Photographs and descriptions show how U.S. Highway 40, from Atlantic City to San Francisco, has changed since 1953

U.S. 40 Today: Thirty Years of Landscape Change in America

Geraldine

Vale, Thomas R.

Vale, Geraldine R.

Science & Math

Univ of Wisconsin Pr

Walking with Muir across Yosemite

Does todays visitor trekking Yosemite National Park find it much different from what John Muir encountered a century ago? Thomas and Geraldine Vale retrace Muirs path, based upon journal descriptions of his activities and experiences during his first summer in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. From the foothills through Yosemite Valley and on up to the Tuolumne Meadows, the Vales follow the present roads and trails that crossed Muirs route, imagining his reaction to the landscape while reflecting on the natural world in both his time and ours. Illustrated with drawings by John Muir and drawings and photos by the Vales, Walking with Muir across Yosemite emphasizes that current visitors to Yosemiteindeed to any national parkcan still experience the solitude, wildness, and romanticism of nature. They believe, however, that this modern exploration would benefit from a national parks policy that actively promotes nature study and encourages a more profound interaction between humans and the natural world.

Walking With Muir Across Yosemite

History

Americas

Does today’s visitor trekking Yosemite National Park find it much different from what John Muir encountered a century ago? Thomas and Geraldine Vale retrace Muir’s path, based upon journal descriptions of his activities and experiences during his first summer in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. From the foothills through Yosemite Valley and on up to the Tuolumne Meadows, the Vales follow the present roads and trails that crossed Muir’s route, imagining his reaction to the landscape while reflecting on the natural world in both his time and ours.     Illustrated with drawings by John Muir and drawings and photos by the Vales, Walking with Muir across Yosemite emphasizes that current visitors to Yosemite—indeed to any national park—can still experience the solitude, wildness, and romanticism of nature. They believe, however, that this modern exploration would benefit from a national parks policy that actively promotes nature study and encourages a more profound interaction between humans and the natural world.

University of Wisconsin Press

Interpretations of wild nature and wilderness are particularly diverse in the American mind, given our history, our collective economic success, and our diverse social and cultural mix. Although the meanings we attribute to nature reflect our different views of the role humans should play in the natural world, there remains a divide between how we embrace protected landscapes and how we consider natural landscapes, or nature itself. Thomas Vale explores this phenomenon in The American Wilderness: Reflections on Nature Protection in the United States. In his examination of protected landscapes at all scales, from the wooded corners of a city park and the local reserve of wetland, to the vast wilderness of the Everglades and Okeefenokee, to Central Park and Yosemite, Vale argues that nature protection is an act of place-creation, an act that necessarily links humans to nature and depends on a diverse array of human interactions.
A rare combination of celebration and criticism, Vale’s argument is twofold: landscapes of protected nature in the United States represent a legitimate natural resource, and contrary to expressions in some recent literature, such landscapes bond people to nature. Providing extensive historical and modern data about the national park, national wilderness, and national wildlife refuge systems, Vale argues for the validity of landscape protection and the benefits of achieving both strict preserves and mixed-commodity places in a democratic society. His goal is to unite the often disparate threads of nature protection into a fabric that will enhance an appreciation for the extent and richness of nature protection sentiment and action in the United States.

The American Wilderness: Reflections on Nature Protection in the United States (Center Books)

Business & Money

Economics

University of Virginia Press

Examines the landscape along Highway 89 from Arizona to Montana, and discusses how the region is changing

Western Images, Western Landscapes: Travels Along U.S. 89

Earth Sciences

University of Arizona Press

In 1901 John Muir described Yosemite: "Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another." Time and the Tuolumne Landscape presents a spellbinding glimpse of this endless song. Through repeat photography, the process whereby a scene in an old picture is precisely rephotographed, Thomas and Geraldine Vale use over eighty photo pairs to document continuity and change in the Tuolumne landscape from Muir's time to our own. In their consideration of change, the Vales offer a meditation on rock and water, vegetation, and human impact. Natural process is comparable, in one sense, to an intricate timepiece with myriad wheels spinning at varying speeds, some stopping or starting without warning, others reversing direction, a few steady on course. Which changes we see, and which changes we comprehend, are limited by the scale of human time. This book is an opportunity to move beyond that constraint to see, with Muir, the whirl and flow of nature.

Time and the Tuolumne Landscape: Continuity and Change in the Yosemite High Country

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Univ of Utah Pr

Plants and People: Vegetation Change in North America (Resource Publications in Geography)

Biological Sciences

Assn of Amer Geographers

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

Books by Vale, Thomas R.