Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction Reading the Forested Landscape: Where to Begin (Ian Marshall)

Site 1: Twin Bridges

On Orange Teeth and Busy Beavers (Scott Weidensaul)

Dams and Lushness (David Gessner)

The Insistence of Forests (Hannah Inglesby)

In Search of Signs (Michael P. Branch)

Site 2: The Sawmill Site

The Mill and the Hemlocks (Scott Weidensaul)

Looking into the Past: The Rudy Sawmill (Jacy Marshall-McKelvey)

Nothing Remains the Same (Marcia Bonta)

The Saw (Perpetual) Mill (Julianne Lutz Warren)

Site 3: The Chestnut Orchard

Which Side Are You On? (Michael P. Branch)

Reflections on Ecology from the Chestnut Grove (Carolyn Mahan)

The Chestnut Plantation (John Lane)

Almost Lost (Katie Fallon)

Site 4: The Dark Cliffy Spot

The Dark Cliffy Place: A Fiction Fragment in Imitation of Cormac McCarthy (David Gessner)

Song for the Unnamed Creek (David Taylor)

Naming a Place, Placing a Name (Michael P. Branch)

Reflections on Ecology at the Dark Cliffy Spot (Carolyn Mahan)

Site 5: The Bluebird Trail

Battleground (Scott Weidensaul)

Plotlines, Transitions, and Ecotones (Ian Marshall)

Caught in the Web (John Lane)

A New Sound (Katie Fallon)

Site 6: Lake Perez

The Lake on Ice (Ian Marshall)

Wet Earth (Todd Davis)

Spring Melt (Todd Davis)

Lake Perez: Reflections (Julianne Lutz Warren)

Fog on Lake Perez (John Lane)

Site 7: The Lake Trail

Clockwise Around the Lake (Ian Marshall)

Circumambulating the Lake (David Gessner)

The Work of Walking (David Taylor)

A Place for Exuberance (Hannah Inglesby)

A Little Quiet, Please (Marcia Bonta)

Site 8 : The Raptor Center

Earning Intimacy at the Raptor Center (David Taylor)

Eagle Acquaintances (Hannah Inglesby)

The Raptor (Eye) Center (Julianne Lutz Warren)

I Remember a Bird (Katie Fallon)

Bibliography

About the Contributors

About the Author

Ian Marshall is Professor of English and Environmental Studies at Penn State Altoona.

Reviews

“What a pleasure to wander with some of America’s finest environmental writers along the ferny edges of a Pennsylvania stream—to listen to birdsong with their educated ears, to see the stony past and stormy future through their discerning eyes, to explore the brambles and branches of their marvelous minds. Like Walden, Reading Shaver’s Creek is testimony to the power of creative attention to a special place, and a rollicking good read.”—Kathleen Dean Moore,author of Great Tide Rising: Towards Clarity and Moral Courage in a Time of Planetary Change and Piano Tide

“Reading Shaver’s Creek is an inspirational contribution to the growing genre of multivoiced, place-oriented community writing projects, sometimes called ‘deep maps.’ Its blend of environmental history, ecological understanding, and literary flair is all seasoned with a healthy love of place, whether that place is thought of as an out-of-the-way valley in the Allegheny Mountains or the whole of planet Earth.”—Tom Lynch,Coeditor of Thinking Continental: Writing the Planet One Place at a Time

“The journals of nature writers like John Burroughs and Henry David Thoreau provide a rich record of cultural and climate change. Now the Ecological Reflections Project has brought this approach to the eastern Appalachians. Over the next one hundred years, accomplished writers will experience and reflect on place, and this lively book samples the project’s first decade. Brimming with beautiful insights, stories, and meditations, it will inspire anyone who loves the way wood, stone, wind, and water speak to the human spirit.”—John Tallmadge,author of The Cincinnati Arch: Learning from Nature in the City

“Visit Shaver’s Creek. Observe. Write. Like exquisite footprints meandering along a muddy shore, the ‘best of’ pieces in this ten-year compendium track the fascinating merging of mind and matter, words and wildness, people and place. After reading these reflections by scientists, local writers, and visiting authors, Shaver’s Creek has become meaningful—and even a little magical—to me, and I hope that this book will inspire similar long-term ecological reflections projects in other special places.”—Cheryll Glotfelty,coeditor of The Bioregional Imagination: Literature, Ecology, and Place

“This book can serve well as a model for nature centers or writers who may wish to explore a place and document that exploration. It also makes an excellent text for courses in environmental writing and environmental studies, English literature courses that focus on nature, or parks and recreation courses interested in how visitors experience a nature center, park, or natural area.”—D. Ostergren Choice