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Another Country: Journeying toward the Cherokee Mountains
The southern Appalachians encompass one of the most beautiful, biologically diverse, and historically important regions of North America. In the widely acclaimed Another Country: Journeying toward the Cherokee Mountains, Christopher Camuto describes the tragic collision of natural and cultural history embedded in the region. In the spirit of Thoreau’s “Walking,” Camuto explores the Appalachian summit country of the Great Smoky Mountains--the historical home of the Cherokee--searching for access to the nature, history, and spirit of a magnificent, if diminished, landscape.As the author takes the reader through old-growth forests and ancient myths, he tells of the attempted restoration of Canis rufus, the controversial red wolf, to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. He details the impact of European occupation, and his meditations on the enduring relevance of Cherokee language, thought, and mythology evoke an appreciation of what were once sacred rivers, forests, and mountains.
Through this attempt “to catch glimpses of the Cherokee Mountains beyond the veil of the southern Appalachians,” Camuto forges a new consciousness about the complex, conflicted past hidden there and leaves us with an important, thought-provoking book about a haunting American region.
Through this attempt “to catch glimpses of the Cherokee Mountains beyond the veil of the southern Appalachians,” Camuto forges a new consciousness about the complex, conflicted past hidden there and leaves us with an important, thought-provoking book about a haunting American region.
368 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 17, 2022
“When these beautiful creatures were done with their lives in the woods, I told myself- because I was getting tired of caring about so many things on the verge of disappearance – they slipped behind the veil, safe from both politics and science…”
This passage (from page 312 in my copy) best encapsulates the entire book for me in one quote. The book is at its heart largely about the attempted reintroduction of the red wolf (Canis rufus) to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the 1990s (starting in 1991), with the author definitely discussing the science of the red wolf, noting information about is appearance, habitat, habits, behavior (the science part of things) and more controversial aspects, such as taxonomy (is it a real species or just a mix of gray wolf and coyote DNA, or if there was a full species red wolves, are any non-hybrids left or do they all have coyote DNA, debates of which could get political and influence politics outside of the scientific world) and conservation (from imagined threats to people to sometimes rather real threats to livestock to Republican attempts to overall destroy attempts at conserving endangered species, as well as divisions even within the conservation world, as the gray wolf restoration efforts in Yellowstone National Park at roughly the same time seemed to get far more attention and resources), all of this the politics side of thing. Not a book on science or politics at least not only on those, the author spent a great deal of time camping, hiking, and exploring the national park, trying to catch glimpses of the wolves, and experiencing what it is like in a country with wolves, even if the wolves the vast majority of the time existed in his mind.
The highly endangered red wolves aren’t the only thing “on the verge of disappearance” that the author detailed in the book. Though red wolves are the star, almost as much time is spent on the lost world of the Cherokee people, with the author examining the literature and in one instance an archaeological dig site of a long-gone Cherokee village, of detailing what the region was like when the Cherokee called the area home, discussing Cherokee origin myths for various land features or fauna and flora of the Smoky Mountains, using again and again Cherokee names for different mountain ranges and other features. The Cherokee aren’t gone, but like the red wolves, are no longer dominant in the region, only inhabiting a small corner and in vastly reduced numbers. The reader will also read many depressing tales of Cherokees being attacked and massacred first by the British and later by the Americans.
In addition to red wolves and the Cherokee, there are other vanishing things the author spent time on. We get passages on the endemic Fraser fir, once dominant on the highest peaks of the Smokies, now largely “a ghost forest of dead trees” thanks to the spread of a blight, once “a realm of shade and moisture…now a bright, unnatural expanse,” the loss of this forest a threat to other species like ground mosses and the spruce-fir moss spider.
Perhaps better known to the average reader is the loss of the American chestnut, once a dominant tree of old growth forests in the Smokies, its demise felt even in the few remaining patches of old growth forest left, the author talking about how the old people “remember the forest as having an open understory because of the shade of the chestnuts, which helps to explain the early records of travelers riding without complaint on horseback through the woods,” as the broad-crowned chestnuts took more of the sunlight than any other tree.
Other things nearly on the verge of disappearance that Camuto spent time on were the old growth forests themselves (a few patches are left, largely still in existence because of how inaccessible they were, the timber economically unfeasible to harvest and bring out) and on natural rivers (with so many natural rivers in the Smokies dammed, the author discussing the beautiful rivers, often with archaeological sites, lost below the polluted waters of reservoirs).
I am going to be honest and say this book took me a while to read, not because it was sad, but because of its poetic, lyrical Thoreau-like language. It could be beautiful at times, the author writing about “the short, staccato southern winter,” or talking about how settlement of the Smokies was “the bloom of iron in the forest” or how at a camp fire, now that “wolves were free, that dark, starlit silence within the gusts might be the silence of wolves – not the final muteness of extinct beings, but the close counsel of animals that could be present beyond the ragged circle of the campfire.” It was pretty writing but could be a little dense at times. Not purple prose, but less informational and more impassioned and lyrical than I was used to in my nonfiction. Also, though I appreciate the author’s enthusiasm, at times he spent too much time rhapsodizing about how he was in wolf country and how that changed his outlook, which was an odd contrast to his more “just the facts” sections that showed wolves were only likely found in certain areas of the park, how few they were in number, and that seemed no middle ground between too-tame-once-lived-in-zoos red wolves who trotted along tourist clogged highways in Cades Cove, or wily have-plenty-of-wildness-in-them wolves that no one ever saw and conservation agents would never see again if they weren’t radio collared. Either you easily saw them, or you never saw them.
Certainly not a bad book by any means, I learned a lot, especially about the Cherokee, their mythology and the many, many massacres of them, and about the red wolves. The fact that, sorry spoiler here, the red wolf reintroduction program ended in 1998 with all the remaining red wolves recaptured and relocated, the scope of which was beyond the book, but the writing seemed to me to be on the wall, did color the book for me, as I feared I was reading a book full of hope about something that failed and in many ways it was. That doesn’t mean the book is a failure though. Maybe a more poetic person will appreciate the writing better than I did. I did learn a lot though and thus my rating.
This passage (from page 312 in my copy) best encapsulates the entire book for me in one quote. The book is at its heart largely about the attempted reintroduction of the red wolf (Canis rufus) to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the 1990s (starting in 1991), with the author definitely discussing the science of the red wolf, noting information about is appearance, habitat, habits, behavior (the science part of things) and more controversial aspects, such as taxonomy (is it a real species or just a mix of gray wolf and coyote DNA, or if there was a full species red wolves, are any non-hybrids left or do they all have coyote DNA, debates of which could get political and influence politics outside of the scientific world) and conservation (from imagined threats to people to sometimes rather real threats to livestock to Republican attempts to overall destroy attempts at conserving endangered species, as well as divisions even within the conservation world, as the gray wolf restoration efforts in Yellowstone National Park at roughly the same time seemed to get far more attention and resources), all of this the politics side of thing. Not a book on science or politics at least not only on those, the author spent a great deal of time camping, hiking, and exploring the national park, trying to catch glimpses of the wolves, and experiencing what it is like in a country with wolves, even if the wolves the vast majority of the time existed in his mind.
The highly endangered red wolves aren’t the only thing “on the verge of disappearance” that the author detailed in the book. Though red wolves are the star, almost as much time is spent on the lost world of the Cherokee people, with the author examining the literature and in one instance an archaeological dig site of a long-gone Cherokee village, of detailing what the region was like when the Cherokee called the area home, discussing Cherokee origin myths for various land features or fauna and flora of the Smoky Mountains, using again and again Cherokee names for different mountain ranges and other features. The Cherokee aren’t gone, but like the red wolves, are no longer dominant in the region, only inhabiting a small corner and in vastly reduced numbers. The reader will also read many depressing tales of Cherokees being attacked and massacred first by the British and later by the Americans.
In addition to red wolves and the Cherokee, there are other vanishing things the author spent time on. We get passages on the endemic Fraser fir, once dominant on the highest peaks of the Smokies, now largely “a ghost forest of dead trees” thanks to the spread of a blight, once “a realm of shade and moisture…now a bright, unnatural expanse,” the loss of this forest a threat to other species like ground mosses and the spruce-fir moss spider.
Perhaps better known to the average reader is the loss of the American chestnut, once a dominant tree of old growth forests in the Smokies, its demise felt even in the few remaining patches of old growth forest left, the author talking about how the old people “remember the forest as having an open understory because of the shade of the chestnuts, which helps to explain the early records of travelers riding without complaint on horseback through the woods,” as the broad-crowned chestnuts took more of the sunlight than any other tree.
Other things nearly on the verge of disappearance that Camuto spent time on were the old growth forests themselves (a few patches are left, largely still in existence because of how inaccessible they were, the timber economically unfeasible to harvest and bring out) and on natural rivers (with so many natural rivers in the Smokies dammed, the author discussing the beautiful rivers, often with archaeological sites, lost below the polluted waters of reservoirs).
I am going to be honest and say this book took me a while to read, not because it was sad, but because of its poetic, lyrical Thoreau-like language. It could be beautiful at times, the author writing about “the short, staccato southern winter,” or talking about how settlement of the Smokies was “the bloom of iron in the forest” or how at a camp fire, now that “wolves were free, that dark, starlit silence within the gusts might be the silence of wolves – not the final muteness of extinct beings, but the close counsel of animals that could be present beyond the ragged circle of the campfire.” It was pretty writing but could be a little dense at times. Not purple prose, but less informational and more impassioned and lyrical than I was used to in my nonfiction. Also, though I appreciate the author’s enthusiasm, at times he spent too much time rhapsodizing about how he was in wolf country and how that changed his outlook, which was an odd contrast to his more “just the facts” sections that showed wolves were only likely found in certain areas of the park, how few they were in number, and that seemed no middle ground between too-tame-once-lived-in-zoos red wolves who trotted along tourist clogged highways in Cades Cove, or wily have-plenty-of-wildness-in-them wolves that no one ever saw and conservation agents would never see again if they weren’t radio collared. Either you easily saw them, or you never saw them.
Certainly not a bad book by any means, I learned a lot, especially about the Cherokee, their mythology and the many, many massacres of them, and about the red wolves. The fact that, sorry spoiler here, the red wolf reintroduction program ended in 1998 with all the remaining red wolves recaptured and relocated, the scope of which was beyond the book, but the writing seemed to me to be on the wall, did color the book for me, as I feared I was reading a book full of hope about something that failed and in many ways it was. That doesn’t mean the book is a failure though. Maybe a more poetic person will appreciate the writing better than I did. I did learn a lot though and thus my rating.
January 4, 2014
A book I go back to again and again. First for the writing - clear as a mountain stream, moving as a mountain river, precise in its descriptions as a rock. Secondly I go back again and again for its insights into our deep relationship to place, and how place engenders culture.
March 23, 2024
I really enjoyed what amounts to several essays painting the western North Carolina and northern Georgian Appalachian mountains in several different styles.
The content is right up my alley, although its 1997 writing has made much of the writing feel dated. In particular toward the end as he complains about the Newt-Gingrich-led Contract with America and war on government spending for good, it ties it very much to that time. The overarching theme has always existed and of course still exists, but the complaints make it feel less relevant.
Also, I think, the science on definitions of species has evolved to make the argument about whether red wolves are a hybrid of coyotes and gray wolves, or a branch 'purely' from ancient wolves, moot. I think it's accepted now that legitimate species can be from more than one prior species. The 'tree of evolution' isn't so much a tree as a...mess. Life's gonna life. Don't make one species more than another. But apparently it affected the legitimacy of the program to reintroduce red wolves to the southeastern US back then.
The content is right up my alley, although its 1997 writing has made much of the writing feel dated. In particular toward the end as he complains about the Newt-Gingrich-led Contract with America and war on government spending for good, it ties it very much to that time. The overarching theme has always existed and of course still exists, but the complaints make it feel less relevant.
Also, I think, the science on definitions of species has evolved to make the argument about whether red wolves are a hybrid of coyotes and gray wolves, or a branch 'purely' from ancient wolves, moot. I think it's accepted now that legitimate species can be from more than one prior species. The 'tree of evolution' isn't so much a tree as a...mess. Life's gonna life. Don't make one species more than another. But apparently it affected the legitimacy of the program to reintroduce red wolves to the southeastern US back then.
June 24, 2013
"The southern Appalachians encompass one of the most beautiful, biologically diverse, and historically important regions of North America. In the widely acclaimed Another Country: Journeying toward the Cherokee Mountains, Christopher Camuto describes the tragic collision of natural and cultural history embedded in the region. In the spirit of Thoreau’s Walking,” Camuto explores the Appalachian summit country of the Great Smoky Mountains--the historical home of the Cherokee--searching for access to the nature, history, and spirit of a magnificent, if diminished, landscape.
"As the author takes the reader through old-growth forests and ancient myths, he tells of the attempted restoration of Canis rufus, the controversial red wolf, to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. He details the impact of European occupation, and his meditations on the enduring relevance of Cherokee language, thought, and mythology evoke an appreciation of what were once sacred rivers, forests, and mountains. Through this attempt "to catch glimpses of the Cherokee Mountains beyond the veil of the southern Appalachians," Camuto forges a new consciousness about the complex, conflicted past hidden there and leaves us with an important, thought-provoking book about a haunting American region."
~~back cover
I'm having a hard time trying to think of how to describe this book. It took me almost 3 weeks to read 319 pages, and I'm normally a very fast reader. But the book is thick, layered with layers upon layers, and filled with detail, history and asides.
The best thing about the book is the way the story of the attempts to reintroduce red wolves to the Appalachian mountains is interwoven with the story of the Cherokee, their culture, their relationship to the land, how their language is intertwined with the land, and that story in turn interlaced into the story of the original old growth climax forest that we have all but destroyed in our greed to have bigger houses, to be protected from floods and other forces of nature that annoy us by their unpredictability, etc.
It's a very thoughtful book, and what was unclear and unformed at the begiuning of the book evolves into a brilliant, exquisitely delineated dance of continuity by the end of the book.
Not for the faint hearted, this book is required reading for anyone interested in American's relationship to the land, the environment, the flora and fauna that we live with and impact every day.
"As the author takes the reader through old-growth forests and ancient myths, he tells of the attempted restoration of Canis rufus, the controversial red wolf, to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. He details the impact of European occupation, and his meditations on the enduring relevance of Cherokee language, thought, and mythology evoke an appreciation of what were once sacred rivers, forests, and mountains. Through this attempt "to catch glimpses of the Cherokee Mountains beyond the veil of the southern Appalachians," Camuto forges a new consciousness about the complex, conflicted past hidden there and leaves us with an important, thought-provoking book about a haunting American region."
~~back cover
I'm having a hard time trying to think of how to describe this book. It took me almost 3 weeks to read 319 pages, and I'm normally a very fast reader. But the book is thick, layered with layers upon layers, and filled with detail, history and asides.
The best thing about the book is the way the story of the attempts to reintroduce red wolves to the Appalachian mountains is interwoven with the story of the Cherokee, their culture, their relationship to the land, how their language is intertwined with the land, and that story in turn interlaced into the story of the original old growth climax forest that we have all but destroyed in our greed to have bigger houses, to be protected from floods and other forces of nature that annoy us by their unpredictability, etc.
It's a very thoughtful book, and what was unclear and unformed at the begiuning of the book evolves into a brilliant, exquisitely delineated dance of continuity by the end of the book.
Not for the faint hearted, this book is required reading for anyone interested in American's relationship to the land, the environment, the flora and fauna that we live with and impact every day.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews