Postscripts: Retrospections on Time and Place

by Robert L. Root Jr.

Walt Whitman’s meditation on time is the undercurrent running through Postscripts , a series of reflections on finding one’s place in the endless chain of time. In linked essays, Robert Root ranges across American terrains and landscapes including locales as varied as Walden Pond and Mesa Verde, the mountains of Montana and the coastline of Maine, Great Lakes shorelines and Manhattan on the first day of the war with Iraq. Rich in “all that retrospection,” Postscripts chronicles moments of intimacy and arrival in the natural world while also charting intersections of natural, cultural, and personal history. Whether revisiting the first European settlement in Nova Scotia or seeking out the sites of E. B. White’s life and literature, exploring the only old-growth forest in lower Michigan or shifting perceptions at the birth of a granddaughter, Root offers readers a new perspective on the relationship between time and place, time and timelessness, history and personal history. If the past is prologue, his book suggests, the present is postscript.
   

Genres: Essays

216 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2012

Reviews

[Tuck · Rating 3 out of 5]

root is a creative nonfiction writer, mostly about environmental stuff, or at least, being outdoors. he also is a e b white expert and incorporates lots of white in his essays, as well as thoreau and walt whitman. this collects many essays from over the years, generally dealing with great lakes area, 4 corners and Anasazi, nyc, maine coast, and florida. well written, not too tortured, some interesting anecdotes and nature notes, deals with time a lot, how humans musing and thought are really not even a quiver in the second hand of cosmic clock, so yes, we need to think about ourselves, our cultures, our "civilizations", but really? all that is barely a twitch of a turtles great great grandpas eyelid, so humans need to take ourselves with a grain of salt. the prettiest essay was about how things have changed in southwest michigan and the old neighborhoods along a pretty stretch of coast are being ruined by mcmansions and conspicuous consumption, so him and his wife go to this park nearby, the warren woods, and walk around in "virgin" remnant forest where the beech, oak, elm, maple, etc are all 125 feet tall and big around are a ROAT. 200 acres this woods. the only only only non-cutover woods in michigan. nice, but melancholy.

[Sheri Fresonke Harper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Root re-examines a number of places where authors were inspired in terms of his existence in time and place and how the experience resonated with the earlier writings. It provides good examples for nature writing, use of earlier essays to provide a historical view or experience. Very thoughtful work.