Oct 9 - Value Village

I figured that if I'm teaching Twilight next term, I'd better pick up the second and third volumes. Good news was that Value Village, predictably, had both New Moon and Eclipse ($3.99 each). More interestingly, it also had Arthur Kruckeberg's excellent Natural History of Puget Sound Country ($7.99, from the notorious - in some very small circles, admittedly - Weyerhauser Environmental Books series for the University of Washington Press), as well as John McPhee's celebrated The Pine Barrens ($3.99).

From 1967, The Pine Barrens is about a thousand-square-mile region in New Jersey that at the time was almost uninhabited, in the most densely populated American state. In 1988 the area became a UN Biosphere Reserve, too, so it's not like McPhee was talking out of turn about this place. My interest, really, is in the idea that the idea of wilderness (and a largish actual "wilderness," with all the definitional problems of the term) can survive in such an industrial, urban state. I'm looking forward to reading it, and more so because I find the usual voice of 60s nature writing so comfortable!

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