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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [250 Line —— 0.0p —— Norm PgEn [250 jeff walker The Great, Shaggy Barbaric Earth Geological Writings of John Burroughs Throughout his career John Burroughs insisted that nature, and ultimately the earth, should be the basis for all observations, all interpretations, and for beauty itself. 1 As far as Burroughs was concerned, observations could be embellished, as an artist might emphasize certain aspects of a view to enhance its beauty. Observations could also be described with emotion, and indeed it made for poor writing if the author wrote without some degree of passion. In the end, however, Burroughs felt that observations and their interpretations must be true to the nature of that which was being described . In “Before Beauty” he put it this way: “the great, shaggy barbaric earth,—yet the summing up, the plenum, of all we know or can know of beauty! So the orbic poems of the world have a foundation as of the earth itself, and are beautiful because they are something else first” (172). That phrase, “shaggy barbaric earth,” appeals to the geologist in me. Burroughs’s fascination with the earth, and with geology, began in his youth when, as he says in the preface to Time and Change, “I delighted in lingering about and beneath the ledges of my native hills” (v). This delight sprang partly from a thirst for adventure and partly from his curiosity about the stories the rocks might tell. Burroughs’s early nature writings concentrated on flowers and birds, but as he matured, his focus shifted from organic nature toward inorganic nature or, in other words, from biology to geology. This is not to say that he wrote less about plants and animals and more about rocks: Under the Maples, published in the year of his death, 1921, is filled with essays on topics such as birds, seals, weasels, mosquitoes, and fleas. But as Burroughs’s understanding of the world developed, he came to appreciate more fully the fact that the natural world of plants and animals depended on the soil as the basis of life and that the soil, in turn, depended on the underlying rocks for its fertility. This essay explores ways in which John Burroughs’s interest in geology influenced his writings; the effects of this interest can be divided into four 250 The Great, Shaggy Barbaric Earth 251 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [251 Line —— -0.3 —— Norm PgEn [251 broad categories. The first category includes writings that specifically explore a particular geological concept, as illustrated in his essay “The Old Ice Flood.” The second category includes essays that use geology to help set the scene, as illustrated by “A River View.” The third includes moments when Burroughs contemplates scientific mysteries and asks prescient questions , as seen in an example from “The Divine Abyss.” The final category includes writings for which geology is but a backdrop for speculations on the dependence of humans upon the natural world, as illustrated by “The Grist of the Gods.” In all these examples we see Burroughs’s fascination with geologic processes and with the immensity of geologic time as well as his ability to distill scientific concepts into plain language that his general audience could understand. The Old Ice Flood “The Old Ice Flood” is an essay on the effects of the continental-scale glaciers that covered the northern half of North America approximately 15,000 years ago. The essay calls to mind Burroughs’s journal entry in which he describes a visit by John Muir in June 1896: “Ask him to tell you his famous dog story . . . and you get the whole theory of glaciation thrown in” (qtd. in Barrus 1:360). By contrast, “The Old Ice Flood” is the whole theory of glaciation with stories from Burroughs’s Hudson Valley home thrown in. In fact, these inclusions are what make so interesting the explanation of such phenomena as glacial erratics, glacial polish and striations, and the geographical limits of the most recent continental ice sheet. For instance, instead of simply telling us...

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