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Resurrection of the Wild: Meditations on Ohio’s Natural Landscape
Winner, 2020 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay An impassioned call for recognizing and preserving the ecological wonders of the Allegheny Plateau Yosemite National Park, Louisiana’s bayou, the rocky coasts of New England, the desert Southwest―America’s more dramatic locations are frequently celebrated for their natural beauty, but far less has been written about Ohio’s unique and beautiful environment. Author Deborah Fleming, who has lived in rural Ohio and cared for its land for decades, shares fourteen interrelated essays, blending her own experiences with both scientific and literary research. Resurrection of the Wild discusses both natural and human histories as it focuses on the Allegheny Plateau and hill country in Ohio’s eastern counties. These lyrical meditations delve into life on Fleming’s farm, the impacts of the mining and drilling industries, fox hunting, homesteading families, the lives of agriculturalist Louis Bromfield and John Chapman (better known as Johnny Appleseed), and Ohio’s Amish community. Fleming finds that our very concept of freedom must be redefined to include preservation and respect for the natural world. Ultimately, Resurrection of the Wild becomes a compelling argument for the importance of ecological preservation in Ohio, and Fleming’s perspective will resonate with readers both within and beyond this “forgotten” state’s borders.
199 pages, Hardcover
First published April 14, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 2, 2024
Sorry Goodreads fans — we went on a long roadtrip and now I have to do graduate school so my reading has been minimal. And to be honest, Will mostly read this one out loud to me which was very lovely. We picked this up at the park store at Cuyahoga Valley National Park after a short but beautiful hike there on our way to Cleveland. And read it to each other through the rest of the journey. I really enjoyed the meditations on nature alongside human histories and getting to peek into Ohio’s wildness. And we chuckled quite often at Deborah’s witty prose and stories. I’m not as enthralled as Deborah is with early American environmentalists and agrarians like Thomas Jefferson and so I thought more mention could have been given to the structures of oppression and violence that allowed such men to appreciate the American landscapes and agricultural ideals. But in the end, we enjoyed reading this and gaining insight into the state we just briefly passed through.
November 13, 2021
I believe three stars to be overly generous for this work. And, over the course of writing this review and reflecting In those essays, I decided there isn’t really a justification for being generous. The author has put the work of essays on the open market for consumption and assessment. I took the hook and made the purchase. I now need to fulfill my obligation to fellow readers with a review.
In this collection of essays touching on land conservation and nature, the author relies heavily in those moments in the book related to the work’s title on her reading of some of the great writers who proceeded her and who helped forge a strong land ethic through their evocative books, essays and life work: Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, Louis Bromfield, Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, and David Kline are the ones I recall.
If you are fortunate enough to read this review before acquiring the current title and haven’t read any of those inspiring authors, I strongly encourage you to begin your journey with any of them. All of them. Then skip this. You likely will, as have so many readers of these men before you, find yourself with a new or renewed, deeper, appreciation for the rest of nature and the need for our species to fully inhabit lives imbued with greater respect and humility for our place in it and our dependence on all of nature being healthy. You might begin to see what we simply and generically call land these authors recognize to be much greater, much more complex, more dynamic, more alive, and much, much more than simply a resource for our use and enjoyment. A community. We may live well in Land, not simply on it.
In the current work, Fleming offers you none of that. In many essays the reader will find academic disinterestedly composed descriptions of her house, her farm, her horses, the geology/geography of her state. Almost clinically dry, like a coroner beginning the description of yet another stranger’s dead body.
At the same time, and we realize or confirm through other essays, the author is very interested in these subjects, the land and buildings she describes, because she wants to convey they are hers (emphasis on the last word). She admits she didn’t clear the pastures of their native woods, doesn’t even grow anything in their denuded soils, didn’t build the house, saying “I cannot call it a homestead because I didn’t build it”. But she is saying she owns them now. They are hers.
That relationship seems to lack anything but a superficial or even wrong understanding of the works of the cited authors and their relationship to the land.
The separation caused by personal possession and Fleming’s seemingly selective use or timing of any sense of belonging is more clearly demonstrated in the sections of the slim collection in which she describes her hostile encounters with visitors — her word might as well gave been intruders — to the property. Fleming seems to take great amusement recounting her verbal abuse of religious pilgrims who stop by. More telling of her disconnectedness from the community embracing the land ethic of her above reading list is her dislike of the visits by people with whom the particular place — that house, that barn, and that land — has meaning. The visitors recognize they, and Fleming now, belong to a special, small community of living individuals for whom this specific place has meaning. She recounts even threatening to chase one walker off the land with her dog.
They try to share the narrative of change in Man’s relationship with this place but she scoffs and recoils at their stories. The community is broken, the land ethic lost, the author oblivious to her complicity.
The incongruity of the title and her unwitting hostility to the theme is demonstrated again on the mess that is her essay that begins with a dismissive assessment of David Kline’s book, Great Possessions, moves into the now all too familiar dry characterization of the Amish, and ends with anecdotes pronouncing her judgments and apparent dislike of “them” as “others.” There is no shared sense of community and commitment to the land or nature to be found in the author’s perspective here.
So if you are seeking a quick read on what can happen when affluent people co-opt the great works of individuals like Thoreau, Leopold, and Berry to redefine the land ethic and “wild “ so it encompasses hobby horse farms perpetuating the taking from nature rather than restoring our relationship to it, by all means you won’t be disappointed.
In this collection of essays touching on land conservation and nature, the author relies heavily in those moments in the book related to the work’s title on her reading of some of the great writers who proceeded her and who helped forge a strong land ethic through their evocative books, essays and life work: Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, Louis Bromfield, Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, and David Kline are the ones I recall.
If you are fortunate enough to read this review before acquiring the current title and haven’t read any of those inspiring authors, I strongly encourage you to begin your journey with any of them. All of them. Then skip this. You likely will, as have so many readers of these men before you, find yourself with a new or renewed, deeper, appreciation for the rest of nature and the need for our species to fully inhabit lives imbued with greater respect and humility for our place in it and our dependence on all of nature being healthy. You might begin to see what we simply and generically call land these authors recognize to be much greater, much more complex, more dynamic, more alive, and much, much more than simply a resource for our use and enjoyment. A community. We may live well in Land, not simply on it.
In the current work, Fleming offers you none of that. In many essays the reader will find academic disinterestedly composed descriptions of her house, her farm, her horses, the geology/geography of her state. Almost clinically dry, like a coroner beginning the description of yet another stranger’s dead body.
At the same time, and we realize or confirm through other essays, the author is very interested in these subjects, the land and buildings she describes, because she wants to convey they are hers (emphasis on the last word). She admits she didn’t clear the pastures of their native woods, doesn’t even grow anything in their denuded soils, didn’t build the house, saying “I cannot call it a homestead because I didn’t build it”. But she is saying she owns them now. They are hers.
That relationship seems to lack anything but a superficial or even wrong understanding of the works of the cited authors and their relationship to the land.
The separation caused by personal possession and Fleming’s seemingly selective use or timing of any sense of belonging is more clearly demonstrated in the sections of the slim collection in which she describes her hostile encounters with visitors — her word might as well gave been intruders — to the property. Fleming seems to take great amusement recounting her verbal abuse of religious pilgrims who stop by. More telling of her disconnectedness from the community embracing the land ethic of her above reading list is her dislike of the visits by people with whom the particular place — that house, that barn, and that land — has meaning. The visitors recognize they, and Fleming now, belong to a special, small community of living individuals for whom this specific place has meaning. She recounts even threatening to chase one walker off the land with her dog.
They try to share the narrative of change in Man’s relationship with this place but she scoffs and recoils at their stories. The community is broken, the land ethic lost, the author oblivious to her complicity.
The incongruity of the title and her unwitting hostility to the theme is demonstrated again on the mess that is her essay that begins with a dismissive assessment of David Kline’s book, Great Possessions, moves into the now all too familiar dry characterization of the Amish, and ends with anecdotes pronouncing her judgments and apparent dislike of “them” as “others.” There is no shared sense of community and commitment to the land or nature to be found in the author’s perspective here.
So if you are seeking a quick read on what can happen when affluent people co-opt the great works of individuals like Thoreau, Leopold, and Berry to redefine the land ethic and “wild “ so it encompasses hobby horse farms perpetuating the taking from nature rather than restoring our relationship to it, by all means you won’t be disappointed.
March 6, 2022
As a lifelong resident of Ohio, a lover of the native rural landscape, and fond of horseback riding in my youth, I found so much to celebrate and enjoy in Deborah’s essays on Ohio’s natural landscape. It is always lovely to find someone else who loves a place you love. These are detailed and well researched essays, ones that challenge the reader to be more conscious of our actions and efforts to respect and preserve the world we have been given. The wilderness to be preserved is not only the valuable rainforests continents away, it is also our own local backyard.
May 17, 2025
Although the essays are a bit uneven, by the time I finished this collection I felt it deserved five stars for the quality of the writing, the thoroughness of the observations, and the breadth of the environmental concern. I am prejudiced a bit, as I now live in northeast Ohio, not that far from Fleming's farm. Also I am roughly the same age as the author, so have shared some of these experiences and watched the same cultural changes. I would not have read it if I hadn't moved to Ohio, and I am glad I did.
July 1, 2020
Dr Fleming draws the reader in with interesting facts and her experiences of Ohio. I finished the book feeling like I was invited along on a journey to get to know her, her thoughts, and her opinions on a variety of subjects. The book is worth the read, especially if you have any connection with the geography, flora, fauna or the people of Ohio.
September 14, 2021
Beautiful writing about not only nature but life.
March 20, 2025
A passionate, often lyrical portrait of a place in the heart of Ohio.
September 21, 2023
Deeply observed naturalist's memoir, field notebook & ecological enquiry on the rolling Appalachian foothills & communities of Eastern /North Eastern Ohio. As an admiring visitor and occasional hiker of Ohio's beautiful hill counties, I enjoyed Fleming's book.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews