Gary Ferguson research notes

Gary Ferguson: Writing Workshops at IUP

Part IV Voice, Argument, Autobiography, and Research

Gary Ferguson is visiting IUP April 17 and 18, 2000 for a series of meetings with faculty and students. This website is designed to provide supplementary material for his workshop on Research, voice, and technology.

Following are notes from America’s Outdoors: New England, to be published by National Geographic in May of 2000. This book profiles the natural history of the various eco-regions comprising the six New England states; in addition, it offers suggestions on the best places to sample "classic" slices of each area.

One of my first priorities is to describe the project to a variety of people who may be able to assist in the research. Names are obtained from a variety of sources, including the Web, national and regional journals, and a variety of state and federal agencies. The following is a fax to Charles Johnson, State Naturalist for Vermont:

Thanks so much for taking a look at this. As I mentioned on the phone, a significant portion of this book will consist of "armchair" nature" discussions about the different eco-regions of the six New England states. At the end of those discussions, however, I’ve been asked to come up with a number of sites (roughly 12-14 in each state) where people can go to experience first-hand what makes these areas so unique.

With that in mind, while I’m trying to provide people with a high-quality experience, I certainly don’t want to encourage visitation to areas that can’t handle it. (I’ve already removed a couple of places for exactly that reason.) Two other points may be worth mentioning: 1) National Geographic wants me to present the "don’t-miss" sites within each state; 2) as for the rest, they seem to be leaning toward places with interpretive offerings on-site, or else nearby.

At larger sites I'll be looking for one or two trails - either short or long - that I can actually interpret for the reader.

Here's a quick run-down of some places that come to mind. Again, I'm not wed to any of these – they’re merely a starting point, based in large part on my past experiences in Vermont.

Meanwhile, there is the issue of travel arrangements. Here’s an email from Diane Konrady, head of the Vermont Department of Tourism, sent to various people around the state:

After nearly three months of preliminary research, a tentative list of focus areas in Vermont is sent to National Geographic:

Includes the following: a 75-mile loop drive on U.S. Highway 7, Forest Road 6, Vermont State Highway 100, and Forest Road 10, with the following minor site attractions:

Grout Pond (easy walk), Branch Pond (walking and canoeing), Bourn Pond (day hike),

Emerald Lake State Park (nature trail, swimming), Little Rock Pond (easy day hike),

Other sites worth mentioning include a loop trail (long day hike) on Stratton Mountain, a day hike at Old Job Shelter, and canoeing on the West River.

The major focus here will be a region known as Moosalamoo - 22,000 acres of rural and wild country managed through a cooperative association of the Forest Service, various Country Inns, the State of Vermont, Chambers of Commerce, Middlebury College, a public utilities corporation, etc. Minor sites will include: Silver Lake (hiking and canoeing), Branbury State Park (swimming, nature trail, canoeing), Mount Moosalamoo (day hike), The Hogback (walk), Robert Frost Interpretive Trail (walk), brief mention of canoeing Chittenden Reservoir, two short sections of the Long Trail.

Brief mention of hiking opportunities at Stowe Pinnacle, Smugglers Notch, Hunger Mountain.

Scenic Drive: includes Lake Willoughby and Mount Pisgah hike, Crafstbury Common,

Also, brief mention of the following minor sites: Mount Philo and Snake Mountain Natural Areas (day walks), Dead Creek Waterfowl Management Area (canoeing, bird watching)

Once on site, I make notes - usually by talking into a tape recorder, and then later transcribing the tape. Following is a small sample of these notes:

Roads and river corridors crowded by modest to large sprawls of timber. As for the roads themselves, there’s such a mix of hills and curves that a certain kind of pacing forces itself, a rhythm, as in writing, that gets you into the pulse of the landscape. Tea shops, cross-country ski centers, old farm houses about to collapse, or more commonly, restored. Downhill ski areas abundant – Bromley, Stratton. Thick, foggy bank of clouds, laying on the mountains as if they were resting, letting out rain as we would let out breath. Signs for free manure for egg customers.

Hike up to Prospect Ridge on an old road, just east of Manchester. Fairly young forest of hemlock, striped maple, yellow and white birch, understory of red-berried elder, thimble berry in bloom now (6/27), viburnum. Beautiful the way the clouds have settled on the mountain. Ethereal mist.

In intro essay, may want to write about how over twenty years of nature writing, you’ve noticed a lot of locals increasingly wary of talking about beautiful places in their back yard because visitors treat it so harshly, while at the same time the budgets to take care of the resource have been cut to the bone. Rose and another woman at Forest Service station near Manchester talking about how the forest is supposed to go from 90 full-time employees to 60 by the year 2000.

A forest at this time somewhat devoid of wildflowers – yet a wonderful collection of partridgeberry, flowering raspberry, thimbleberry. In places a wonderful sprawl of thimbleberry flowers and red-berry elder. Also a fair amount of bluebead lily.

Driving along the west side of the southern Green Mountain National Forest (East Manchester Road, heading south). These hills absolutely covered with trees, low down and sprawling – they pull you in, very comfortable, exuding a feeling of summer. Covered bridge at Sunderland with a sign that says "One dollar fine for driving faster than a walk across this bridge." Equally beautiful view off to the west, hills covered with trees, as well as to the north. The lack of billboards has a big effect.

Crossing the Green Mountains on the Kelly Stand Road; just after the turnoff to Branch Pond is the turnoff to Bebee Pond on Right – a beautiful looking place. You pick up this road from Old Mill Road, which takes off in East Arlington, I believe. Hard to find. East Manchester Road south and then left on Old Mill Road, not long south after the covered bridge.

Several opportunities: Take the trail into Lye Brook Wilderness off of Glen Road (left turn off of East Manchester Road), and this will take you past Lye Brook Falls – beautiful. From the south side, head over Kelly Stand Road and take Forest Road 70 to Branch Pond, and hike from there, or a short distance east of this, take the AT/LT north to Stratton Mountain (3.4 miles). Busy parking lot. Grout Pond recreation area is further east on this road, less than a mile from the AT/LT. Pavement begins just past the Grout Pond turnoff.

Trip begins .5 miles west of the West Wardsboro Post Office, leaving Highway 100. Road you turn on is first identified as the Stratton Road, later becomes all kinds of things, most commonly the West Wardsboro-East Arlington Road.

Seems like a lot of people around here have named their places – I’ve seen Avalon, and Xanadu.

Heading north on Highway 100, turn left, west, onto the Stratton Road, 4.8 miles north of the turnoff from the turnoff to Mount Snow Ski Area (begin at 680.5). A highway sign says Stratton 4, Stratton Mountain 10. A few miles up the road the signs read Stratton-Wardsboro Road. The turnoff to the ski area is 3.4 miles – keep going straight, unless you want to go ride the gondola. Enter the national forest at 5.3. Still a paved road – branches leaning over the highway, maple and elm – moderate age. Pavement ends at 6 miles. Turnoff for Grout Pond is just .2 mile past where the pavement ends, on the left. 1.5 miles to Grout Pond. 6.6 miles – just past the Grout Pond turnoff, on the right, is a turnoff and bronze plaque at the place where Daniel Webster spoke to about 15,000 people at the WHIG convention, July 7,8 1840. 7.2 miles on right is the LT/AT trail leading to Stratton Mountain, right along the East Branch of the Deerfield River. Lot is very busy. 8.2 miles is the trailhead to Stratton Pond – part of the loop.

Discussion about how the forest has changed since the forest was cut over and the ground warmed up, allowing intrusion of more hardwoods.

.3 mile canoe trail access from the parking area to Branch Pond (check New England walks book for this pond) – a beautiful access to the pond (and less than the stated .3 mile). Sizeable yellow birch and some modest hemlock, interrupted ferns, viburnum, bead lilies, beautiful pond - .25 by .25. Some great plants – great stand of sheep laurel right next to put-in, pond lilies, blackberries in woods. Striped maple, beautiful mats of wood sorrel.

The above notes are combined with written remarks about specific species, etc., and are then turned into a draft manuscript:

Notice how the draft incorporates interviews, on-site research, and basic descriptive information. Gary uses a conversation with a "local" to illustrate something unique about the area--and enrich his own writing with another voice that a traveler might expect to "hear" going to this place.

Despite having been cut over no fewer than three times, today the Green Mountain National Forest holds more enchanting nooks and crannies than most of us could waltz through in a lifetime of exploring. Within these 325,000 acres, which are generally divided into two sections, a north unit and south unit, you’ll find everything from peat bogs to alpine summits, hemlocks to hardwoods, red spotted newts to peregrine falcons to black bears.

The following loop drive in the south half of the forest will lead you to a splendid mix of trails, streams, mountain vistas, even swimming holes, not to mention a fine collection of enchanting villages - former textile towns that are today dappled with inns, art galleries, clapboard churches and antique stores by the dozen. While the trails we’ll be exploring are perfect for day walks, nearly all lead to more extensive hiking opportunities. Note that roughly half of this loop drive consists of rather narrow dirt roads, not well suited to large recreational vehicles or to cars pulling trailers.

We begin in the little village of West Wardsboro, on a road leading from Vermont State Highway 100 to Stratton Mountain Ski Area. As is typical in rural New England, the actual name of this road depends both on who you ask and where you happen to be on it at the time, a situation that has nothing to do with any sort of plot to confound tourists, and everything to do with the simple fact that for a very long time the only people who were interested pretty much knew where they were going anyway. One man I met recalled his confusion when, on buying a house in the area, he could find no address for it. Concerned about what to do in the case of an emergency, finally he went down to the local volunteer fire department to see what location he should give in case of fire.

Suffice it to say that when you first turn west from Highway 100, roughly 0.5 mile south of the West Wardsboro Post Office, a weathered, faded street sign identifies it as Stratton Road.

From this intersection our route climbs steadily through a long run of woods for six miles, at which point the pavement ends. Just beyond this, on the left, is the turnoff for Grout Pond, which is a perfect stop for those wanting to break loose from the car and walk the shoreline of one of southern Vermont’s most beautiful and accessible pockets of water.

Grout Pond is a summer kind of place. In some sections it's cradled by beech and balsam and sugar maple, in others by a thick weave of flowering ground plants, from whorled wood aster and self heal, to bunchberry, wood sorrel, and red-berried elder. If you’re in the mood for a good stroll, you could do no better than to follow the roadway on the north end of the water, which leads to a network of trails that will take you on a 2.9 mile walk clockwise around the pond. (Bear right at each of several trail intersections along the way.)

In the first portion of the walk are several side trails leading to a handful of fine picnic areas. (Be forewarned that eating your picnic in peace may require a generous dose of bug spray, garlic, or whatever other concoction you might have on hand to fend off New England's official bird, the mosquito.) Along the path are fine views of Mount Snow, to the southeast, while Stratton Mountain can be seen to the north. Both of these areas offer a full range of summer activities, including high speed gondola rides to the summits. Such reliable transportation is a far cry from the 1940’s, when Vermont introduced America to the sport of skiing by hooking rope tows to the rear wheels of an old car set on blocks, some poor sap sitting on the front seat wrapped in a wool coat, pushing on the accelerator every time the rope filled with skiers.

As you round the wetlands on the southeast corner of the lake, notice the bird houses scattered about the shore. These are nesting boxes for wood ducks, one of the most beautiful of all Vermont’s waterfowl. Unlike most other ducks, wood ducks are quite content to live in places without much ground cover, assuming there are suitable nesting cavities. Not that wood ducks are the only ones fond of these box nests; over the years managers have found in them everything from mice to bees to flying squirrels.

Along the shore of Grout Pond are some of the region's more interesting plants. Get out the guidebooks, and see if you can find mountain maple and ironwood (both have buds which are a favorite of the many ruffed grouse that live here), as well as mountain holly, witherod, selfheal, and jewelweed.

Soon after leaving Grout Pond you’ll pass a turnoff to a small historical marker on the right, marking the place where that consummate orator, Daniel Webster, gave a rousing oration to 15,000 people at the WHIG convention of July, 1840. Not bad for a guy who as a kid was so shy that when called to speak to his classmates at Exeter Academy, he found himself too petrified to even get out of his seat.

The mixed hardwood forest along this road is still fairly young, the latest of many to have grown here since the area was first settled three hundred years ago. Each year these branches lean out into the road a little farther, reaching for the sunlight, in some places actually locking arms to create a tunnel of leaves to shade you in the summer, thrill you with their colors in the fall. Our next chance for a leg stretch comes at Forest Road 70, on the right at just over 11 miles from Highway 100. Follow this for 2.4 miles to a small parking area at Branch Pond, and if you have a canoe, waste no time portaging it down 0.2 mile of forested pathway to the shore. In summer this lovely little pond is fringed with the blooms of flowering raspberry, sheep laurel, pond lilies, and in June, flag iris, not to mention a number of common woodland plants including wood sorrel, bead lily, Canada mayflower, and ferns beyond the counting.

If you’re more in the mood for walking than boating, by all means put on your hiking boots (this path can be muddy after a good rain), and head up the trail located directly opposite the one to Branch Pond, which leads in 2.6 miles to Bourn Pond, a remote water pocket in the Lye Brook Wilderness. There is a camping shelter there, available on a first-come first-serve basis.

If not everyone in your group wants to walk, send the hikers on a terrific one-way, ten-mile day trip from the southwest corner of Bourn Pond down the mountain on the Lye Brook Trail to Glen Road, in the town of East Manchester, where the rest of the group can then pick them up. To reach that lower pick-up point from Branch Pond, go back to the West Wardsboro – East Arlington Road and turn right, heading down the mountain to Route 7 North. Follow this to the Manchester exit; at the end of the ramp turn right (east), onto Highways 11 and 30. In 0.5 mile take a right onto East Manchester Road and follow that for 0.75 mile; Glen Road will be on your left. After making the turn onto Glen Road follow signs to the Lye Brook Wilderness, and the pick-up point, which lies at the end of a spur road heading off to the right.

Back on the main road again, all too soon you'll begin descending past the shouts of Roaring Brook, as well as some exquisite gardens of hay-scented and interrupted ferns. Pavement comes again 6.4 miles from the turnoff to Branch Pond, and 17 miles from where we began our trip at Vermont Highway 100. As you leave the forest watch for signs to Highway 7, and follow that north toward Manchester, passing through the altogether astonishing Batten Kill River Valley, framed on one side by the Green Mountains, and on the other by the larger, younger Taconic Range. The Batten Kill River, by the way, is an exceptionally good fly fishing stream. For information, supplies, or guides contact Angler's Exchange in Manchester Center (phone 802-362-4296), or Orvis Company in Manchester (802-362-3622), or Brookside Angler, also in Manchester (phone 802-362-3538).

If you're traveling with your kayak or canoe, and are interested in relatively calm water, there are two pleasant stretches of the Batten Kill worth your attention (assuming river levels are sufficient). The first is a 7.5 mile, Class I-II trip from the bridge in Manchester to the U.S. 7 Bridge in Arlington. The second trek merely extends the first, continuing on Class I water to the New York State Line, at Route 313.

Located on the west side of Highway 7, approximately 7 miles north of Manchester, tiny Emerald Lake State Park, while not exactly wild, is a perfect place for road weary travelers to spend a couple hours recharging their batteries. For starters, directly north of the entrance station, at the top of a mowed hill and adjacent to a beautiful old cemetery, begins a 0.5 mile nature hike that has numbered stops keyed to an interpretive brochure.

As the trail enters the woods, what it loses in views it more than makes up for with vegetation – basically a middle-aged mixed hardwood forest, the feet of the trees planted in maidenhair, lady, interrupted, sensitive, and Christmas fern, not to mention a host of forest wildflowers. In the last stretch of the walk, right before joining the paved pathway leading to the beach, look along the path for a small ground plant known as herb Robert. Though no one seems to remember exactly which Robert this plant was meant to honor - likely candidates include everyone from a 12^th-century Duke to Robert Goodfellow, also known as Robin Hood - because of its high tannin content herb Robert was long used as a compress to stop bleeding. Unlike many forest wildflowers, which bloom early in the spring before the trees put on their leaves and thus block the sunlight, herb Robert wears its clusters of pink to purple blooms from May all the way to October.

At the paved path take a right, top a small hill and descend onto a pleasant little beach. Here you can either take a swim (along with dozens of kids wearing big wide grins), or rent a canoe, row boat, or paddlewheel boat and cruise around the ragged fringes of Emerald Lake, the green uplands of the Taconics rising to the southwest like a good summer dream. To return to your car follow the path around the beech along an outlet stream dappled with fragrant water lilies, past a small nature museum, and finally, back to the parking area.

Our driving tour continues north from Emerald Lake State Park on Highway 7 for 4.4 miles. In the village of Danby make a right turn, following signs for Mt. Tabor. (This is actually Forest Road 10, which we’ll be following for roughly 13 miles.) Just minutes after leaving Highway 7 you’ll enter the White Rocks National Recreation Area, then cross a bridge over beautiful Dunne Creek; upstream from this bridge are some wonderful places to soak your feet, eat lunch, or even settle in with a good book. Yet another great opportunity for all of the above comes at 2.7 miles from Highway 7, at a picnic area on the right perched on the side of a high hill, offering glimpses through the trees into a remarkably rugged slice of the Green Mountains.

A short distance past this picnic area, just beyond the point where the pavement ends, is the trailhead for Little Rock Pond. This four mile round-trip hike traces the meanders of Little Black Brook through a mix of hardwoods, rich with the sounds of vireo and wood thrush. Framing the trail is a blend of viburnum, strawberry, meadow rue, false Solomon’s seal, and wood sorrel. Little Rock Pond itself is as close to perfect as a pond gets, especially if you’re inclined to do a bit of swimming. You can extend your walk either by following the trail around the entire pond – this would add roughly a mile - or else return to Forest Road 10 a mile west of the parking area by hiking the Green Mountain Trail, which takes off from the northeast corner of the pond. This latter option would add roughly two miles to your trek, much of it over rougher terrain than what you covered on the way in.

Forest Road 10 continues east, offering tantalizing glimpses of the great tree-covered waves of the Green Mountains, drops down to join beautiful Utley Brook, and finally leaves the national forest 13 miles from Danby. Less than a mile later is a "T" intersection; make a left and drive for another 0.3 miles to yet another "T," where you’ll turn left again, following signs for Weston. It’s in the lovely little village of Weston – home, by the way, to an excellent summer playhouse - that you’ll rejoin Vermont Highway 100, roughly 30 miles north of where we began in West Wardsboro.

Finally, after nearly a year-and-a-half of work, the final manuscript is sent off to National Geographic. (Note that I’m also sending along an entire box full of research material, which is meant to assist the fact checkers.)

As discussed, attached please find a copy of the New England book, along with a file containing additional sidebars. I've written the intro essay, but would like to give it another edit when I return from Utah next week. I'll plan on sending that, along with the five ecosystem intro essays ASAP. (Say, 1300-1500 words each?)

A box full of resource material went out UPS today - disk copies of the book will go out tomorrow. On one of the disks I will also include a copy of two html files, containing a complete list of campgrounds for Green Mountain and White Mountain national forests.

As I explained on the phone, the change in the due date has left me panting in the dust; if you see any problems whatsoever, don't hesitate to give me a call at your convenience. For the next week or so, the best way to stay in touch is by phone - 406-446-2388.

Publication: Later I receive a copy-edited manuscript, which usually has questions from the editor about additions, clarifications, etc. that the fact checkers could not address. The book is then laid out with photographs, at which point I get yet another chance to review it.

And later this spring, the book will be available for people to buy, and thus, the writer begins to make a living...only to go back out again on the road, do more research, write more letters....talk to more people, note, transcribe, draft, send, rewrite....

My father is an Episcopalian who has been divorced too many times to count and drinks too much.

My mother goes to church every Sunday in hopes that somebody will notice her there and think she is a good soul.

I never admired my father in his Jaguar with his pretty wives; I admired a homeless man who would let the ashes fall into his lap.

I spent my schooldays being kicked out of Catholic schools and my mights sleeping on the beach waking up with a hangover.

As you read the paragraphs below, note where Gary has brought in historical information that comes from another source.

You could just about argue that it was meant to be. A people who cut their teeth on nature, wresting from the woods of eastern American visions to kindle patriotism, art, even religion, ending up two hundred years later using wilderness to feed the souls of troubled teenagers. Even plain old organized camping, now nearly 150 years old, turned on the idea that one of the best ways for kids to ready themselves one day to lead meaningful, successful lives was to toss off the city now and then to go live in the woods. The Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, the Sons of Daniel Boone, and a host of other programs long since come and gone sprouted from no more than that.

But when it came to using nature for therapy, as a source of healing--that we stumbled into without a clue.It was 1901. Dr. A. E. Macdonald, of the new York psychiatric facility Manhattan State Hospital East, found himself in the alarming position of having forty men and women with tuberculosis who needed to be isolated from the rest of the patients, and absolutely nowhere to put them. Serious trouble, made more so by the fact that most clinicians of the day thought mental patients were equally susceptible to tuberculosis. Finally, more out of desperation than inspiration, Macdonald decided to erect a handful of tents around the grounds and put the infected patients there. At which point he got a big surprise.

Not only the physical but the mental stte of the patients improved dramatically. The same people who'd been lying in their beds in a near vegetative state were walking on the grass, playing games, smiling and waving at the excursion boats cruising up the East River. Macdonald put up another tent, this one for nontubercular psychiatric patients, more than 60 percent so ill they couldn't get out of bed. It worked for them, too. They gained weight, showed increased control over their compulsions, stopped wetting the bed. Several who had been thought to be lost causes two months earlier were by autumn walking out the front door. Everything continued to go well until late in the year, when the weather changed and all but one of the tents came down. The patients headed back inside, where they withdrew again, resumed their bad habits, lost weight, and became incontinent. And they stayed that way until the following summer, when the tents went up again. (Haviland and Carlisle, 100).

Physicians came running from all over that hospital. Drs. Floyd Haviland and Chester Carlisle applied the idea to patients about to be released--a group that often frustrated doctors by slipping back into old ways under the stress of dealing with going home. For them, too, the results were striking. "The beneficial effects of outdoor life can be judged," wrote the doctors, "when it is stated that out of the entire forty-four patients, there have been only three on continued medication during the summer."

Tent therapy, they called it--the beginning of a twenty-year movement that would spread across much of the country. Still more fuel got added to the fire when the 1906 San Francisco earthquake shook to rubble a sizable part of the Agnew Asylum for the Insane. Amid the wreckage a shell-shocked Dr. Andrew Hoisholt set about helping his patients erect temporary shelters out on the lawns with tents and lean-tos, prayed for the best, and then to his utter amazement found most of them doing a lot better out on the lawns living like nomads than locked up inside. "I was astonished," he wrote in Journal of Insanity "Men and women who had been more or less constantly violent and untidy in the building were now getting along peacefully. They all seemed comfortable and contented in the tents and on the open grounds. the record of the patients' condition and conduct during this enforced outdoor life certainly speaks well for tent treament" (Hoisholt, 131).

As you read the Introduction to The Sylvan Path, you’ll experience the way in which a writer can use stylistic choices in words and sentence structure to build an informal voice that is very appealing. These stylistic choices enable Gary to incorporate research material so that you hardly notice how he moves from personal experience to history to argument. Notice how in the passage below, Gary begins with autobiography, but fluidly moves into research so that he builds his argument about how we need to save our forests. He uses specific descriptions to create pictures that draw us into his memories, his point of view, and his argument. His voice is like the summer day that he portrays: languid and relaxed, warm, comforting and familiar. He writes complex sentences within a voice that is informal and friendly, always accessible, and he develops sharp descriptions while maintaining an informal level of word choice. He also uses fragments effectively to focus on small pieces of his descriptions so that we see a picture unencumbered by action. Notice also how he controls complex sentences by using dashes—like this—informal markers that make a long sentence sound like the sound of someone’s voice just telling us a story. He combines narrative, history, research, and argument very gracefully and keeps our interest while "bending our ear" about an idea very important to him.

He begins with a subject everyone can relate to: a child’s irrepressible urge to climb a tree. Another important aspect of his descriptive style in the opening paragraphs is his use of lists. Notice how he uses a series of descriptions in list form to call our attention to the plenty and luxuriance of the woods that he felt as a child. While we’re hooked into this child’s perspective about the joys of climbing trees, he slowly builds his arguments about the value of protecting our forests. As his argument builds, he also incorporates more and more historical information. You won’t find internal documentation in this text because the book was written for the "trade" market, the general reading population that doesn’t want to be slowed down with references. But be assured that Gary had all his sources lined up for his editor to review.

As near as I remember I left the ordinary when I was seven, in late summer, out with my parents off some potholed county road in northern Indiana on a hazy Sunday afternoon when the mayapples were hung and the milkweed was in full flower. My folks had packed lunch and driven my brother and me out some ten or fifteen miles from town, one thing in mind: to let us climb trees. There I was, standing in the crook of a maple, twelve feet off the ground, hugging the trunk, curtains of big green leaves wound up in the wind and dancing all over the place, making noises like a fast creek running through the sky. And my father, looking up at me from ground level through the scratched lenses of his gray-plastic glasses, muscled arms outstretched to catch me if I fell.

Thoughts of the woods have been with me ever since. They come in daydreams: sycamores and sugar maples with arms locked on the hilltops near Lake Wawasee; in the bottoms down below, crowds of pawpaw and white oak and hickory. They rise as pieces of past vacations spent rolling down some two-lane—first in a Studebaker, then in a Chevy—the back windows open, staring into timber: sprawls of tamarack and jack pine in Michigan, unbroken but for log taverns with halos of blue light from the Hamms beer signs in the tops of the windows. In Tennessee, dizzy rolls of red oak, chestnut, and shagbark hickory falling away from the top of the Cumberland Plateau.

We first went west in 1966, to Colorado, and I met the Rocky Mountains with my chin on the back of the seat, staring wide-eyed through the windshield. But there too it was the great sweeps of confers—Douglas-fir, Englemann spruce, lodgepole pine—that lent mystery to the mountains, that brought a feeling of possibility to those drifts of stone. Even now, the lion’s share of my childhood memories is shot full of leaves.

Which is why it was such a sad surprise when in my mid-thirties I looked over my shoulder to find that the trees had shrunk from my life, that they’d gone from being nothing short of ladders to the sky to being something merely pleasant; stories, where once there was myth. Of course fascinations don’t really burn up in flash fires so much as they drown by degrees—old dreams like old boats, sopping water, growing heavier with every season, harder to steer. And yet if I had to pick the heart of those troubled times, it was probably when I went home to Indiana after my mother’s death in 1988, hoping for one more ramble through some of the unkempt places I’d known as a child. But all I could see were the losses. Old wetlands, once thick with the smell of creation, shrouded in veils of pussy willow and spicebush, had been drained away, packed in dirt, filled with condominiums. Fence rows near Cromwell were plowed under, taking with them the fox and the raccoon, the songbirds that once hid in their thickets. Gone too the woodlots that had slept away the winters beside those yellow, stubbled fields of corn.

It was years later that I was wandering through the stacks of a library in Boulder, Colorado, when I stumbled across a passage about an all but forgotten American named Joe Knowles. On a rainy August day in 1913, this part-time artist, then in his mid-forties, stripped down to a G-string, shook hands with a group of bewildered reporters on the shore of King and Barlett Lake in western Maine, then trudged off into the woods without a single piece of equipment to live as a wild man for sixty days. The idea, Knowles claimed, came from a dream in which he was lost in the woods, alone and naked, with little hope of getting out. "Not much of a dream," he confessed, "but a damn real one."

Joe Knowles emerged from the forest two months later a full-blown hero. Two hundred thousand people in Maine and Massachusetts turned out to see him—20,000 on the Boston Common alone. A book of his adventures sold more than 300,000 copies, and he toured vaudeville with top billing, preaching the virtues of life beyond the bustle and soot of the twentieth century. The next summer Knowles managed a similar feat—again to the cheers of the nation—this time in Siskyou Mountains of southwest Oregon.

For whatever reason Joe chose to act out his "damn real dream," he tapped into a belief, once commonplace, whose time had come again. It said that if our dance with nature had been such a big part of what we most valued about our character, then losing our wild places might mean losing that which held the best hope for the future. It was like gas to a spark. The land-preservation movement exploded. Youth groups sprang up everywhere—the Sons of Daniel Boone, the Boy Pioneers, the Boy Scouts, the Woodcraft Indians—each dedicated to maintaining the influence of the wilderness in children’s lives. In the years between 1910 and 1940, The Boy Scout Handbook outsold every book in American except the Bible. Frontier historian Frederick Jackson Turner—the guy who said that in American, democracy was a forest product—was suddenly a genius. The woods were alive again in the American psyche.

Most historians say that Joe Knowles was a charlatan, that he never really did what he claimed to have done. They may be right. Still, he was the one who reminded me that our willingness to conquer nature has as often as not been tethered to a longing to save it—that there have in fact been generous times, times when we’ve waltzed with the woods like Cinderella on champagne. While early Christians were full of fears about wild places, the sons and daughters who steered American through its formative years courted those places, seeding a national commons of fable and myth and spirit-tales based on mountains and rivers and forests.

As unlikely an inspiration as Joe Knowles might be, he’s the one who left me hungry to go back out and roam the last wild places, places like Maine and Appalachia and the North Woods, looking for people who still had pieces of the old American imagination in their pockets, people who never forgot how to warm their lives with the woods.