Valerie Wigglesworth & Ralph Swain on Wilderness

Valerie Wigglesworth is a journalist for the Dallas Morning News, and a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists. Ralph Swain is regional wilderness program manager for the Rocky Mountain region of the Forest Service, overseeing 46 wilderness areas in five states.

Together, Wigglesworth and Swain created the Wilderness Ranger Cookbook, a collection of over 100 backcountry recipes from wilderness rangers working at the Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Recently reissued, the book celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act. Today, the National Wilderness Preservation System protects 758 wilderness areas totaling nearly 110 million acres. All proceeds from the Wilderness Ranger Cookbook benefit the Society for Wilderness Stewardship, a nonprofit organization.

You can win this book! See details below.

Wiggleworth and Swain offer their favorite books on wilderness:

A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There
by Aldo Leopold

It is the classic, fundamental piece of work dedicated to the land ethic for all to follow and to pass to future generations. Leopold’s masterpiece will be read for decades to come.

The Enduring Wilderness: Protecting Our Natural Heritage through the Wilderness Act
by Doug Scott

It is the best concise history of the wilderness movement and the language of the Wilderness Act of 1964.

The Wilderness Writings of Howard Zahniser
edited by Mark Harvey

This new book is a collection of Zanny’s early writings about wilderness and his personal struggles to bring awareness to the American people and Congress for the need for wilderness. It offers outstanding insight into the wilderness movement and the essence of the vision for Wilderness Forever.

Let's celebrate 50 years of wilderness!

Win a copy of the Wilderness Ranger Cookbook.

To enter the drawing, simply click on "Post a Comment" and add your name and contact info by November 1, 2014. A name will be randomly chosen and a winner notified by email.

If you like, share with us your favorite wilderness, or a good book on wilderness.

Good Books: Ann Staley on Past & Present

Ann Staley is a poet and teacher, serving her craft and students for 40 years. She holds three masters degrees — humanities, teaching, and public policy — and has worked in high schools, community colleges, universities, prisons, creative retreats, and more.

A prolific poet, Ann's first collection, Primary Sources, debuted in 2011 and was quickly followed by a second book, Instructions for the Wishing Light, in 2014.

"I used to consider myself a teacher who writes, now I'm a writer who teaches," says Ann, who lives in Corvallis, Oregon.

"Though I consider myself a generally happy person, there is a theme of melancholy that seems to follow me. The people I have "lost" have been important in my life — my grandparents, my friends — and though I am old enough to understand that folks come in and out of our lives at different times, it is always a struggle to "let go" with grace. The other central thread is my attentiveness to the Now." 

Looking back and living now, Ann Staley offers three good books on Past & Present:

Teaching A Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
by Annie Dillard

How could any reader resist essay titles like these: On a Hill Far Away, A Field of Silence, God in the Doorway? I couldn't. I'd read Ms. Dillard's story of a year spent alone in a cabin, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek. She'd done something I'd done— living in the woods for nine months — but she'd also written a best seller about her experience. I had to read it. Her voice was pragmatic, true and mystical. I had some of each of these qualities myself. Her essays mesmerized me. And they were always "present tense," here in the Now where we all live.

Letters of Emily Dickinson - Vol. 2
by Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson's collection of letters is a special gift from a dear friend. It was owned by an editor named Robert Duncan in 1942 with his note on the first page, "These behaviors of the year hurt almost like music, shifting when they ease us most." To find the origin of that quote you have to read all the letters she wrote! I especially liked Emily's letters to Mr. T. W. Higginson who was reading Emily's poems and in correspondence with her about her writing life. Fascinating. Haunting. Like the woman herself.


Selected Stories
by Alice Munro

The writer Cynthia Ozick says of Alice Munro, "She is our Chekhov." A Canadian who writes about small towns and ordinary people with "secrets." What reader could resist a first line like, "In the dining room of the Commercial Hotel, Louisa opened the letter that had arrived that day from overseas," or "On the runway, in Honolulu, the plane loses speed, loses heart, falters and veers onto the grass, bumps to a stop." I have a shelf of Munroe's books and am always awaiting the next one.

Good Books: Reb Livingston on Oracles & Dreams

Reb Livingston is the author of Bombyonder — a novel-poetry hybrid available October 2014, God Damsel, and Your Ten Favorite Words. She is both creator and curator of the Bibliomancy Oracle, a site offering over 2,500 prophecies divined from literature. Reb lives in Virginia with her husband and son.

"Reb Livingston is concerned with large and small disruptions: small disruptions of the sentence, large disruptions of the world," notes  Patricia Lockwood.

Reb Livingston suggests three good books on oracles & dreams:

Tarot Wisdom: Spiritual Teachings and Deeper Meanings
by Rachel Pollack

This book notably influenced and changed the way I conduct Tarot readings. More than simply a quick reference for each card, it explores a range of approaches for each card, how the cards work in conjunction with one another and varying interpretations between decks. There’s specific spreads inspired by each Major Arcana  card & suit. Before I read this book, I wasn’t considering “reversed” meanings because most books present them as automatically and unnecessarily negative. But Pollack’s approach is different, each reversed meaning depends on the particular card, the differences often more subtle than an opposite interpretation. She also addresses Tarot-related superstitions and “rules,” like wrapping your deck in silk or not allowing someone else to touch your cards. It’s a valuable book for novice & advanced readers alike. I use my copy so much, I need to buy another because the pages are falling out.

The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images
Ami Ronnberg, editor-in-chief
Kathleen Martin, editor

There are any number of good books on both dream interpretation and symbols, but this book I regularly return to when I want to explore a deeper or variety of cultural meanings related to a specific image or object. While not written specifically (or perhaps solely) for dream interpretation, it nonetheless offers a broad range of possibilities when applying them to dreams, as well as art, literature and history. What I appreciate most is that the essays aren’t afraid to explore inconsistencies and paradoxes of meanings because let’s admit it: there are few absolutes when it comes to meaning. With its beautiful color photographs and illustrations, this book is a bargain too.

Strange Tarot
by Jamalieh Haley

Often I am disappointed how the Tarot is portrayed in popular culture and literature. Perhaps its because the cards are presented in such simplistic fashion. Or perhaps its because the works never seem to move past descriptions or generalities. Often I wonder what exactly I am hoping for, perhaps if I knew I could write it myself. I’m not claiming that Strange Tarot is specifically what I’ve been looking for, but it’s certainly not what I expected or read before. Focusing on Death, the Tower, the Moon, the Lovers, the Empress, The World, The Wheel of Fortune and Judgment (some of the more interesting cards) and referencing some unusual decks (Zombie, Solleone) and even an album (Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot), Haley doesn’t limit the poems to descriptions or card meanings, but instead uses them as springboards to leap all over the place.

An excerpt from Strange Tarot:

Future Solleone: La Luce
You are his oracle—a corpse that reflects all his loved ones. The robot looks up and asks what is this afternoon letter piercing sack of glitter. From it he builds a P-O-O-L and submerges. It’s the kind of suicide that’s so bright even masks close their eyes.

I’m not sure if the poems are free associations or if they’re developing their own meanings/interpretations or if they’re doing something completely else, but they’re a delight to read. This short, limited-edition chapbook, certainly lives up to its “strange” label and I mean that in the best possible way.

Good Books: Eduardo Gabrieloff on Latino Writers

Eduardo Gabrieloff was born in Colombia and moved to Colorado when he was four years old. His work has been published in many literary journals, including Pank, Ninth Letter, The Journal of Ordinary Thought, and can be seen on Denver Public Library's audio archive of poetry. He is a 2014 Canto Mundo Fellow, and was a 2011 Callaloo Fellow. He lives in Denver, Colorado with his partner and child.

“I was forced to read a lot of the poetry canon in high school and hated it,” he says. "One day I announced, proudly, to the class that I could do better, and set to do so. After eighteen years, I’m making progress. And, thankfully, I’ve come to respect and love poetry.”

Eduardo Gabrieloff recommends three good books by Latina/o writers:

Days and Nights of Love and War
by Eduardo Galeano

I don't remember where I got this book. I think I found it in a trash pile in college, one of those epic ones where the seniors just throw away anything they can't take with them. At some point, about a decade later, I actually opened it up. And not just because he has a fantastic first name. This is a book of fragments, loosely linked vignettes that follow Galeano through exile from Uruguay. He lives in Argentina, working as a journalist, after being exiled and the survives the coup d'etat in 1976. The language Galeano uses ranges from simple and straightforward to beautifully lyric; one paragraph will be a political declaration, the next a description of crying with a child whose feelings were hurt. Galeano intersperses these sorts of stories to show the life of an exile. Politics are always on his mind, but he still has to live a normal life. And it's a life filled with sadness and mourning. It is a story of survival, struggle, and remembrance. And it is beautiful.

Toda Violeta Parra: Antologá de canciones y poemas

This is a book of Chilean folk-singer Violeta Parra's song lyrics and some of her poems. Violeta, along with Atahualpa Yunpaqui, were leaders of the Nuevo Cancion movement in South America, a cultural force that is still going more than 60 years later. Violeta's songs showed the poetics of Spanish in ways I don't think it is possible to do in English. I take away a lot from her songs and the craft of her writing. She manages, like Galeano, to write about politics in a way that focuses on the art rather than polemics. This book is an odd one to bring up, as I don't think there's a way to find it outside of interlibrary loan, but the lyrics to her songs can be found online (though untranslated). It's also worth noting how minimalist her songs are, musically. I can't call them three-chord songs, a la The Ramones, but they're close!

Poemas y antipoemas
by Nicanor Parra

The Parra family is prolific. Violeta's brother, Nicanor, is a world famous poet. This book, released in 1954, is still relevant. Nicanor strips the inflated language typical of South American poetry from the 50s and before and introduces a new school of poetry. I think, even subconsciously, his work affects a lot of people around the world. From the Beats to slam poetry, his influence is still felt. There's even a journal, Anti, named after the anti-poem movement! The idea that poetry doesn't have to be aesthetically beautiful to be worthwhile is still hard for me to wrap my head around and let happen in my poems, but every time I read Poemas y antipoemas, I'm struck by the depth of the poetry while it, for lack of a better description, stays simple.

Good Books: Lisa Romeo on Personal Essays by Women

Lisa Romeo's love of personal nonfiction began as a child when she read letters her mother received from childhood friends now living in other places and writing about their lives. Her personal essays have appeared in The New York  Times, and O - The Oprah Magazine, in literary journals, themed collections, and on numerous websites. Romeo teaches memoir and personal essay at The Writers Circle in northern New Jersey, and with the nonfiction MFA (master of fine arts) program offered online by Bay Path College. She works as a freelance manuscript editor and writing coach, and her blog offers author interviews and other writing resources.

"I love many newer single-author essay collections, but there are certain ones I return to when I need to remember why I write essays at all," says Romeo. "I want to say that reading the first lines of these essays feels like being enrobed in a soft quilt – but it's that plus another feeling: of being pushed, urged, prodded to write my own. After only moments inside these pages, I'm challenged, charged up. Come, they seem to say, you can have a space on the page too. And, I follow, or try to."

Lisa Romeo suggests three good books by women essayists:

Living Out Loud
by Anna Quindlen

For me, Anna Quindlen was the way in to personal essay writing, a beacon, a siren. As I worked my way through a series of quasi-writing jobs in public relations, college communications, and marketing in the 1980s, it was her personal essays in The New York Times that helped me see where I wanted to go as a writer. This compilation of her "Life in the 30s" columns holds up well over time, and I return to it again and again. Wrestling with how much of your personal life to put on the page? See "Pregnant in New York." Wondering if you can write about your children?  Consult "A Secret Life." Worried about putting your spouse on the page? There's a lesson on page 73. I teach from her essays often. All of Quindlen's subsequent essay collections make fine reading too, but my dog-eared, slightly yellowed (signed by Anna!) paperback copy of this early gem remains a favorite.

The Woman at the Washington Zoo
by Marjorie Williams

This book was suggested to me by a faculty mentor early in my MFA program, and at first I wasn't sure why: the first third is comprised of the late author's magazine profiles of major political figures, and while the writing is superb and there's much to admire, it wasn't until I got to Part 2: Essays, and Part 3: Time and Chance, that I understood the profound gift this book is to a personal essayist. Williams, who died of cancer in her mid-40s, apparently at the height of her best creative work, is magnificent on every level one can imagine an essayist can aspire to: she moves deftly, beautifully, seamlessly, from and between the most personal, family moments—and the larger universal human questions of illness, mortality, health care, and hope. What emerges is a bold portrait of connectedness, alongside the most singularly private, quiet confronting of what it means to be vital and in the middle of life, motherhood, career, and marriage, facing the inevitability of everything ending and not on one's own schedule. Her essay, "Hit by Lightning: A Cancer Memoir" may be the best essay I've read on this confluence of the human condition.

The Opposite of Fate
by Amy Tan

Very often, I come to an essay collection because I have tried and failed to track down one particular essay I want to read. "Mother Tongue" is the essay that brought me to Tan's collection, and I probably re-read that one piece at least yearly. It has everything a writer hopes to craft into a narrative essay, and yet none of it shows; only rich story emerges, clear and complex, simple and multi-layered. Unlike some miscued essays collections by novelists, there's a clear intent here to be personal; her "I" narrator is not just a character. I don't always love essays in which writers write about writing, or ponder the writer's life, and not every essay in here is about that, but those that are completely cancel out my wariness: Tan avoids every cliché, and shows up as a human being first, who happens to be a writer, who naturally lives out many portions of her life as a writer in the world (and still delivers one fun peek into what writer/readers want to know about big writing deals, in "Joy Luck and Hollywood"). And there's so much more—her cross-cultural marriage; expectations of appearance and body image; the forces exerted by her family history and ancestry—that (as all excellent essays do), invite a reader into the narrator's very specific situation, seemingly just to hear the story, but alas, it's there where we learn something important about our own, very different story.