"The height of our mountains", wrote Thomas Jefferson in his "Notes on the State of Virginia", 'has not yet been estimated with any degree of exactness'. In this sweeping anthology of nearly four centuries of nature writing from the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Michael P. Branch and Daniel J. Philippon take the full measure of this rich natural and literary landscape. Beginning with Captain John Smith's eager gaze westward in search of gold and ending with contemporary essayinst John Daniel's trtansformative gaze inward in search of wilderness, "The height of our mountains" collects the work of 70 of the nation's finest writers on nature since 1607.
This wide-ranging survey includes colonial narratives by Robert Beverly, William Byrd, and George Washington; natural history writings by John Bartram, Mark Catesby, and John James Audubon; travel narratives by King Louis Philippe of France, James Kirke Paulding, and Caroline Gilman; diaries of memoirs by Cornelia Peake McDonald, Walt Whitman,and John Burroughs; fiction by William Gilmore Simms, Ellen Glasgow, and Villa Cather; speeches by James Madison, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin Roosevelt; and contemporary nature essays by Donald Culross Paettie, Edwin Way Teale; Roger Tory Ppeterson, Annie Dillard, Peter Svenson, and Jake Page. The book also includes a critical introduction to the character and form of nature writing, the concepts of place and bioregionalism, and the literary natural history of the Blue Ridge region, as well as detailed notes to the selection and an extensive bibliographical essay. Illustrated with historical paintings, drawings, engravings, and maps.