The Nature of Home: Taking Root in a Place

by Greta Gaard

"As long as humans have been around, we've had to move in order to survive." So arises that most universal and elemental human longing for home, and so begins Greta Gaard's exploration of just precisely what it means to be at home in the world. Gaard journeys through the deserts of southern California, through the High Sierras, the Wind River Mountains, and the Northern Cascades, through the wildlands and waterways of Washington and Minnesota, through snow season, rain season, mud season, and lilac season, yet her essays transcend mere description of natural beauty to investigate the interplay between place and identity. Gaard examines the earliest environments of childhood and the relocations of adulthood, expanding the feminist insight that identity is formed through relationships to include relationships to place. "Home" becomes not a static noun, but an active verb: the process of cultivating the connections with place and people that shape who we become. Striving to create a sense of home, Gaard involves herself socially, culturally, and ecologically within her communities, discovering that as she works to change her environment, her environment changes her. As Gaard investigates environmental concerns such as water quality, oil spills, or logging, she touches on their parallels to community issues such as racism, classism, and sexism, uncovering the dynamic interaction by which "humans, like other life on earth, both shape and are shaped by our environments." While maintaining an understanding of the complex systems and structures that govern communities and environments, Gaard's writing delves deeper to reveal the experiences and realities we displace through euphemisms or stereotypes, presenting issues such as homelessness or hunger with compelling honesty and sensitivity. Gaard's essays form a quest narrative, expressing the process of letting go that is an inherent part of an impermanent life. And when a person is broken, in the aftermath of that letting go, it is a place that holds the pieces together. As long as we are forced to move--by economics, by war, by colonialism--the strategies we possess to make and redefine home are imperative to our survival, and vital in the shaping of our very identities.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0816525765
• ISBN13: 9780816525768
• Release Date: November 2007
• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.3" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Great Beginning

This book for one, will finally have you run for a field guide to birds. What with the mention of the different kinds of birds, the author comes across in different places. When you read something like 'Canada geese urge on fluffy yellow goslings that look nothing like their black and white parents', you cannot but help to want to know more about them. With the author moving from one place to another, not only is she finding her ultimate place, but also fixing the geography of birds. This for the bird lovers. If you can handle more serious stuff, theres history of waste management interfering with water management requiring water treatment. Water is another major theme in this book. The only way that I could do justice to this book as a reader was to follow the places on google maps. The author's message about nature, its preservation, knowing local history of the vast resources comes across very strongly. Its surprising to see adventures of mountain climbing and glissading along with the Erin Brockovichy work. Some best chapters are on June Lake, CA and the chapter introducing Whatcom and Bellingham. Towards the end it slightly got difficult to read for me.

While home is 'where the heart is', it is also where the body happens to reside as well.

While home is 'where the heart is', it is also where the body happens to reside as well. "The Nature Of Home: Taking Root In A Place" by environmental literature critic, board member of the Environmental Association for Great Lakes Education, and academician Greta Gaard (University of Wisconsin - River Falls) provides a focused yet wide ranging discussion on what it truly means to be at home in the world. A collection of essays that draw upon such diverse sources as Buddhist studies, feminist psychology, ecopsychology, and environmental writing, "The Nature Of Home surveys the interplay between 'place and identity. The resulting conclusion of her theme is that 'home' is not a static concept but rather a process of 'cultivating the connections with place and people that shape who we become'. Thoughtful and thought-provoking, "The Nature Of Home" will prove to be of immense relevance to students of the psychological aspects of the environmentally oriented concept of home, the concept of ecofeminism, and issues of environmentally relevant social justice, as well as non-specialist general readers with an interest in being and feeling at home in our world from the deserts of Southern California, to the high country of the Sierras, the Wind River Mountains, the North Cascades, Washington wildlands and Minnesota waterways in every season of the year.