Jottings in the Woods: Walt Whitman's Nature Prose and a Study of Old Pine Farm
JOTTINGS IN THE WOODS, WALT WHITMAN'S NATURE PROSE AND A STUDY
OF OLD PINE FARM is a unique combination of Whitman's stunning
nature descriptions and the down-to-earth profile of a current
program to protect land in South Jersey. While Whitman lived in
Camden, he was stricken by paralysis. The Stafford family in Laurel
Springs invited him to be their guest. During his stays, he walked
along the Big Timber Creek and wrote about the nature he saw. The
Old Pine Farm Natural Lands Trust in Deptford was founded to
protect what is now nearly forty acres of woodlands, meadow and
wetlands along the same Big Timber Creek. It is as though Whitman
wrote his essays just yesterday, and the land trust is a current,
living reflection of what Whitman experienced so long ago.
Photographs, maps, drawings. "The teachings in this book come
as natural and lively as the land it celebrates. Walt Whitman's
vibrant jottings stir our senses, showing us how to wake up and
see, smell, hear the daily wonders of the natural world, right at
the edge of our city lives. With those who have come, over a
century later, to love the same small realm of creek, woods and
wetland, we learn how that full-body attention to life translates
into service and the commitment to restore. Another lesson I love
in this book is the way Old Pine Farm ignites people's dreams
and energies to work together. The all-volunteer staff and board,
neighbors, naturalists, scouts, high schoolers have generated an
ecosystem of human community, whose powerful magic is this: to use
the present moment to preserve the gifts of the past for the sake
of our common future." -Joanna Macy Advocate of Deep Ecology
and author of Coming Back to Life "WaltWhitman has been
celebrated as an experimental poet who introduced the long line and
free verse, as advocate of an uninhibited sensory and sexual life,
and as a would-be founder of a new religion. But underlying all of
these images of the poet is the Whitman who experienced the natural
world as a manifestation of divine love and reciprocated this love
in his poetry and remarkable prose "jottings." As we face
an era of impending climate change, the editors have given us a
choice sampling of Whitman's least known but best prose
nature-writing. They also tell a heart-warming story of preserving
an area of South Jersey streams and wetlands and woods that Whitman
walked in and wrote about in riveting detail. Read this book and
then plant a tree in honor of Old Walt and the good folk at Old
Pine Farm." -David Kuebrich, Whitman Scholar and author of
Minor Prophecy: Walt Whitman's New American Religion
