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Landscapes of the Heart: Narratives of Nature and Self

by Michael Aleksiuk and Thomas Nelson, eds.

The essays collected by Michael Aleksiuk and Thomas Nelson in Landscapes of the Heart till the fertile ground plowed by Henry David Thoreau in Walden, focusing on writers’ personal relationships with the natural world. Missing here, though, are Thoreau’s fully articulated reflections, the poetic economy of his writing, and his ambition to win over more than just those already converted to his radical criticisms of civilization.

Many of the writers understand the wilderness well enough to pose worthy philosophical questions but not well enough to broach possible answers. Contributor Mark Schaller uses his week alone in the mountains to bemoan and analyze his failed relationships, but does not produce anything beyond such superficial teen-journal insights as, I must learn to ask for what I want.

Worse is J. Douglas Porteous’s “Slaughterhouse: How Vandals Destroyed My Home and What I Did About It.” A kneejerk conservatism infuses his lament for the lost town of his youth, an English village he himself fled for greater opportunities across the Atlantic. He accuses those responsible for the economic revitalization of his moribund hamlet of the basest of motives, without convincing the reader that this nostalgic paradise was indeed not better off lost.

Three of the essays poignantly discuss the interesting relations between humanity and the natural world. Robert G. Williamson, a longtime advocate for the Innu and the Arctic, convincingly explains how the Inuktuk language frames the natives’ relation to their region; editor Michael Aleksiuk exposes the values behind an archetypal conflict with his tree-levelling neighbour; and Lisa Lynch deftly mingles the personal and political when describing her relationship with the now imperilled river in which her only sister drowned.

 

Reviewer: Alec Scott

Publisher: NeWest Press

DETAILS

Price: $24.95

Page Count: 208 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 1-896300-62-6

Released: Mar.

Issue Date: 2002-2

Categories: Science, Technology & Environment