“Ceremonial time” occurs when past, present, and future can be perceived simultaneously. Experienced only rarely, usually during ritual dance, this escape from linear time is the vehicle for John Mitchell’s extraordinary writing. In this, his most magical book, he traces the life of a single square mile in New England, from the last ice age through years of human history, including bear shamans, colonists, witches, local farmers, and encroaching industrial “parks.”
Trespassing, "a thoughtful, beautifully written addition to environmental and regional literature" (Kirkus Reviews), is a historical survey of the evolution of private ownership of land, concentrating on the various land uses of a 500-acre tract of land over a 350-year period. What began as wild land controlled periodically by various Native American tribes became British crown land after 1654, then private property under US law, and finally common land again in the late twentieth century. Mitchell considers every aspect of the important issue of land ownership and explores how our attitudes toward land have changed over the centuries.
In this second book in his Scratch Flat Chronicles, John Hanson Mitchell tells how he set out to recreate Henry David ThoreauÕs two years at Walden Pond in a replica of ThoreauÕs cabin. Mitchell lived off the grid, without running water or electricity, in a tiny house not half a mile from a major highway and in the shadow of a massive new computer company. Nevertheless, his contact with wildlife, the changing seasons, and the natural world equaled and even surpassed ThoreauÕs. Hugely popular with the international community of Thoreau followers when it was first published, this book will now be essential reading for the growing community of people who are interested in living in a tiny house, fully experiencing the natural world, or finding self-sufficiency in an increasingly plugged-in society.
Walking Towards Walden is an exploration of the sense of place, what it means, how it developed, and why it matters. Based on an eighteenth-century literary device in which a group of friends undertake a walking tour and discuss a certain subject, this wide-ranging story emerges from the author's fifteen-mile bushwhack through woods, backyards, and marshes - from a hilltop in Westford, Massachusetts, to the town of Concord, Massachusetts - trespassing all along the way. A mock epic, complete with encounters with armed mercenaries and vicious dogs, the book covers all the aspects of place - art, literature, myth, and even music.
Thirty years ago in the attic of an old estate in Massachusetts, John Hanson Mitchell discovered over two thousand antique glass plate negatives. He was told that the photographs had been taken by nineteenth–century ornithologist and conservationist William Brewster, but as a result of a tip from a Harvard research assistant, he began to suspect that the images were actually the work of Brewster's African American assistant, Robert A. Gilbert. So begins the author's journey. From the maze–like archives at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology to the Virginia countryside and haunts of American expats in 1920s Paris, as well as the rich cultural world of blacks in nineteenth–century Boston, Mitchell brings sharp focus to the figure of Mr. Gilbert, a quiet, unassuming Renaissance man who succeeded as best as he could beneath the iron ceiling of American racism. Told with Mitchell's trademark grace and style, the fascinating story of this "invisible man" deepens our understanding of the African American past as well as the history of American photography.
Here is a book to enhance our appreciation of the small citizens of the world and to introduce us to the neighbors we never knew we had, from spotted salamanders to meadow voles, from snowy tree crickets to ambrosia beetles, all living within steps of your door. “If there is grass and a few scraggling trees, there will be wildlife,” suggests John Hanson Mitchell, an internationally recognized naturalist and advocate for tuning your senses to the wonders of your environment. Whether your yard consists of a small stretch of grass or a rambling mix of forest and field, Mitchell will introduce you to the wealth of plants, insects, and animals that share your corner of the world. Learn how the behavior at the birdfeeder mirrors that of the wild woods; get an inside view of the rich ecology of the woodpile; learn why you might want to welcome a skunk into your garden. In short, you’ll get to know the neighbors you never knew you had who make their homes all around yours. With wisdom and humor, this book reacquaints you with the denizens of your own local habitat.
Author John Hanson Mitchell recounts a marathon bicycle trek from Andalusia to the Outer Hebrides, tracing solar myths, sun cults, birds, and flowering plants all along the way.
This is the ironic story of how Italian Renaissance and Baroque gardens encouraged the preservation of the American wilderness and ultimately fostered the creation of the world's first national park system. Told via Mitchell's sometimes disastrous and humorous travels - from the gardens of southern Italy up through Tuscany and the lake island gardens - the book is filled with history, folklore, myths, and legends of Western Europe, including a detailed history of the labyrinth, a common element in Renaissance gardens. In his attempt to understand the Italian garden in detail, Mitchell set out to create one on his own property - with a labyrinth.
Twenty-five years ago John Hanson Mitchell cut down a 1 1/2-acre stand of seventy-five-year-old white pines and planted a garden in their place. An Eden of Sorts is a history of the plants and animals that lived on the tract over the next decades. In a survey he made before taking down the pines, Mitchell counted no more than five or six flowering plants and shrubs. Over the years he created a series of fanciful garden “rooms” in the Italian style. Now, in addition to an intriguing garden of earthly delights, he has recorded more than one thousand species of plants and animals on the property. This is a paradoxical yet hopeful narrative of what can happen to a plot of land when it is properly managed.
How much does the current landscape of Boston, Massachusetts, resemble the place that Captain John Smith referred to in 1614 as "the Paradise of all these parts"? John Hanson Mitchell explores a variety of habitats as he ranges outward from the core of the peninsula where the Puritans first settled to the ancient rim of the Boston Basin, within which the modern city now lies. Endlessly readable and full of personality, The Paradise of All These Parts offers Boston visitors and residents alike a whole new perspective on one of America's oldest cities.
This memoir of the author’s brief sojourn working at a café and auberge in Corsica is populated with a questionable group of locals, fugitives, and escapists during the Algerian and Vietnam Wars.
Looking for Mr. Gilbert is an account of the quest to uncover the heretofore unknown life of Robert A. Gilbert, an African American serving man who worked for the ornithologist William Brewster. A man of many talents, Gilbert went on to become the first African American landscape photographer.
In 1928, Massachusetts water authorities began land takings for the construction of the Quabbin Reservoir, in the Swift River Valley. Unknown to the authorities was the fact that, subsisting in the more remote, forested tracts of the valley, there was a secretive band of mixed-race hunter-gatherers who had been there for over ten generations. Mitchell's book is the story of the exodus of this tribe and the young anthropologist who first discovers them. The novel takes the form of a legal deposition, taken at the Everglades City Court House, in 1929, concerning the fate of these people. John Hanson Mitchell (http: //johnhansonmitchell.com/) is the author of Ceremonial Time: Fifteen Thousand Years on Once Square Mile (Counterpoint) and eight other books on cultural and environmental history, the most recent of which is The Paradise of All These Parts, A Natural History of Boston (Beacon Press). He is also the creator and editor of the award-winning magazine, Sanctuary, published by the Massachusetts Audubon Society
Green Tunnel "Just in time to counteract Bill Bryson's lumbering 'A Walk in the Woods, ' here is a book by a guy who actually made it through. John Illig is light on his feet and writes with tripping prose." John Hanson Mitchell, Author Ceremonial Time, Living at the End of Time "The author's style is breezy, intimate; he talks to you, to himself, to his trail mates. When he describes a day on the AT you see it, feel it, as if you are there. He writes fluidly, always compellingly readable." Jane Weinberger, Windswept House Publishing
Twenty-five years ago John Hanson Mitchell cut down a 1 1/2-acre stand of seventy-five-year-old white pines and planted a garden in their place. An Eden of Sorts is a history of the plants and animals that lived on the tract over the next decades. In a survey he made before taking down the pines, Mitchell counted no more than five or six flowering plants and shrubs. Over the years he created a series of fanciful garden “rooms” in the Italian style. Now, in addition to an intriguing garden of earthly delights, he has recorded more than one thousand species of plants and animals on the property. This is a paradoxical yet hopeful narrative of what can happen to a plot of land when it is properly managed.
In 1928, Massachusetts water authorities began land takings for the construction of the Quabbin Reservoir, in the Swift River Valley. Unknown to the authorities was the fact that, subsisting in the more remote, forested tracts of the valley, there was a secretive band of mixed-race hunter-gatherers who had been there for over ten generations. Mitchell's book is the story of the exodus of this tribe and the young anthropologist who first discovers them. The novel takes the form of a legal deposition, taken at the Everglades City Court House, in 1929, concerning the fate of these people. John Hanson Mitchell (http: //johnhansonmitchell.com/) is the author of Ceremonial Time: Fifteen Thousand Years on Once Square Mile (Counterpoint) and eight other books on cultural and environmental history, the most recent of which is The Paradise of All These Parts, A Natural History of Boston (Beacon Press). He is also the creator and editor of the award-winning magazine, Sanctuary, published by the Massachusetts Audubon Society
Tells the experiences of a man who built a cabin on an undeveloped plot of land in the woods in New England, and lived without running water or electricity, among owls, deer, and foxes
A lyrical field guide to the natural world surrounding the eastern U.S.'s residential areas profiles a wide variety of plant, animal, and insect life, in a reference that offers insight into birdfeeder behaviors, woodpile ecology, and more.
Thirty years ago in the attic of an old estate in Massachusetts, John Hanson Mitchell discovered over two thousand antique glass plate negatives. He was told that the photographs had been taken by nineteenth–century ornithologist and conservationist William Brewster, but as a result of a tip from a Harvard research assistant, he began to suspect that the images were actually the work of Brewster's African American assistant, Robert A. Gilbert. So begins the author's journey. From the maze–like archives at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology to the Virginia countryside and haunts of American expats in 1920s Paris, as well as the rich cultural world of blacks in nineteenth–century Boston, Mitchell brings sharp focus to the figure of Mr. Gilbert, a quiet, unassuming Renaissance man who succeeded as best as he could beneath the iron ceiling of American racism. Told with Mitchell's trademark grace and style, the fascinating story of this "invisible man" deepens our understanding of the African American past as well as the history of American photography.
How much does the current landscape of Boston, Massachusetts, resemble the place that Captain John Smith referred to in 1614 as "the Paradise of all these parts"? John Hanson Mitchell explores a variety of habitats as he ranges outward from the core of the peninsula where the Puritans first settled to the ancient rim of the Boston Basin, within which the modern city now lies. Endlessly readable and full of personality, The Paradise of All These Parts offers Boston visitors and residents alike a whole new perspective on one of America's oldest cities.
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