The hour of land : a personal topography of America's national parks Cover Image

Book

The hour of land : a personal topography of America's national parks / Terry Tempest Williams.

Summary:

"A personal, lyrical, and idiosyncratic ode to our national parks"-- Provided by publisher.

"For years, America's national parks have provided public breathing spaces in a world in which such spaces are steadily disappearing, which is why close to 300 million people visit the parks each year. Now, to honor the centennial of the National Park Service, Terry Tempest Williams, the author of the beloved memoir When Women Were Birds, returns with The Hour of Land, a literary celebration of our national parks, what they mean to us, and what we mean to them. Through twelve carefully chosen parks, from Yellowstone in Wyoming to Acadia in Maine to Big Bend in Texas, Tempest Williams creates a series of lyrical portraits that illuminate the unique grandeur of each place while delving into what it means to shape a landscape with its own evolutionary history into something of our own making. Part memoir, part natural history, and part social critique, The Hour of Land is a meditation and manifesto on why wild lands matter to the soul of America"-- Provided by publisher.

Record details

ISBN: 9780374280093
ISBN: 0374280096
Physical Description: 395 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm
Publisher: New York : Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016.

Content descriptions

Formatted Contents Note:

A Poetic Crossing -- Mapping the Territory -- Introduction: By Definition : America's National Parks -- Keep promise : Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming -- All this is what the wind knows : Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota -- What more shall we do to others : To otherness : Gulf Islands National Seashore, Florida & Mississippi -- "The stones, the steel, the galaxaies" : Acadia National Park, Maine -- "There is no prevailing" : Gettysburg National Battlefield, Pennsylvania -- Death yes but as a gathering : Effigy Mounds National Monument, Iowa -- Any wind will tell you : Big Bend National Park, Texas -- There is no private space : Gates of the Arctic National Park -- We Are In Some Strange Wind Says the Wind : Canyonlands National Park, Utah -- The bodies are all gone from it, the purchases have been made : Alcatraz Island, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, California -- It is so extreme this taking-the-place-of, this standing-in-for, this disappearing of all : Glacier National Park, Montana -- I say to myself keep on, it will not be the end, not yet, my children sleep, not yet : Cesar Chavez National Monument and the future -- Gallery.