The Wildest Place on Earth: Italian Gardens and the Invention of Wilderness

by John Hanson Mitchell

Book Overview

A compelling inquiry of the meaning of wilderness follows the author's exploration of local landscapes such as a hedge maze and town parks in search of that essential contact with nature. This is the ironic story of how Italian Renaissance and Baroque gardens encouraged the preservation of the American wilderness and ultimately fostered the creation of the world's first national park system. Told via Mitchell's sometimes disastrous and humorous travels--from...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1582432155
• ISBN13: 9781582432151
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: Catapult
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.3" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

top shelf

Not so often do I come across a recently published work and call it a classic -- something worth preserving and handing down to the next generation -- but this is one. It is an honest man's reexamination of how to relate to nature. He wears his erudition lightly, and one has confidence that his thoughts are his own and hard-won. Like many classics, one gets the feeling that for every sentence written, there were ten he didn't write. The book reminds me in some deep sense of the old masons who taught me my trade. Their words were few, but long thought out, humble, and worth remembering.

In search of the spirit of the wilderness

This book is a pilgrimage. Not a linear pilgrimage that sets off from a given point and progresses towards a distant goal, but a pilgrimage through a labyrinth or maze - a circular pilgrimage, if you will.The writer, a naturalist with a home and garden in eastern Massachusetts, is at home also in the wilderness of the western United States as well as in thr historic gardens of Italy. He traces for the reader the influence that the great gardens of Italy, part cultivated, part bosky wilderness, have had on the development of both the gardens and the wilderness of the U.S. But the book is not so simple and direct. Through it runs the theme of the labyrinth, its symbolism of the complexities of nature, its paradoxes, twists and turns.The true spirit of wildness is seldom to be found, the writer says, in our large "wilderness" parks polluted by ATV's, rangers and over-run camp sites. Human connection with the land is most strongly felt in our gardens - not the front yard with its neatly mowed lawn and well-pruned foundation planting but a truly creative garden with wild spaces and vistas that welcome wild creatures. We can save some land from developers, build small parks, add in gardens with their boskyness (lovely word, that) and create our own web of wilderness even in our most built up areas,Did the nature god Pan die with the birth of Christianity and the idea of dominion over all the creatures of the earth? The writer is optimistic that he did not and that the true spirit of nature can be revived, one natural garden space at a time.This is the work of a respected nature writer who is stringing together ideas about wilderness and gardens loosely and creatively. It is both evocative and provocative, a mental ramble for an open and enquiring mind.

An arboretum of ideas

Like a ramble through a garden, or through the twists and turns of a maze, Mitchell takes the reader on a casually structured walk through memory, opinion, and speculation. He jumps from topic to topic in an engaging manner without exploring in any great depth his subjects -- the history of gardening in Italy and America, a few favorite writers (Thoreau, Wharton), his own large garden, his personal history, encounters with interesting people, the American conception and use of wilderness, urban encroachment, mazes and monsters, some colorful myths and stories. Nor does he need to go deep. His attempt in these related essays seems to be to introduce the reader to a great variety of ways of thinking about gardens, to provide different pathways through the subject, different perspectives. And he succeeds. Despite his overly ambitious subtitle ("Italian Gardens and the Invention of the Wilderness"), which suggests a strong unifying theme that the book is not disciplined enough to provide, he continually evokes the beauty and mystery of gardens as places of internal as well as external discovery. Constantly on the lookout for an iconic, sexless Pan, Mitchell finds the demigod in humans, goats, decorative statues, the center of a maze, and, ultimately, in the enduring metaphor that survived the arrival of Christianity not just to exist on its own, but also to inform the imagery of Satan. There are several startling moments as he gently guides us on his personal journey, such as the fact that in the 1960s scientists discovered lead from auto exhaust embedded in Arctic ice, or his encounters with an unnerving hiker in one of our national parks. Throughout, Mitchell's abiding faith in the garden, in the importance of human contact with the earth, sustains the book's meditative and thoughtful tone.

Rambles in The Wildest Place on Earth

John Hanson Mitchell has spent the past two decades prowling a square mile or so of suburban woods and fields in Eastern Massachusetts, searching for its past and speculating on its future, and in the process producing 4 books (Ceremonial Time, Living At the End of Time, Walking Toward Walden, and Trespassing) dealing with the nature of place and its affect on the people who live there. His latest book, The Wildest Place on Earth, may at first glance seem, if not exactly a detour, at least a stroll down a side street, away from his favorite square mile of land known as Scratch Flat, but read on and you will find that Mitchell is once again exploring in small spaces.In The Wildest Place on Earth, Mitchell sets out to discover the nature of the American wilderness and the influence of Italy?s tamed landscapes on the American experience. In a series of rambles that span decades and move effortlessly from the history of Renaissance gardens to American conservationists, and the Hudson River school of landscape painters to encounters in America?s overcrowded and over-loved wilderness parks, Mitchell pokes and prods and writes of the past. This book is part travelogue, and part informed speculation as Mitchell comes to realize that wilderness is perhaps more a concept than a true reality for most of us, and that the wildest place on earth may be his own somewhat haphazardly planned backyard garden that has grown over the past decade into a lush and relaxing presence.Mitchell writes much in this book about the Greek and Roman myths and how they influence, even to this day, what we see and feel as wilderness. The god Pan is always present, and the history of mazes and labyrinths makes for some fascinating side trips through Italy. If you are looking for a few good modern-day gardening stories, he supplies those as well.The editor of the Massachusetts Audubon magazine Sanctuary and the winner of the 1994 John Burroughs essay award and the 2000 New England Bookseller?s Award, Mitchell is a graceful stylist who will win you over as he rambles an speculates?much like a close friend who you may not always agree with, but you can?t stop listening to those provocative opinions.

From bewilderment to enchantment...

THE WILDEST PLACE ON EARTH by John Hanson Mitchell is a semi-autobiographical account of how a nature writer based in Thoreau's old stomping grounds in New England became enchanted. The subtitle of Hanson's book is "Italian Gardens and the Invention of Wilderness." Mr. Hanson begins his writing as Thoreau began, complaining about the "developers" who are wrecking the local countryside. He then discusses the concept of countryside--which some view as "wilderness." But what is wilderness? He decides to investigate, and his investigation takes him back to the begnning--to the garden of paradise. The original wilderness may have been frightening, but it had an enchanted center--a sacred garden. Within this garden lived a mystical creature, half beast and half man. To reach the sacred garden one had to pass through a maze. On some level, humans "remember" the enchanted garden and have attempted recreate it over and over with various mazes and gardens. It would seem all human effort in some way is an effort to get back to the beginning. Hanson interweaves Western myths, garden-making, maze-making, conservation of the natural world, artistic principles, and personal humor into his story. Ariadne, Theseus, Daedalus, and the other characters fill his pages. The Great God Pan is his personal friend--he of cloven hoof who has managed to infiltrate the most sacred places including the center of the maze in Chartres Cathedral.If you're a literary buff, an nature lover, a gardener, a witch or a pagan, you will love this book.