Blurbs from John D’Agata, Camille Dungy, and Christopher Merrill
“A series of absorbing, funny, tragic, and deeply present ruminations…packed with a scientist’s curiosity and an artist’s imagination…a lesson in how to accept, relish and even seek out change. – John D’Agata, About a Mountain
“These walks with Leslie Carol Roberts — by turns exhilarating, heart-breaking, and informative — are always just what I need. – Camille Dungy, Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry.
“A profound meditation on the intersection of many different histories, lives, and fates, all of which reveal different facets of a thoroughly engaging literary imagination. – Christopher Merrill, Director of the Iowa International Writing Program; Self-Portrait with Dogwood.
Here Is Where I Walk: Episodes from a Life in the Forest, is an eco-memoir that explores, through stories of the author’s own experiences as a traveler, walker, mother, teacher, journalist and writer, how humans are changed by deep engagement with varied species of trees, animals, and plants in diverse locales around the world. Arguing for a flat ontology, Leslie calls to mind the scientists and poets who have informed her own philosophical position vis a vis more-than-humans. While the stories are rooted in many years of living in the Presidio National Park in San Francisco, Leslie equally recounts walks in the Indiana Dunes National Park, in Umbria, Italy, and in the wilds of Tasmania, among others. Leslie brings a sweet, emotional voice to her walks, as she reflects on the role complex ecosystems play in her own and other artists’, naturalists’, and scientists’ lives, nourishing the human spirit in times both tragic and triumphant.
QUOTE from Here:
“There are reports in the esteemed journal Nature that scientists have discovered what is called the Wood Wide Web, a revelation that trees and fungi converse, sharing across species information about their needs and alerting each other to predation threats. Living in the midst of one of America’s great historic forests — a forest with the same designation as historic human-built structures, these discoveries confirmed what I believe so many of us walkers-of-woods have long sensed. From the forest bathers of Japan to Henry David Thoreau, to John Muir, to Annie Dillard, to Alice Eastwood the great Western botanist, we all of us have felt this chatter.” – From the introduction to Here Is Where I Walk.
Get A Copy“This is no ordinary nature book, though Ms. Roberts writes in the tradition of Thoreau, Muir, Leopold, Carson, and Terry Tempest Williams. Rather, it is a profound meditation on the intersection of many different histories, lives, and fates, all of which reveal different facets of a thoroughly engaging literary imagination. The author seems to have walked everywhere in the park, turning her daily journeys rich with observation and recollection into occasions to tease out larger meanings about our brief time on earth.” – Christopher Merrill, author of Self Portrait with Dogwood, and Director of the University of Iowa International Writing Program