Every Wednesday I drive to Augusta, Georgia. The city is less interesting than the trip. It’s just under a two-hour drive from Athens. The trip is a course in southern environmental history. Athens is the liberal oasis of the south. Sure, corporate mongers tear down historic buildings to build parking decks. The university acts purelyContinue reading “Windshield History: A Car’s Eye View, Athens-Augusta (Part 1)”
Author Archives: Anthony DePaul Sadler
The Process: Grad School, GRE, and the next chapter
It may be cliche, but I view my life through chapters. I feel like an objective reader, an outsider looking in on my own life. Sometimes I feel pride and accomplishment. Mostly, I feel nervous. I feel anxiety, fear, and excitement when a chapter is near its close. Endings and beginnings terrify me. Now you knowContinue reading “The Process: Grad School, GRE, and the next chapter”
History is Complicated
I shivered more than ever before. Clutching a drenched sleeping bag. Lying in soggy clothes, next to three trembling men. The wind howled like a locomotive, swirled around our tent, and pounded on the vinyl walls. I drifted through several states, none of which were sleep. It was last October. I was a junior atContinue reading “History is Complicated”
What is A Ramble in a Field
As a trained Environmental Historian I see the tendrils of the history of our relationship with nature. These posts explore those connections Environmental History perfectly blends two of my loves. The title to this blog, “Ramble in a Field,” refers not only to Donald Worster but also a metaphor my career in history. The environmentContinue reading “What is A Ramble in a Field”
On the West Virginia Floods
Disasters, large and small, are only as damaging as we allow. Gone should be the days where the publicity surrounding calamities focus on the seemingly uncontrollable winds, rivers, and rains that kill and destroy. I do not speak of dams and other man-made pseudo scientific “cures” for the disasters. No, I criticize the very realContinue reading “On the West Virginia Floods”
A Cold, Rainy Way
It’s cold. In fact, it’s freezing. I checked my “spanking new” iPhone and the app told me it would be 60 degrees today. It lied. My feet are soaked. My face is tingling with abrasion and my books are moist. My shoes, my socks, my backpack, my umbrella, the papers within my backpack, my books,Continue reading “A Cold, Rainy Way”
Mistakes
Sometimes mistakes lead to a change in the route home. Sometimes you pass on foot what you intended to drive by. As a person who cherishes routine and the expected, these times can be hopelessly frustrating. However, such a time happened to me while heading home last Thursday. I have a five minute window ofContinue reading “Mistakes”
O’ Wilderness, Faith Where Have You Gone
Some shout at the environmentalists, “Why waste time saving trees when people starve and nations are crumbling?” I say the same cause for the crumbling of nations and starvation of their people is the cause of the eradication and abuse of our wild neighbors. An underlying ignorance is woven throughout our American culture. It isContinue reading “O’ Wilderness, Faith Where Have You Gone”
Wilderness and Passion
There is something wild in each of us. In everything that breathes there is something to tame. Children eat with their hands first. They crawl before they walk. They spit before they speak. They scream before they write. If it were natural for these activities to reverse in order it would be so. If these,Continue reading “Wilderness and Passion”
Much of Nature
When I drive down the freeway I often watch the hills as they roll on either side of me. Rather than focusing on their present, barren, condition my imagination soars with ideas of how they must have been. Instead of forty foot billboards I see hundred foot Chestnuts. I see oaks as big as housesContinue reading “Much of Nature”
Anthony Sadler 