Making Mountains

Making Mountains PDF Author: David Stradling
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295989890
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
For over two hundred years, the Catskill Mountains have been repeatedly and dramatically transformed by New York City. In Making Mountains, David Stradling shows the transformation of the Catskills landscape as a collaborative process, one in which local and urban hands, capital, and ideas have come together to reshape the mountains and the communities therein. This collaboration has had environmental, economic, and cultural consequences. Early on, the Catskills were an important source of natural resources. Later, when New York City needed to expand its water supply, engineers helped direct the city toward the Catskills, claiming that the mountains offered the purest and most cost-effective waters. By the 1960s, New York had created the great reservoir and aqueduct system in the mountains that now supplies the city with 90 percent of its water. The Catskills also served as a critical space in which the nation's ideas about nature evolved. Stradling describes the great influence writers and artists had upon urban residents - especially the painters of the Hudson River School, whose ideal landscapes created expectations about how rural America should appear. By the mid-1800s, urban residents had turned the Catskills into an important vacation ground, and by the late 1800s, the Catskills had become one of the premiere resort regions in the nation. In the mid-twentieth century, the older Catskill resort region was in steep decline, but the Jewish "Borscht Belt" in the southern Catskills was thriving. The automobile revitalized mountain tourism and residence, and increased the threat of suburbanization of the historic landscape. Throughout each of these significant incarnations, urban and rural residents worked in a rough collaboration, though not without conflict, to reshape the mountains and American ideas about rural landscapes and nature.

Making Mountains

Making Mountains PDF Author: David Stradling
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295989890
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 362

Get Book Here

Book Description
For over two hundred years, the Catskill Mountains have been repeatedly and dramatically transformed by New York City. In Making Mountains, David Stradling shows the transformation of the Catskills landscape as a collaborative process, one in which local and urban hands, capital, and ideas have come together to reshape the mountains and the communities therein. This collaboration has had environmental, economic, and cultural consequences. Early on, the Catskills were an important source of natural resources. Later, when New York City needed to expand its water supply, engineers helped direct the city toward the Catskills, claiming that the mountains offered the purest and most cost-effective waters. By the 1960s, New York had created the great reservoir and aqueduct system in the mountains that now supplies the city with 90 percent of its water. The Catskills also served as a critical space in which the nation's ideas about nature evolved. Stradling describes the great influence writers and artists had upon urban residents - especially the painters of the Hudson River School, whose ideal landscapes created expectations about how rural America should appear. By the mid-1800s, urban residents had turned the Catskills into an important vacation ground, and by the late 1800s, the Catskills had become one of the premiere resort regions in the nation. In the mid-twentieth century, the older Catskill resort region was in steep decline, but the Jewish "Borscht Belt" in the southern Catskills was thriving. The automobile revitalized mountain tourism and residence, and increased the threat of suburbanization of the historic landscape. Throughout each of these significant incarnations, urban and rural residents worked in a rough collaboration, though not without conflict, to reshape the mountains and American ideas about rural landscapes and nature.

The Mountains Next Door

The Mountains Next Door PDF Author: Janice Emily Bowers
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816546991
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
A charming natural history (inclined to botany) of the Rincon Mountains of SE Arizona. But the location is not carefully specified.

The City of the Saints

The City of the Saints PDF Author: Sir Richard Francis Burton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 748

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Book Description


At the Mountains of Madness

At the Mountains of Madness PDF Author: H. P. Lovecraft
Publisher: The Floating Press
ISBN: 1776671856
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
In this classic novella from horror and fantasy luminary H.P. Lovecraft, geology professor William Dyer recounts a harrowing expedition to Antarctica. The research trip uncovered a series of strange fossils, the likes of which had never before been encountered. This leads the scientists to even more mysterious discoveries, including evidence of an ancient civilization.

Day Hiking Los Angeles

Day Hiking Los Angeles PDF Author: Casey Schreiner
Publisher: Mountaineers Books
ISBN: 1680510096
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
• 125 of the best trails throughout the Los Angeles metro area • Easy-to-use, well-organized guide to hiking in the greater Los Angeles area • Hikes feature ocean views, waterfalls, coastal canyons, native grasslands, rocky peaks, desert wildflowers, and more In Southern California, the city of Los Angeles alone covers more than 500 square miles. Yet beyond the freeways and suburbia, there is a surprising amount of hikeable green space and wilderness. This new guide details trails in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, the world’s largest urban national park stretching from the Pacific Coast right into Hollywood itself; the Santa Susana Mountains in Los Padres National Forest; Angeles National Forest, including the San Gabriels and Mount San Antonio, the highest point in Los Angeles County; the striking desert landscape of Antelope Valley; the Santa Ana Mountains; portions of the San Bernardino Mountains; Chino Hills State Park; and slivers of green space and city parks such as famed Griffith Park.

Behind the Mountains

Behind the Mountains PDF Author: Edwidge Danticat
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 1338841564
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description
A lyrical and poignant coming-of-age story about one girl's immigration experience, as she moves from Haiti to New York City, by award-winning author Edwidge Danticat. It is election time in Haiti, and bombs are going off in the capital city of Port-au-Prince. During a visit from her home in rural Haiti, Celiane Espérance and her mother are nearly killed. Looking at her country with new eyes, Celiane gains a fresh resolve to be reunited with her father in Brooklyn, New York. The harsh winter and concrete landscape of her new home are a shock to Celiane, who witnesses her parents' struggle to earn a living and her brother's uneasy adjustment to American society, and at the same time encounters her own challenges with learning and school violence. National Book Award finalist Edwidge Danticat weaves a beautiful, honest, and timely story of the American immigrant experience in this luminous novel about resilience, hope, and family.

My Side of the Mountain

My Side of the Mountain PDF Author: Jean Craighead George
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593115007
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
"Should appeal to all rugged individualists who dream of escape to the forest."—The New York Times Book Review Sam Gribley is terribly unhappy living in New York City with his family, so he runs away to the Catskill Mountains to live in the woods—all by himself. With only a penknife, a ball of cord, forty dollars, and some flint and steel, he intends to survive on his own. Sam learns about courage, danger, and independence during his year in the wilderness, a year that changes his life forever. “An extraordinary book . . . It will be read year after year.” —The Horn Book

In the Mountains

In the Mountains PDF Author: Ned Morgan
Publisher: Aster
ISBN: 1783253711
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Mountains have forever been steeped in poetry, symbolism and mystery, inspiring everyone from the explorers who wish to scale every peak to those who wish to walk in the valleys, ski the slopes or take in the crisp air and feel renewed once more. These rooftops of the world encourage us to see the bigger picture, appreciate the world around us and the sensations in our own bodies. The mountains offer clarity and a sense of 'getting away from it all' - they call to our wild side and are in many physical and mental ways good for us. The benefits of spending time at altitude include: Weight loss Improved heart health Reduced stress Improved the quality of sleep Improved immune function Encouraged physical fitness and activity Improved mental agility and creativity Improved mood Improved self-esteem, self-awareness and sense of wellbeing As the world's population becomes increasingly urbanised, the need for a healthy relationship with nature is more important than ever, both from a psychological wellbeing and physical health point of view. In the Mountains is an awe-inspiring book that takes us on a journey to reveal the health and wellbeing benefits of spending time at altitude and also teaches how we can be inspired by the research to bring elements of a mountain lifestyle into our everyday lives, from spending more time outdoors, walking on uneven ground whenever possible and enjoying the medicinal benefits of mountain herbs.

Across a Hundred Mountains

Across a Hundred Mountains PDF Author: Reyna Grande
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743269586
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Grande puts a human face on the epic story about those who make it across the border into America, those who never make it across, and those who are left behind.

The Control of Nature

The Control of Nature PDF Author: John McPhee
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374708495
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
While John McPhee was working on his previous book, Rising from the Plains, he happened to walk by the engineering building at the University of Wyoming, where words etched in limestone said: "Strive on--the control of Nature is won, not given." In the morning sunlight, that central phrase--"the control of nature"--seemed to sparkle with unintended ambiguity. Bilateral, symmetrical, it could with equal speed travel in opposite directions. For some years, he had been planning a book about places in the world where people have been engaged in all-out battles with nature, about (in the words of the book itself) "any struggle against natural forces--heroic or venal, rash or well advised--when human beings conscript themselves to fight against the earth, to take what is not given, to rout the destroying enemy, to surround the base of Mt. Olympus demanding and expecting the surrender of the gods." His interest had first been sparked when he went into the Atchafalaya--the largest river swamp in North America--and had learned that virtually all of its waters were metered and rationed by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' project called Old River Control. In the natural cycles of the Mississippi's deltaic plain, the time had come for the Mississippi to change course, to shift its mouth more than a hundred miles and go down the Atchafalaya, one of its distributary branches. The United States could not afford that--for New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and all the industries that lie between would be cut off from river commerce with the rest of the nation. At a place called Old River, the Corps therefore had built a great fortress--part dam, part valve--to restrain the flow of the Atchafalaya and compel the Mississippi to stay where it is. In Iceland, in 1973, an island split open without warning and huge volumes of lava began moving in the direction of a harbor scarcely half a mile away. It was not only Iceland's premier fishing port (accounting for a large percentage of Iceland's export economy) but it was also the only harbor along the nation's southern coast. As the lava threatened to fill the harbor and wipe it out, a physicist named Thorbjorn Sigurgeirsson suggested a way to fight against the flowing red rock--initiating an all-out endeavor unique in human history. On the big island of Hawaii, one of the world's two must eruptive hot spots, people are not unmindful of the Icelandic example. McPhee went to Hawaii to talk with them and to walk beside the edges of a molten lake and incandescent rivers. Some of the more expensive real estate in Los Angeles is up against mountains that are rising and disintegrating as rapidly as any in the world. After a complex coincidence of natural events, boulders will flow out of these mountains like fish eggs, mixed with mud, sand, and smaller rocks in a cascading mass known as debris flow. Plucking up trees and cars, bursting through doors and windows, filling up houses to their eaves, debris flows threaten the lives of people living in and near Los Angeles' famous canyons. At extraordinary expense the city has built a hundred and fifty stadium-like basins in a daring effort to catch the debris. Taking us deep into these contested territories, McPhee details the strategies and tactics through which people attempt to control nature. Most striking in his vivid depiction of the main contestants: nature in complex and awesome guises, and those who would attempt to wrest control from her--stubborn, often ingenious, and always arresting characters.