Monthly Archives: February 2010
FREE RANGE: FOOD, NATURE, PLACE, AND MORE
Stonewall: permission to dig
There must be a story behind the sign at the front gate of the Stonewall Community Cemetery—I mean, who digs a new grave in a cemetery without permission?—but I don’t know it. Even though I wrote the entry on Stonewall … Continue reading
Posted in Place
Tagged Civil War, Handbook of Texas, Israel Nunez, Lyndon Johnson, nineteenth century, peaches, Pedernales River, Stonewall TX
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Massachusetts, part III: take a walk on the wild side
A Very Long Time Ago, my mother brought home a Peter Max-style poster with this quotation from Henry David Thoreau: “In wilderness is the preservation of the world.” Each time we moved, its reappearance was an indication that I was … Continue reading
Posted in Nature
Tagged camels, David Quammen, Henry David Thoreau, Madroño Ranch, Massachusetts, nineteenth century, predators, walking, wildness
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The Great Texas Camel Experiment
Susan Orlean’s wonderful story on mules in the military in this week’s issue of The New Yorker mentions one of my favorite, and most unlikely, episodes of Hill Country history: the U.S. Army’s Great Texas Camel Experiment of the 1850s. … Continue reading
Posted in More
Tagged aoudad, camels, Camp Verde, Civil War, desert, Douglas MacArthur, Jefferson Davis, mules, San Francisco Chronicle, Susan Orlean, Texas Hill Country, The New Yorker
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Massachusetts, part II: in defense of Thoreau
On our recent trip to snowy Massachusetts, as Heather told you last week, we carved out time for a pilgrimage to Walden Pond, just south of Concord, the very wellspring of American conservationism. Walden Pond, of course, is where that … Continue reading