Monday, September 10, 2007

Extra on "Place"


Pete Wallace sitting on the Caretaker's Throne at sunset in the White Mts. NH

The New York Times had a neat article on the power of place in Sunday's paper.

At midnight I woke under a clear sky and gibbous moon and walk"ed along the brook. Much has happened in the Adirondacks — even here, where it seemed nothing had. My experience in, if not of, Panther Gorge fell short of James's, but I had no trouble imagining what he had felt.

Science recognizes no link between place and mind such as I had intuited years before, but those who know of his Walpurgisnacht will always imagine it there, where William James found the insight behind his best-known and most far-reaching work.

This article is a good complement to the chapters on the sublimity of nature in the Waterman's Forest and Crag, the definitive history of mountain recreation in the Northern Forest of NY and New England. And for added spice, read this essay about hiking the Cohos Trail in northern NH.