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A Road Running Southward: Following John Muir’s Journey through an Endangered Land
Maybe someday
49
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
21/100Critics
77/100Scholars
Author:
Dan Chapman
Publisher:
Island Press
Date:
May 26, 2022
In 1867, John Muir set out on foot to explore the botanical wonders of the South, from Kentucky to Florida. One hundred and fifty years later, veteran Atlanta reporter Dan Chapman recreated Muir's journey to see for himself how nature has fared since Muir's time. He uses humor, keen observation, and a deep love of place to celebrate the South's natural riches. But he laments the long-simmering struggles over misused resources and seeks to discover how Southerners might balance surging population growth with protecting the natural beauty Muir found so special.
What The Reviewers Say
Dan Chapman retraces the ecologist John Muir’s thousand-mile walk through the Reconstruction-era South, and what he finds there today is alarming.
Alternating between jeremiad and dark satire, Mr. Chapman, a seasoned environmental journalist from Georgia, thinks that we have lived precisely the way Muir admonished us we shouldn’t—namely, as if the world were made for humans. While Mr. Chapman isn’t loath to name his villains, he is more interested in the good guys.
How would Muir react to our contemporary landscape? 'He would cry in his beer today,' writes Chapman. However, Muir likely would nod his approval at the work of his acolyte.
[Chapman's] wry observations and self-deprecating wit make a book that delivers great doses of history and bad news surprisingly readable.
