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Pepacton
The Pepacton rises in a deep cleft or gorge in the mountains, the scenery of which is of the wildest and ruggedest character. For a mile or more there is barely room for the road and the creek at the bottom of the chasm. On either hand the mountains, interrupted by shelving, overhanging precipices, rise abruptly to a great height. About half a century ago a pious Scotch family, just arrived in this country, came through this gorge. One of the little boys, gazing upon the terrible desolation of the scene, so unlike in its savage and inhuman aspects anything he had ever seen at home, nestled close to his mother, and asked with bated breath, "Mither, is there a God here?"
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1881
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About the author
John Burroughs
915 books174 followersIn 1837, naturalist John Burroughs was born on a farm in the Catskills. After teaching, and clerking in government, Burroughs returned to the Catskills, and devoted his life to writing and gardening. He knew Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir and Walt Whitman, writing the first biography of Whitman. Most of his 22 books are collected essays on nature and philosophy. In In The Light of Day (1900) he wrote about his views on religion: "If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go." "When I look up at the starry heavens at night and reflect upon what is it that I really see there, I am constrained to say, 'There is no God' . . . " In his journal dated Feb. 18, 1910, he wrote: "Joy in the universe, and keen curiosity about it all—that has been my religion." He died on his 83rd birthday. The John Burroughs Sanctuary can be found near West Park, N.Y., and his rustic cabin, Slabsides, has been preserved. D. 1921.
According to biographers at the American Memory project at the Library of Congress, John Burroughs was the most important practitioner after Henry David Thoreau of that especially American literary genre, the nature essay. By the turn of the 20th century he had become a virtual cultural institution[peacock term] in his own right: the Grand Old Man of Nature at a time when the American romance with the idea of nature, and the American conservation movement, had come fully into their own. His extraordinary popularity and popular visibility were sustained by a prolific stream of essay collections, beginning with Wake-Robin in 1871.
In the words of his biographer Edward Renehan, Burroughs' special identity was less that of a scientific naturalist than that of "a literary naturalist with a duty to record his own unique perceptions of the natural world." The result was a body of work whose perfect resonance with the tone of its cultural moment perhaps explains both its enormous popularity at that time, and its relative obscurity since.
Since his death in 1921, John Burroughs has been commemorated by the John Burroughs Association. The association maintains the John Burroughs Sanctuary in Esopus, New York, a 170 acre plot of land surrounding Slabsides, and awards a medal each year to "the author of a distinguished book of natural history".
Twelve U.S. schools have been named after Burroughs, including public elementary schools in Washington, DC and Minneapolis, Minnesota, public middle schools in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Los Angeles, California, a public high school in Burbank, California, and a private secondary school, John Burroughs School, in St. Louis, Missouri. Burroughs Mountain in Mount Rainier National Park is named in his honor.There was a medal named after John Burroughs and the John Burroughs Association publicly recognizes well-written and illustrated natural history publications. Each year the Burroughs medal is awarded to the author of a distinguished book of natural history, with the presentation made during the Association's annual meeting on the first Monday of April.
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bur...
http://research.amnh.org/burroughs/
According to biographers at the American Memory project at the Library of Congress, John Burroughs was the most important practitioner after Henry David Thoreau of that especially American literary genre, the nature essay. By the turn of the 20th century he had become a virtual cultural institution[peacock term] in his own right: the Grand Old Man of Nature at a time when the American romance with the idea of nature, and the American conservation movement, had come fully into their own. His extraordinary popularity and popular visibility were sustained by a prolific stream of essay collections, beginning with Wake-Robin in 1871.
In the words of his biographer Edward Renehan, Burroughs' special identity was less that of a scientific naturalist than that of "a literary naturalist with a duty to record his own unique perceptions of the natural world." The result was a body of work whose perfect resonance with the tone of its cultural moment perhaps explains both its enormous popularity at that time, and its relative obscurity since.
Since his death in 1921, John Burroughs has been commemorated by the John Burroughs Association. The association maintains the John Burroughs Sanctuary in Esopus, New York, a 170 acre plot of land surrounding Slabsides, and awards a medal each year to "the author of a distinguished book of natural history".
Twelve U.S. schools have been named after Burroughs, including public elementary schools in Washington, DC and Minneapolis, Minnesota, public middle schools in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Los Angeles, California, a public high school in Burbank, California, and a private secondary school, John Burroughs School, in St. Louis, Missouri. Burroughs Mountain in Mount Rainier National Park is named in his honor.There was a medal named after John Burroughs and the John Burroughs Association publicly recognizes well-written and illustrated natural history publications. Each year the Burroughs medal is awarded to the author of a distinguished book of natural history, with the presentation made during the Association's annual meeting on the first Monday of April.
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bur...
http://research.amnh.org/burroughs/
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 16, 2021
Volume 5 in the collected works of naturalist/essayist John Burroughs I've been working my way through. I keep these books by my bedside as they are supremely calming and beautiful, the perfect thing when I have insomnia. I'm enjoying learning about life in America as it was 1870's and 80s and 90s, as well as Nature's eternals, and Burrough's own way in the world. The Pepacton is a branch of the Delaware River, and Burroughs takes us on a summer boating journey on it, introducing us to the natural environment of the watershed as well as its inhabitants, and it moves--as most of his essays do--at a walking pace, time to point things out, time to consider.
The first two essays are both watery, "Pepacton" and "Springs", depicting activities and ways of life with which my only connection is literary. This is such an antidote to contemporary culture--something I desperately need right now. For example, in "Pepacton," Burroughs first has to build the boat--literally, he built the boat for the trip--before taking us on his journey:
"The boat-building warmed the blood; it made the germ take; it whetted my appetite for the voyage. There is nothing like serving an apprenticeship to fortune, ike earning the right to your tools. In most enterprises the temptation is always to begin too far along; we want to stat where somebody else leaves off. Go back to the stump, and see what an impetus you take. Those fishermen who wind their own flies before they go a-fishing--how they bring in the trout; and those hunters who run their own bullets or make their own cartridges,--the game is already mortgaged to them."
It is an intimate look at the animals, the birds and the fish--what Burroughs knows about the natural world is astonishing and it's because he takes the time to see, and in doing so, lets us see through his eyes--the fox, the lamprey, the habits of the bee. The boys he comes into contact with as he rows along are especially delightful, an unimaginable kind of childhood to us now, two boys fishing, knowing only their piece of the river and marveling at Burrough's journey. What a pleasure just in contemplating it.
I didn't know that people in those days actually chased down wild swarms of honeybees to capture and domesticate--like free money! Burroughs introduces us to all that in his essay "An Idyl of the Honey-Bee." We get to chase a swarm into the woods, learn what flowers they like and surprisingly what they don't care for. the difference between the domestic honeybee (an italian creature) and the rude native American "humblebee." "Indeed, a colony of bs, with their neatness and love of order, their division of labor, their public-spiritedness, their thrift, their complex economies, and their inordinate love of gain, seems as far removed from a condition of rude nature as does a walled city or a cathedral town." The capturing of the bees is amazing.
Having followed a swarm, he returns and places a box underneath the tree:
"Our bees are soon back, and more with them, for we have touched the box here and there with the cork of a bottle of anise oil, and this fragrant and pungent oil will attract bees half a mile or more. .. It is a singular fact that when the bee first finds the hunters' box, its first feeling is one of anger; it is as mad as a hornet; its tone changes, it sounds its shrill war trump and darts to and fro, and gives ent to its rage and indignation in no uncertain manner It seems to scent foul play at once. It says, "Here is robbery; here is the spoil of some hive, maybe my own," and its blood is up. But its ruling passion soon comes to the surface, its avarice gets the better of its indignation, and it wseems to say, "Well, I had better take possession of this and carry it home." So after many feints and approaches and dartings off with an angry hum as if it would none of it, the bee settles down and fills itself."
In his essay on "Nature and the Poets", he lets us know which poets know their stuff about nature and which have no idea. (Surprisingly--or not surprisingly?--Shakespeare takes the prize for accuracy as well as verbal genius.) He was friends with Whitman, and describes the poet's power of observation, both of Nature and of man:
"Like the old poets, he does not dwell upon nature, except occasionally through the vistas opened up by the great sciences, as astronomy or geology, but upon life and movement and personality, and puts in a shred of natural history here and there, --the "twittering redstart," the spotted hawk swooping by, the oscillating sea-gulls, the yellow-crowned heron, the razor-billed auk, the lone wood duck, the migrating geese, the sharpe-hoofed moose, the mockingbird, 'the thrush, the hermit,' etc.--to help locate and define his position. Everywhere in nature Whitman finds human relations, human responses. In entire consistence with botany, geology, science or what not, he embues his very seas and woods with passion, more than the old hamadryads or tritons. His fields, his rocks, his trees, are not dead material but living companions. The is doubtless one reason why Addington Symonds, the young Hellenic scholar of England, found him more thoroughly Greek than any other man of modern times."
Quiet, rich and companionable, my favorite essay in this was about the ancient footpaths of England, why America doesn't have them, why we walk on the road while the English cut across the fields, how the layout of the villages and the existence of the footpaths have shaped the British countryside--makes me want to go on a walking trip there.
Be forwarned that with Burroughs, you're occasionally slashed by some bit of unexamined 19th century white male attitude. He's incredibly observant, yet not always self-aware. It's like a blighted bit of the river, you just have to get through it.
The first two essays are both watery, "Pepacton" and "Springs", depicting activities and ways of life with which my only connection is literary. This is such an antidote to contemporary culture--something I desperately need right now. For example, in "Pepacton," Burroughs first has to build the boat--literally, he built the boat for the trip--before taking us on his journey:
"The boat-building warmed the blood; it made the germ take; it whetted my appetite for the voyage. There is nothing like serving an apprenticeship to fortune, ike earning the right to your tools. In most enterprises the temptation is always to begin too far along; we want to stat where somebody else leaves off. Go back to the stump, and see what an impetus you take. Those fishermen who wind their own flies before they go a-fishing--how they bring in the trout; and those hunters who run their own bullets or make their own cartridges,--the game is already mortgaged to them."
It is an intimate look at the animals, the birds and the fish--what Burroughs knows about the natural world is astonishing and it's because he takes the time to see, and in doing so, lets us see through his eyes--the fox, the lamprey, the habits of the bee. The boys he comes into contact with as he rows along are especially delightful, an unimaginable kind of childhood to us now, two boys fishing, knowing only their piece of the river and marveling at Burrough's journey. What a pleasure just in contemplating it.
I didn't know that people in those days actually chased down wild swarms of honeybees to capture and domesticate--like free money! Burroughs introduces us to all that in his essay "An Idyl of the Honey-Bee." We get to chase a swarm into the woods, learn what flowers they like and surprisingly what they don't care for. the difference between the domestic honeybee (an italian creature) and the rude native American "humblebee." "Indeed, a colony of bs, with their neatness and love of order, their division of labor, their public-spiritedness, their thrift, their complex economies, and their inordinate love of gain, seems as far removed from a condition of rude nature as does a walled city or a cathedral town." The capturing of the bees is amazing.
Having followed a swarm, he returns and places a box underneath the tree:
"Our bees are soon back, and more with them, for we have touched the box here and there with the cork of a bottle of anise oil, and this fragrant and pungent oil will attract bees half a mile or more. .. It is a singular fact that when the bee first finds the hunters' box, its first feeling is one of anger; it is as mad as a hornet; its tone changes, it sounds its shrill war trump and darts to and fro, and gives ent to its rage and indignation in no uncertain manner It seems to scent foul play at once. It says, "Here is robbery; here is the spoil of some hive, maybe my own," and its blood is up. But its ruling passion soon comes to the surface, its avarice gets the better of its indignation, and it wseems to say, "Well, I had better take possession of this and carry it home." So after many feints and approaches and dartings off with an angry hum as if it would none of it, the bee settles down and fills itself."
In his essay on "Nature and the Poets", he lets us know which poets know their stuff about nature and which have no idea. (Surprisingly--or not surprisingly?--Shakespeare takes the prize for accuracy as well as verbal genius.) He was friends with Whitman, and describes the poet's power of observation, both of Nature and of man:
"Like the old poets, he does not dwell upon nature, except occasionally through the vistas opened up by the great sciences, as astronomy or geology, but upon life and movement and personality, and puts in a shred of natural history here and there, --the "twittering redstart," the spotted hawk swooping by, the oscillating sea-gulls, the yellow-crowned heron, the razor-billed auk, the lone wood duck, the migrating geese, the sharpe-hoofed moose, the mockingbird, 'the thrush, the hermit,' etc.--to help locate and define his position. Everywhere in nature Whitman finds human relations, human responses. In entire consistence with botany, geology, science or what not, he embues his very seas and woods with passion, more than the old hamadryads or tritons. His fields, his rocks, his trees, are not dead material but living companions. The is doubtless one reason why Addington Symonds, the young Hellenic scholar of England, found him more thoroughly Greek than any other man of modern times."
Quiet, rich and companionable, my favorite essay in this was about the ancient footpaths of England, why America doesn't have them, why we walk on the road while the English cut across the fields, how the layout of the villages and the existence of the footpaths have shaped the British countryside--makes me want to go on a walking trip there.
Be forwarned that with Burroughs, you're occasionally slashed by some bit of unexamined 19th century white male attitude. He's incredibly observant, yet not always self-aware. It's like a blighted bit of the river, you just have to get through it.
January 21, 2019
Pepacton means “marriage of the waters.”
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews