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A Year in Rock Creek Park: The Wild, Wooded Heart of Washington, DC
2015 IPPY Silver Medalist, Best Mid-Atlantic Nonfiction Twice the size of Central Park, Rock Creek Park is the wild, wooded heart of Washington, DC, offering refuge from a frantic city pace to millions of visitors each year. Rock Creek Valley, which serves as the spine of the national park, has a long and storied history―from Amerindians who fished the creek, hunted the woods, and quarried the rock outcroppings, to Euro-Americans' claims on the land as mill sites, to widespread deforestation during the American Civil War, to its ecological restoration and designation as a federal park in 1890. Melanie Choukas-Bradley, renowned naturalist and writer, spent a year in Rock Creek Park walking and skiing its trails at all times of day, observing and recording natural events in all seasons and weather conditions. Enhanced by the evocative photographs of Susan Austin Roth, A Year in Rock Creek Park takes readers on an incredible and unforgettable journey. Distributed for George F. Thompson Publishing (www.gftbooks.com)
- GenresNatureNonfiction
240 pages, Paperback
First published November 5, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 30, 2019
Very informative and interesting. I walk through Rock Creek Park often. I know I will notice more on my next walk through the park.
January 28, 2016
"When I don't get enough snow, I get cranky." p. 22
"Lost and found--that's how it is with us humans in this remarkable process of life and living over which we have so little control, despite our attempts through science and art and religion. We go from feeling lost to feeling found and vice versa. We lose ourselves and find ourselves through all that we experience. Whether and how we feel lost or found depends on a full array of occurrences and mysteries, big and small, obvious and hidden." p. 89
Quoting John Muir's Our National Parks: "The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of autumn." p. 175
"During the past two or three centuries, people have been moving ever faster, smitten and energized by our human cleverness. Recently, we've begun to see that it might be time to apply the brakes to save our own souls and our planet. If and when we finally slow down, what will there be left to see, and will we have the wisdom to see it? And, if we do, will we be willing to cherish and protect the view?" p. 156
"No matter how closely we stay tuned, Nature is constantly surprising us, and we surprise ourselves with our responses to its ever-changing theater. We might feel exhilarated during winter's first cold wind and inexplicably saddened by the blossoms of spring. But, whatever gets stirred up in us and however unpredictable that might be, we have been able to count on Nature's cycles--our summers and winters, our dry and rainy seasons, our familiar. Droughts come and go, epic floods occur, one winter might be violently cold and a summer unbearably hot, but, however severe things get, we've known somewhere deep inside that a pendulum swings across a balanced center. And now that center may not hold." p. 193
"Lost and found--that's how it is with us humans in this remarkable process of life and living over which we have so little control, despite our attempts through science and art and religion. We go from feeling lost to feeling found and vice versa. We lose ourselves and find ourselves through all that we experience. Whether and how we feel lost or found depends on a full array of occurrences and mysteries, big and small, obvious and hidden." p. 89
Quoting John Muir's Our National Parks: "The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of autumn." p. 175
"During the past two or three centuries, people have been moving ever faster, smitten and energized by our human cleverness. Recently, we've begun to see that it might be time to apply the brakes to save our own souls and our planet. If and when we finally slow down, what will there be left to see, and will we have the wisdom to see it? And, if we do, will we be willing to cherish and protect the view?" p. 156
"No matter how closely we stay tuned, Nature is constantly surprising us, and we surprise ourselves with our responses to its ever-changing theater. We might feel exhilarated during winter's first cold wind and inexplicably saddened by the blossoms of spring. But, whatever gets stirred up in us and however unpredictable that might be, we have been able to count on Nature's cycles--our summers and winters, our dry and rainy seasons, our familiar. Droughts come and go, epic floods occur, one winter might be violently cold and a summer unbearably hot, but, however severe things get, we've known somewhere deep inside that a pendulum swings across a balanced center. And now that center may not hold." p. 193
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews