As it erupted in 1980, Mount St. Helens captured the attention of the region, nation, and the world, and it continues to fascinate us today— a constant reminder that we live in a volcanic landscape. In lucid prose and poetry by some of America’s leading writers and ecologists, In the Blast Zone explores this story of destruction and renewal in all its human, geological, and ecological dimensions. Most popular accounts of the momentous eruption have focused on the devastation it caused. More recent scientific work on Mount St. Helens tells a story of unexpectedly rapid and varied ecological and geological change. In the Blast Zone is the first book to present a cross-pollination of literary and scientific perspectives on the mountain’s history of cataclysm and renewal. Most of the contributors to this volume camped together on Mount St. Helens for four days in 2005—the 25th anniversary of the eruption— hiking, learning the ecology, and sharing ideas. They asked the question: What can this radically altered landscape tell us about nature and how to live our lives? In the Blast Zone collects some of their answers. While introducing fascinating ecological and geological insights, it also tells compelling stories about how science informs our lives and our relationship to nature. These writings will startle readers with new recognition of the matchless gift Mount St. Helens makes to our region and the world: the gifts of beauty, of scientific illumination, of hope.

In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mt. St. Helens

Science & Math

Goodrich, Charles

Biological Sciences

Oregon State University Press

Charming, witty, graphic, accessible poems by a former gardener and teacher. "Each poem is loaded with discoveries. . . This is one of the finest books I’ve read in years." Vern Rutsala, poet and professor.

Insects of South Corvallis

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Cloudbank Books an imprint of Bedbug Press

Poetry. Second Edition. Charles Goodrich's writing earned fellowships from Fishtrap, the Oregon Arts Commission, and the 2001 Walt Morey fellowship from Literary Arts. Garrison Keillor has read his poems on National Public Radio. Charles currently works for the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature and the Written Word at Oregon State University.

Cloudbank Books

A refreshing look at parenting, love, and building one's own house.

The Practice of Home: Biography of a House

Parenting & Relationships

Parenting

Lyons Pr

A beautifully unconventional love story. It's the summer of 2008, and thirty-five-year-old Ursula Tunder, reeling from the breakup of a bad marriage, has abandoned her career as a botanist and moved home to the family farm to start a wholesale garden-plant greenhouse, and, perhaps more importantly, to care for her ailing father, Joe. Her younger brother, Bodie, now that a shoulder injury has ended his NFL career, comes home as well, to try his hand at organic farming. Their land at the edge of a prosperous college town is coveted by developers. Ursula wants to sell the farm to Camas Valley State University, which has promised to create a research facility on the land, but Bodie and his idealistic wife, Fleece, are committed to farming. Enter Nu, Ursula and Bodie's Vietnamese-American cousin by adoption, and an up-and-coming visual artist. When Nu gets arrested after a fight with a pair of dirt bikers, Joe persuades him to take refuge at the Tunder farm. Nu gets pressed into service helping Bodie with farm chores and taking care of Joe, so Ursula seizes the opportunity to get away from the farm, accepting a temporary job surveying native plants in the Cascades. But when Joe's health plummets and Bodie's finances crash, Ursula abandons her summer job to return home once again. Facing bankruptcy, Ursula, Bodie, and Nu enlist a ragtag troupe of land-defenders in a festival of resistance in a last-ditch effort to save a way of life that may disappear forever.

Weave Me a Crooked Basket: A Novel

United States

University of Nevada Press

Poetry. Nonfiction. "In GOING TO SEED: DISPATCHES FROM THE GARDEN, Charles Goodrich chronicles the changing seasons manifested in his garden. He evokes plants and animals, and our deep human congress with the earth in exquisitely drawn poems, but the heartbeat at the center of his book is the recognition that death is the fuel for all the life that rises out of the fecund earth. This is no dainty plot, no white-gloved garden of roses and daffodils. Goodrich's garden is a teaming, treacherous terrain of great peril, and even greater earthy delights. His book leaves you longing to put your hands into the dirt, to turn the soil and remember where you came from, and where you're going."—Gary Young

Going to Seed: Dispatches from the Garden

Silverfish Review Press

"Charles Goodrich's poems celebrate the body of the earth from which we come and to which all things return, as well as the power of poetry to raise its fist-full of seeds, its only weapon-against oppression. These poems share the comfort of ravens, "black wings banked around the coals of their hearts, /their bright minds/smoldering," the particular, fleeting tang of whortleberries, and the minerally kiss of cold water drawn from a well. Contemplating the uncomfortable, such as aging, the risk of tsunami, and the self-inflicted erosion of habitat and democracy, these poems nonetheless point our eyes toward the hawks, not the "hawkers of hate." This is poetry wholesome in the best sense, showing us how to preserve our wholeness and the flow of grateful energy amid the obstructions (major and minor) of our worldly lives." - Karen Holmberg

Watering the Rhubarb

Flowstone Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Goodrich, Charles. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Goodrich, Charles

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Goodrich, Charles. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mt. St. Helens

Insects of South Corvallis

Insects of South Corvallis

The Practice of Home: Biography of a House

Weave Me a Crooked Basket: A Novel

Going to Seed: Dispatches from the Garden

Watering the Rhubarb