Reading the Mountains of Home

This text is a journey into the reaches of the once-populated Vermont Hills where John Elder explores the body and soul of a place, interpreting its natural and literary life, and balancing the pressures of civilization and the attraction of wilderness.

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This text is a journey into the reaches of the once-populated Vermont Hills which sees through a landscape in which nature and literature, and loss and recovery, are inextricably joined. John Elder describes the course of the year hiking through forested upland, reflecting on the forces of nature - from the descent of glaciers to the rush of the New Haven River that shaped the plateau for his village of Bristol - and on the human will that denuded and farmed and abandoned the mountains. This leads to mediations on both human failure and the possibility for deeper communion with the land and others. The work is an exploration of the body and soul of a place, an interpretive map of its natural and literary life, balancing the pressures of civilization and the attraction of wilderness.