Bill Belleville is a veteran author and documentary filmmaker specializing in environmental issues. His books include the critically acclaimed Losing It All to Sprawl: How Progress Ate My Cracker Landscape and River of Lakes: A Journey on Florida's St. Johns River.
"...Longtime Florida author Bill Belleville takes a personal
approach to sharing his love for wild places in his latest book
"Salvaging the Real Florida" (University Press of Florida, 240
pages $24.95).This work is a collection of writings about
Belleville's travels around Florida...The point of Belleville's
writings is that getting outside is the point. You learn about
nature by getting inside habitats. You get scratched up and
sunburned. You have muck on the outside of your shoes and sand on
the inside. You may, like Belleveile... have minor misadventures of
being temporarily lost in the woods or trying fruitlessly to paddle
down an unwelcoming creek.It's the kind of experience that makes
you look back and laugh at your temporary folly, but it's also the
antidote to the scripted experiences that await you in the
unnatural entertainment venues that increasingly dot this part of
Florida today, leaving tourists with the impression that that's all
there is to the Florida experience....Belleville's book also puts
Florida's nature in historical and cultural contexts when the
occasion calls for it-he quotes early Florida naturalist William
Bartram a lot-and suggests some other books that anyone interested
in Florida's natural history might enjoy...."--Lakeland Ledger
"There's still enough real Florida left in Florida to wow even the
most attention-addled imagination. All it takes are a few left
turns. Just ask Bill Belleville, who's gotten off on more unnamed
exits than anyone I've come upon in quite some time. In his
delightfully meandering Salvaging the Real Florida, Belleville will
not only tell ya which turns to take, he'll let you know what goes
down once you get [there]. And trust me, once you've gotten a
gander at Belleville's Real Florida you will wanna be hitting the
low road--or at least a wild waterway. Taking a page from ol' Henry
David Thoreau . . . Belleville begins his sauntering series of
journeys by explaining just what sauntering really meant to the
infamous Transcendentalist. Belleville is encouraging us to adapt
'a behavior that sets you squarely in the moment.' And to 'retrieve
the real Florida from those who would turn the Land of Flowers into
one giant, giddy corporate amusement park.' Most remarkably perhaps
is that no matter where Belleville goes, he sinks into what he
calls 'gator time, ' and he achieves a oneness with the world that
would surely please a saunterer such as Thoreau. That Belleville
does so with a naturalist's eye and a historian's attention to
detail only makes this rich appreciation of a largely forgotten
Florida all the more rewarding."--Miami Sun Post Weekly
"Reaffirms that [Belleville's] poetic work belongs with a class of
Florida writers that includes Al Burt (too often forgotten), Archie
Carr, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Sidney
Lanier, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and William Bartram. . . . He still
turns a cold eye on the trampling, gouging, lacerating, scorching,
mauling, draining, and eradicating that lies behind a perverted
notion of progress. But he does not allow the conceit to get him
down as he crisscrosses the state in search of the 'real Florida, '
an expression Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings usd more than six decades
ago to distinguish to indigenous landscape from the
developed."--Jack Davis, Tampa Bay History
"Salvaging is the kind of book that will enthrall devotees of Henry
David Thoreau and Ed Abbey. Reading [it] is a bit like going on a
field trip with your favorite science teacher: fun because you get
to be outside and get your hands dirty, and wholesome because,
despite your best efforts, you end up learning something. . . .
It's impossible not to soak up Belleville's concern for a
sustainable, healthy environment. . . . In appreciating natural
places, we become better observers, Belleville says, and his essays
are a relaxed study in observation."--Orlando Weekly
"[Belleville's] essays in the new Salvaging the Real Florida are an
immensely readable introduction to his conservation philosophy and
respect for nature."--Orlando Sentinel
"In Salvaging the Real Florida essayist Bill Belleville saunters
through pine and palmetto country, fins deep down into artesian
springs, visits shipwrecks off Key Largo, and kayaks through the
densest gator populations in Florida. He treks off the map and
close to home, seeking not only 'the real Florida, ' but a 'chance
to rediscover [him]self-the chance to be found.' . . . This is a
smart, knowing collection that sheds light on Florida's lesser
known natural wonders. Belleville takes the reader to places that
most people figure are already gone. He reminds us that all is not
lost; there are places worth being found. We only have to know
where and how to look."--Florida Book Review
"Belleville is the sort of guy that you'd want as a companion on an
outdoor trip. . . . HIs writing is an absolute pleasure to read.
This collection of essays, full of hidden gems and wonderful
insights, never disappoints."--National Outdoor Book Awards
(Winner, Natural History Literature)
"People who spend their lives marching in the parade of progress
need passionate artists like Bill Belleville to help us see---or
see again---the natural world. Not just see it, but to feel and
respect it . . . to blend into it, to merge our souls into a
wilderness landscape. . . . I love pondering with him the untamed
yet harmonious and efficient compositions of nature. I revel in his
respect for those who have made their mastery of language a vehicle
for Salvaging the Real Florida, and I revel in his own spectacular
gifts of expression--especially his ability to conjure the quietly
epiphanic close."--Phil Jason, Naples Florida Weekly
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