ABOUT THIS BOOK

Guy and Laura Waterman spent a lifetime reflecting on and writing about the mountains of the Northeast. The Waterman Fund seeks to further their legacy of stewardship through an annual essay contest that celebrates and explores issues of wilderness, wildness, and humanity. Since 2008, the Waterman Fund has partnered with the journal Appalachia in seeking out new and emerging voices on these subjects, and in publishing the winning essay in the journal. Part of the contest’s mission is to find and support such emerging writers, and a number of them have gone on to publish other work in Appalachia or their own books. The contest has succeeded admirably in fulfilling its mission: new writers have brought fresh perspectives to these timeless issues of wilderness and wildness. In New Wilderness Voices these winning essays are collected for the first time, along with the best runners-up. Together, they make up an important and celebratory addition to the growing body of environmental literature, and shed new light on our wild spaces.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

CHRISTINE WOODSIDE is the editor of Appalachia journal, published by the Appalachian Mountain Club. She is the author of Libertarians on the Prairie: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane, and the Making of the Little House Books. AMY SEIDL is a lecturer in environmental studies at the University of Vermont and the author of two books on climate change, Early Spring: An Ecologist and Her Children Wake to a Warming World and Finding Higher Ground.

REVIEWS

“It’s worth noting that thanks to the Waterman Fund, and to the University Press of New England . . . the Upper Valley plays a central role for people who are trying to define and preserve wilderness. What wilderness is, who can say? But there’s no question that it’s worth looking for.”—Valley News

“If you’re snowed in, rained in, or just in, New Wilderness Voices delivers two dozen calls of the wild. . . . Read this anthology and lace up your boots.”—Barbara Richardson, editor of Dirt: A Love Story

“As these writers contemplate wilderness they discover new, often unexpected connections to the natural world. . . . This anthology is all about deeper, more meaningful relationships with nature and the people with whom they experience it.”—Tom Wessels, author of Granite, Fire, and Fog: The Natural and Cultural History of Acadia

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword—Amy Seidl • Introduction—Christine Woodside, Annie Bellerose, and Bethany Taylor • Letter to Readers—Laura Waterman • Climate Change at the Top—Kimberley S. K. Beal (2008, Winner) • A Dark Night on White Wall—Will Kemeza (2008, Runner-up) • It’s a Seasonal Life—Sally Manikian (2008) • Looking Up—Sandy Stott (2008) • A Ritual Descent—Jeremy Loeb (2009, Winner) • The Northeast’s True Hundred-Mile Wilderness?—Rick Ouimet (2009, Runner-up) • Hunting the Woolly Adelgid—Dianne Fallon (2010, Winner) • The Red Squirrel and the Second Law, or, What the Caretaker Saw—Jonathan Mingle (2010, Runner-up) • On Being Lost—Blair Braverman (2011, Co-winner) • The Warp and Weft—Bethany Taylor (2011, Co-winner) • A Place for Everything—Katherine Dykstra (2012, Winner) • Wilderness—Angela Zukowski (2012, Runner-up) • Where the Trail Ends—Wendy Ungar (2012) • Catching a Fish—Leah Titcomb (2012) • Epigoni, Revisited—Michael Wejchert (2013, Winner) • Steward’s Story—Devon Reynolds (2013, Runner-up) • The Cage Canyon—Jenny Kelly Wagner (2014, Winner) • Walking with Our Faces to the Sun—Nancy Rich (2014, Runner-up) • Getting Lost in a Familiar Part of the Woods—Aaron Piccirillo (2014) • One Tough Gal—Dove Henry (2015, Winner) • Lady and the Camp—Erica Berry (2015, Runner-up) • About the Contributors