a living, precious, vulnerable place.

    Sunday garden chat and On The Road posts on Balloon Juice.

  168. 168.

    Uncle Omar

    Abbey’s desert reflections can be inspirational, and even though he was a dick in some ways he did inspire great loyalty from his friends.  Ken Kesey’s lesser known novel, Some Times A Great Notion, is a solid look into the Northwest forests and the crackers who live there, if only because crackers are the same everywhere.  Louis Bromfield’s Malabar Farm books are a cry from the 40’s for regenerative agriculture and wonderful descriptions of the changes of the seasons in the old Northwest Territories.

  174. 174.

    BGinCHI

    @John Revolta: Lots of research to be done. On the panels, on an install company, and on your local relationship to the power company (what’s allowed, metering, costs, etc.). Ask around, as it’s great if you can find someone you trust who’s done a lot of it.

  175. 175.

    J R in WV

    @raven:

    OMG, Raven, that’s amazing.

    My cousin Chloe was a hot shot team firefighter out of Fergurson New Mexico for some time. She finally gave it up after they ran up a ridge with the fire after them, she carrying a 36 inch chain saw, they made it, but her boot heels were melted when they got to the downhill side of the ridge.

    A beautiful woman who is still a VFW firefighter in her home in Washington state.

    Gives me shudders of my spine, because I know it would hit Chloe right between the eyes. Hits me between the eyes, as nothing is as scary as a raging fire!!

    Was trained as a fire fighter in the Navy at Charleston Navy base in the long ago. Put our old Jenny Lind house on fire out with a glove box extinguisher… nothing left but a spurt when I was done.

    Could barely stand up after… What coulda been~!!~

  176. 176.

    BGinCHI

    @Elizabelle: You are in for a TREAT!

    Those books are so damn good. And sadly, Izzo died young. He has a few other novels, but didn’t live long enough to build on what he’d done.

  179. 179.

    Splitting Image

    I’ve always considered the second last chapter of The Lord of the Rings, “The Scouring of the Shire”, to be the most beautifully written part of the book, and the most damning indictment of Saruman and his real-life counterparts. If they can’t wreck the world in order to rule it, then by God they’ll wreck it out of spite. Tolkien had his own blind spots to be sure, but damn did he have those fuckers’ number.

    I’ll also second Douglas Adams’ Last Chance to See. I believe that at least one of the animals Adams documented in his travelogue, the Yangtze River Dolphin, has been confirmed extinct since Adams wrote the book. That really drives home what was already a fairly depressing book.

  180. 180.

    JanieM

    @Uncle Omar: I had to remind myself what Ken Kesey’s not lesser-known novel was, I loved Sometimes a Great Notion so much more than the other one. ;-)

  182. 182.

    AliceBlue

    “The Marshes of Glynn” a poem by Georgian Sidney Lanier.

    Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,

    Of the heavenly woods and glades,

    That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within

    The wide sea-marshes of Glynn

    Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire …

  183. 183.

    JanieM

    @Splitting Image:

    If they can’t wreck the world in order to rule it, then by God they’ll wreck it out of spite.

    Sounds unfortunately timely, right?

    Anyhow, good point about “The Scouring of the Shire,” and I would extend the point to the follow-up description in the last chapter: “Spring surpassed his wildest hopes…Altogether 1420 in the Shire was a marvellous year…’Ah! that was a proper fourteen-twenty, that was!'”

    We almost gave my first child the middle initial “F” for “fourteen-twenty” because the year I was pregnant with him was so special, including the weather. Thought better of it, but sometimes I still wish we had done it.

  185. 185.

    Dan B

    @raven: Wow!  My grandparents were musicians from the turn of the century to the 30’s – sang solo for Toscanini.  And a cousin was the assistant to the Conductor of the Chicago Symphony, Sir Georg Solti, but no composers or their spawn.

  186. 186.

    J R in WV

    Cormac McCarthy…

    Will not, can not, read, attempt to read, another Cormac McCarthy work. Just way too dark, too bleak. Would rather be dead than trying to live in Cormac McCarthy’s world, any of his worlds.

    On the other hand… Stephen King’s Duma Key is a great Florida story about the barrier islands around Sarasota. We spent a good bit of time in that area when my folks started spending winters there, and it really rings true. Mom was a watercolor painter, and had shows. The novel is about a guy who becomes a painter when he relocates to the area, on a barrier island.

    Obviously there’s a lot of not reality in the novel, but the reality is so good it makes up for the unreal parts.

  187. 187.

    BretH

    Colin Fletcher: The Man Who Walked Though Time. About hiking the length of the Grand Canyon alone. Lovely writing, it inspired the 17yr old me to do several solo backpacking trips.

    Tom Brown Jr: The Tracker. Inspired me to learn about wilderness skills. I’d say wilderness survival but his belief is that when you know enough the wilderness is bountiful and one doesn’t just survive but really live.

  188. 188.

    MomSense

    I loved the scenes from Snow Falling On Cedars when young Ishmael and Hatsue were inside the giant cedars together. The rain and the foliage were so lush.

  189. 189.

    Dan B

    @BGinCHI: We have Mitsubishi, 2 indoor units with a supplemental resistance heater in a downstairs bedroom.  Cost was $3,000.  The gas furnace was forced air and worked horribly in the downstairs.  The mini- splits work in our mid century modern open plan and the cooling in summer has been great, especially in our hot forest fire season.  We avoided the pollution.

  193. 193.

    Dan B

    @trollhattan:  We’re looking forward to government support of batteries as well.  I think Seattle City Light may be interested in our EV battery but only with some Fed support.

  194. 194.

    J R in WV

    @raven:

    I’ll join them now those that they left me long before

    Thirteen crosses high above the cold Missouri waters

    This is an awesome piece… wife asks “Where did he get this?” and I told her…he’s a PhD, even though he pretends to be just a redneck. Hits me where I live!

    Thanks…

  195. 195.

    West of the Rockies

    Skipped mostly to the end of the thread. So ma it’s  already been mentioned:  Pilgrim  at Tinker Creek  by Annie Dillard.  The surfing book Caught Inside is very engaging, too.

  196. 196.

    JanieM

    @cope: I had forgotten about that, because I’m not much of a movie person. Weird that I can remember that it was Paul Newman, even though I don’t think I ever watched it. Well, Paul Newman is hard to forget.

  197. 197.

    Mike in NC

    @Steeplejack:  On a 100% unrelated note, almost 40 years ago I was idly cruising around Beverly Hills when I came upon a mansion with the name Ricardo Montalban on it.

  200. 200.

    BGinCHI

    @Dan B: Seemed hard to get them figured out for a bungalow.

    Wondering if we should consider them for our basement. We have an old furnace down there (it’s just for the basement, vented), and are going to replace next year.

    Wondering if we should get a quote for those in that space.

  201. 201.

    Dan B

    @John Revolta:  In Seattle there is an online group called Seattle Solar Homeowners.  People log in for contractor recommendations.  There may be similar groups where you land.  Seattle is fortunate that our municipal electric is very supportive.  They also provide helpful information.

  202. 202.

    J R in WV

    Tony Hillerman… one of the best writers about the Native Americans of Arizona and New Mexico. We have driven up the border between AZ and NM clear to the Painted Desert, and from Santa Fe to Monument Valley, and I felt like Tony Hillerman was telling me about the dreamtime everywhere we went in that country.

    Amazing history going back thousands of years…

  204. 204.

    Dan B

    @BGinCHI:  We had a couple consults before picking a contractor who seemed to have no trouble figuring it out.  Our finished downstairs is not as open so it doesn’t work as well but it does where we spend time.

    The other factor is we insulated but the most important thing was air sealing.  Our house was a sieve.  The door test felt like a wind storm.  After air sealing, which I did myself, there was almost zero air movement in the house

    In Chicago houses may be tighter than the mild PNW.  Nothing like 20 degree air seeping in cracks.

  205. 205.

    Kent

    One of the best “place” books I’ve ever read is The Curve of Time https://www.amazon.com/Curve-Time-M-Blanchet/dp/1770500375 which is basically what you would get if John Steinback was a single mom and widow who packed her five young children up on a 25 ft. cruising boat in British Columbia 50 years ago and set off to explore the Inside Passage.

    Her portrait of 1920s and 1930s coastal British Columbia is breathtaking, as are the adventures they experience.

  206. 206.

    Kent

    Another stunning visual portrait of place is The Boys in the Boat.  Which is about the UW crew team that beat the world and the Nazis at the 1936 Olympics.  But it’s also about growing up in poverty in depression-era Washington.  And captures the state and the hard-scrabble life of that time as well as any book I have read.

  207. 207.

    Steeplejack

    @BGinCHI:

    I think it’s a case where the series is a monumental achievement apart from Camilleri’s novels. It’s on a level with, say, Mad Men or Breaking Bad, although completely different and very Italian. Thirty-plus feature-length episodes over 20 years. The first one, “The Snack Thief,” is a bit uneven, but after that the next 10-15 are almost uniformly excellent. The quality falls off a bit from there, but still well worth watching.

  209. 209.

    prostratedragon

    (Back from 60 Minutes and The Ipcress File:) Many of John McPhee’s long essays, such as The Control of Nature (the Mississippi/Atchafalaya works in Louisiana), Basin and Range, and Encounters with the Archdruid; the many Westerns and other Hollywood movies, like Out of the Past, Greed, or High Sierra that were shot in natural surroundings; many British tv mysteries, which often establish themselves very well in particular landscapes and geographies (Midsommer Murders in the Midlands, Vera in Northumberland especially around Tyneside, or Shetland in, well, …). The look of these makes me want to learn more about the natural and human geography of the regions.

  210. 210.

    Nelle

    @BGinCHI: My husband was Abbey’s pilot for part of his time in the Arctic and we had plenty of time with him.  If you read “Gather at the River,” he writes unusual words, admiring words, about technology in describing my husband taking the plane off of a gravel bar.

  211. 211.

    frosty

    @Dan B: Air sealing, definitely! A few years after we moved into this 1923 house I got serious about it. I foamed the baseboard in the living room on a day with 20 degree winds blowing at that side of the house. We could feel the room warm up as I worked!

  212. 212.

    Nelle

    @Yarrow: Yep, he was an asshole at times.  I was eager to confront him about his praise of Mahkno, the Ukrainian anarchist, who was one of the sources of the nightmares that plagued my father all his life.  Abbey just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Oh, it was a fact I heard.  I might have got it wrong.”  The stories of his treatment of women are legendary.  But he was actually a fine guest.

  214. 214.

    Denali

    A magical short book I found by recommendation of Robert MacFarlane is The Living  Mountain by Nan Shepherd, a little known Scottish writer. It is to be reissued this fall. I really want to wander the hills of Scotland now.

  215. 215.

    SFBayAreaGal

    @prostratedragon: “many British tv mysteries, which often establish themselves very well in particular landscapes and geographies (Midsommer Murders in the Midlands, Vera in Northumberland especially around Tyneside, or Shetland in, well, …). The look of these makes me want to learn more about the natural and human geography of the regions.”

    This describes my feelings exactly with many of the British mysteries.

  216. 216.

    randal m sexton

    @Mary G: Its a wonderful book.   I have several copies, one of which the pages of are swollen from being dropped in a tidepool on  the santa cruz / san mateo coast, trying to identify various critters.

  217. 217.

    jl

    John Muir, Rachel Carlson. Stumbled on those two in Jr High. Very influential.

    And Thoreau’s nature writing.

    Oh… and Mark Twain’s travel books, travel essays. He did write about nature, could be very picturesque and hilariously absurd at the same time. He wrote a very nice essay about the eastern slope of the Sierra, Owen’s Valley, Mono Lake, up through Reno.

  218. 218.

    gene108

    @Goku (Amerikan Baka):

    Although, I don’t believe that was commonly thought was going to happen when PK Dick wrote the book, though I never read Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep. I think he did have a fascination with Eastern culture?

    The book is very, very different than the movie, in terms of setting, characters, etc. Eastern culture is not significant at all.

  220. 220.

    opiejeanne

    William Butler Yeats
    The Lake Isle of Innisfree
    I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
    And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
    Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
    And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

    And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
    Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
    There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
    And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

    I will arise and go now, for always night and day
    I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
    While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
    I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

  222. 222.

    Cowgirl in the Sandi

    I first learned about Abbey when I saw his book Desert Solitaire in the gift shop at Arches.  Just lovely, evocative writing even if he was a jerk.  Although I have to say, when I read the Monkeywrench Gang, I couldn’t believe they had his books at Arches!

    I know nothing about Canada and have only been to Vancouver, but reading Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Gamache series has made me want to visit Québec.  Her descriptions of the forests and rivers and small French Canadian towns are wonderful.

  223. 223.

    Ruckus

    @J R in WV:

    Navy fire fighting training was fun!

    Or something like that…..

    Now being out in the North Atlantic and getting the alarm at 3am, not so much fun.

    Electrical fire in a venting duct fan motor out in about 2 1/2 minutes.  I would have been in the fire crew but the OOD rang general quarters rather than the fire alarm. He forgot there was a fire alarm. Great command capacity……

  225. 225.

    joel hanes

    @Keithly:

    A Sand County Almanac is the wisest book I’ve ever read.   I can see three copies from where I’m sitting (I often give them as gifts), and I own a framed picture of Aldo Leopold.

  226. 226.

    cckids

    Super late, as usual, to the party, but (even though it’s a documentary), I’d recommend the docs about Andy Goldsworthy. He’s an artist who works in and with nature; many of his works are meant to be ephemeral and are breathtaking. He does sculptures with found icicles, with leaves, flowers, stones, etc.

    I first saw Rivers and Tides about 15 years ago, and still think about how evocative of nature his work is. Wish I could better express how lovely his work is.

    Rivers and Tides 

    Leaning into the Wind

    Both are also available on YouTube.

  228. 228.

    grandmaBear

    @SFBayAreaGal: I think it was P.D. James I saw in an interview who said that mysteries are novels of place. The Shetland series (both novels and tv) were especially evocative for me. When I saw the opening credits of the series I felt a sense of shock, as though I had not only been there but as if it were my home, though I’d never been. Perhaps in a previous life?

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