A road running southward : following John Muir's journey through an endangered land

A road running southward Following John Muir's journey through an endangered land

Dan Chapman

Book - 2022

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Subjects
Chapman, Dan > Travel > Southern States.
Muir, John, > 1838-1914 > Travel > Southern States.
Human ecology > Southern States.
Natural history > Southern States.
Southern States > Environmental conditions.
Southern States > Description and travel.
Published
Washington, DC : Island Press [2022]
Language
English
Main Author
Dan Chapman (author)
Physical Description
245 pages : illustration, map ; 23 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
9781642831948
  • Introduction: Ghosts, Skeeters, and Rye
  • Savannah, Georgia-Muir spent a half-dozen hungry and desperate, yet historically important, nights in the city's famed Bonaventure Cemetery. A latter-day visit to the land of the dead underscores the South's peril, and its promise.
  • Chapter 1. Who Is John Muir?
  • Atlanta, Georgia-A brief biography of the botanist, inventor, rambler, writer, cofounder of the Sierra Club, father of the national park system, and conscience of the environmental movement.
  • Chapter 2. A New South Reckoning
  • Louisville, Kentucky-Muir crosses the Ohio River and into history. The land of bourbon, horses, and highways epitomizes the South's sprawling environmental problems.
  • Chapter 3. The South's Incredible Biodiversity Is Threatened and Endangered
  • Cave City, Kentucky-Mammoth Cave National Park, and the Green River, are filled with natural wonders. Some species are disappearing. Some are already gone. And some are making a comeback.
  • Chapter 4. A Celebration of Muir Turns Toxic
  • Kingston, Tennessee-The annual Muir Fest is overshadowed by the nation's worst coal ash disaster and the South's checkered legacy of cheap energy.
  • Chapter 5. "The Mountains Are Calling"-and They're Not Happy
  • Coker Creek, Tennessee-The saga of the southern Appalachians as they succumb to the very forces that make them popular-with deadly consequences.
  • Chapter 6. More Rain, More Heat, and More Trouble
  • Boone, North Carolina-A warming world forces trees, trout, and rare flowers higher up into the mountains. Climate change hits the hills in unpredictable and alarming ways.
  • Chapter 7. Water Wars
  • Suches, Georgia-Georgia, Alabama, and Florida have been fighting for a generation over the Chattahoochee River. Farmers, oystermen, kayakers, and sturgeon are threatened by the loss of this increasingly precious natural resource.
  • Chapter 8. The Deeper the River, the Greater the Pain
  • Augusta, Georgia-Globalization demands a deeper Savannah River and compounds the environmental damage done previously by dams, developers, cities, farmers, and factories.
  • Chapter 9. A Coastal Playground Is Disappearing
  • Tybee Island, Georgia-Rising seas. Ghost forests. Sunny-day flooding. Salty tap water. Bigger hurricanes. There's not enough money to save the coast from a warming world.
  • Chapter 10. Where Hogs Rule and Turtles Tremble
  • Ossabaw Island, Georgia-Invasive species-wild boar, Burmese pythons, tegu lizards, lionfish, northern snakeheads, melaleuca trees, laurel wilt-march relentlessly across the South. A marksman aims to save at least one endangered species.
  • Chapter 11. Take My Water, Please
  • High Springs, Florida-The aquifer running from Savannah to Miami is under siege from overuse, pollution, and saltwater intrusion. Yet Florida all but gives away billions of gallons a year to private profiteers.
  • Chapter 12. The End of the Road
  • Cedar Key, Florida-Development imperils one of Florida's last wild places. Science, though, offers hope for the future.
  • Acknowledgments
  • Further Readings
  • About the Author
Review by Booklist Review

Tracing naturalist John Muir's 1867 walk from Kentucky to Florida, a journalist despairs of environmental ills and fears for the future of the wild, biodiverse South. Chapman starts in Louisville, where Muir's lushly leafy oak forests have given way to suburban sprawl. In Tennessee he chronicles coal-ash pollution; in Georgia, water-use litigation, riparian degradation, and coastal flooding. Florida, the "flowery Canaan" sought by Muir, is paving its wilderness and squandering its freshwater aquifers. A veteran Atlanta reporter (currently with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), Chapman offers a lucid feature-story narrative with a splash of gonzo. He sleeps rough in Savannah's storied Bonaventure Cemetery, where Muir had an epiphany about his life's work and contracted malaria. But it's modern-day worries about "environmental carnage," not mosquitoes, that haunt Chapman. Despite a few glimmers of hope--rebounding oyster beds, an Ossabaw Island marksman saving turtles by shooting feral hogs--the prognosis is grim. Chapman may be following Muir's footprints, but as a work of environmental consciousness-raising, this book's true inspiration may be Rachel Carson.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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