Works that deal with the environment, education, and freedom through knowing.
In the Middle of a Wide, Wild River
This entry is a part of a series of vignettes covering the “Great Flood of 1916,” which caused damage across five states in the southeast. Biltmore Village.July 16, 1916 Tired, trembling, and terrified, seventeen-year-old Katherine Lipe clung to a tree at the Biltmore Lodge Gate just outside of Asheville, North Carolina. She was fifty-feet from…
A Windshield History: Athens-Augusta (Part 2)
Most mornings I drive with the window down. The cool air brings the scent of the Piedmont to me. Although shrouded in machinery, it is my way of letting nature in. A window pane is not the best way to see the environment. Working farms smell like manure and sweet feed. Rivers smell sweet and…
Thoreau of the West
Today I saw the ghost of Ed Abbey. He played his flute, lifted one leg, and planted it on the brick wall which rested his back. A hobo. A drunkard. A vagabond. Delightfully nomadic. His long, graying beard barely exposed his lips. The brim of his hat nearly touched his nose. He carried a pack,…
One Planet, a Singular Problem
I often field questions about Environmental History. “What is Environmental History?” Is the most obvious and common. A certain knot sets in my gut when I have to answer, not because I am uncertain about my choice of profession, but because I know I am stepping into dangerous territory. Environmentalism is a polarizing topic. Global…
The Curse
Becoming a specialist creates a curse. An engineer cannot stop trying to figure out how things work. A psychologist cannot have an average conversation. A historian cannot live entirely in the present, a condition which annoys my friends and family to no end. Because much of history is bleak, darkness follows me. Knowing what most…
Windshield History: A Car’s Eye View, Athens-Augusta (Part 1)
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 purely…
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 at…
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 environment…
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 real…
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,…
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 of…
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 is…
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,…
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 houses…
Wilderness Artificiality
The other day my wife and I went for a run. The challenge was to run six miles outside. It was a rare feat for both of us. We chose to run in downtown Jefferson, Georgia. We started near a park which has a Boy Scouts home on the premises. This park is a tribute…
Scattered Showers
A downpour is torrential if witnessed from behind a pane of glass while travelling sixty miles per hour. With each drop crashing and expanding, the rain seems more like a smoky haze than a gathering of individual particles of water. With my automobile in park, I stepped outside and realized the atmosphere was no more…
Wild, Wonderful
Last night Nature’s progression became an inconvenience for man. A storm moved in. As the skies filled with moisture, turning every shade of gray, and replaced the sun-streaked blue and white landscape from the early afternoon with a dark tumultuous atmosphere in the evening, I drove my cantankerous automobile over limbs and leaves, which swirled…
Constant Life and Beauty
We are the projection of the perpetuated ideals of our parents, teachers, culture, religion, nation, and fears. Our view of nature is an aspect of the projection. It is programmable. Like a universal remote control, with the correct codes, our intended purpose can be fulfilled. It is no more natural for me to walk under…
A Magnificent Oak
It is the most magnificent oak tree I have ever seen. On the route from my home to the gym is a homestead featuring a wooden house painted yellow with a very old brick fireplace. Directly in front of the house is a stump at least nine feet in diameter. I want to stop each…
Graceful Hunter
It leaped in front of my car from a small patch of forest on my left. It was in flight. This was no common bird. Its large and broad wings moved slowly with great strength, creating flight and bearing grace unlike any I have seen. At first, I thought it was a vulture because I…
A Flock of Small Birds
The clouds were grey but not imposing. The wind was aimless and strong but not unbearable. The sound of a flagpole ringing as its tether slammed against metal sounded like a ship’s call to port. In the foreground, citizens passed in their cars heading home. In the background, the roar of a highway was ocean-like…
A Backyard Wilderness
Some say wilderness is a concept. Wilderness is an ideal rather than a place. It is a projection of our inner desires. There are hundreds of definitions. Whether you know it or not, you have your own. Wilderness means something to you because A Wilderness matters to you. As a child, the wilderness was a giant grapefruit…
A Tree in the Wind
A tree’s life is about balance. Its soil needs moisture but too much can make it fall. It needs the wind to carry its seeds with the hope that they will prosper. If the wind is too strong a tree may break. What a tree needs most is to be left alone by man. Imagine…
Coffee Shop
I often hear a bird before I see it. It may be a song, a call, or a desperate attempt at mating. Whatever the motivation behind the sound the result is the grasp of my attention. The day is beautiful, mild, and extremely sunny. The automobiles are out in droves. The dallying of bodies to…
A New Beginning
Last night a thought came to me. It soon grew into an idea. I am a wilderness seeker. I need the mountains. I need the trees. I need the birds as much as I need air. However, I live thirty minutes from everywhere I need or want to be. I spend more time in my…
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Anthony Sadler 