Kent Ryden does not deny that the natural landscape of  New England is shaped by many centuries of human manipulation, but he  also takes the view that nature is everywhere, close to home as well  as in more remote wilderness, in the city and in the countryside. In  Landscape with Figures  he dissolves the border between culture  and nature to merge ideas about nature, experiences in nature, and  material alterations of nature.    Ryden takes his readers from the printed page directly to the field  and back again-. He often bypasses books and goes to the trees from  which they are made and the landscapes they evoke, then returns with a  renewed appreciation for just what an interdisciplinary, historically  informed approach can bring to our understanding of the natural  world. By exploring McPhee's The Pine Barrens  and Ehrlich's  The Solace of Open Spaces, the coastal fiction of New England,  surveying and Thoreau's The Maine Woods, Maine's abandoned  Cumberland and Oxford Canal, and the natural bases for New England's  historical identity, Ryden demonstrates again and again that nature  and history are kaleidoscopically linked.

Landscape With Figures: Nature & Culture New England (American Land & Life) PDF

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