Culture, Environment, and Conservation in the Appalachian South (review)

that Wright can embrace fitfully at best but that the onset of autumn, season of mutability, causes him to reconsider. Wright's wide reading in such theologians and philosophers, in medieval and more recent mystics, and in the early Gnostic texts collected in The Nag Hammadi Library testifies to his ongoing spiritual quest despite the "wordless, encrypted blue" his skyward gaze confronts. Part four ends on a positive note as Wright recalls his decision to pursue a career in poetry, a vocation that has allowed him to strive for "words foursquare and indestructible," however fleeting the poet's life. The brief concluding portion of the book, "Body and Soul," again highlights the view of human nature's dual identity that Wright has inherited from Western philosophy and theology. The final poem is set in April, when "anything's possible," though the poet also terms this world "the underworld," thereby emphasizing the gap between the immanent and the transcendent. "Ephemera's what moves us," Wright comments, especially our own ephemerality and the ephemera of poems themselves, which are often "insubstantial as smoke" rather than "indestructible." It is this bone-deep vision of life's transience that leads Wright to include among the four main lessons he has learned the imperative, "Write as though you had in hand the last pencil on earth." Not all the poems in A Short History of the Shadow attain the high standard implicit in this directive. But many do, more than enough to justify another of this volume's dicta: "Every true poem is a spark." These poems will assuredly spark keen insights in their readers and will deepen appreciation for the continuing excellence of Wright's artistic achievement. —John Lang Howell, Benita J., ed. Culture, Environment, and Conservation in the Appalachian South. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002. 216 pages. Hardcover $39.95. Paper $16.95. This anthology edited by anthropologist Benita Howell reflects the growing awareness that humans, plants, and animals entwine in complex relationships that profoundly affect Appalachia's natural environment. Insisting that "solving environmental problems requires cultural thinking" (p.l), she and her fellow authors challenge environmental scientists to collaborate with "cultural scientists" (archaeologists, historians, architectural historians, landscape architects, cultural 84 geographers, and applied ethnographers). While this logical deduction has long guided conservationists working with indigenous peoples abroad, it has been resisted by federal agencies in Appalachia that still stereotypically blame the despoiling of Appalachia's environment on defects in its culture. Howell and her collaborators call upon environmental scientists, planners, and activists alike to overcome this impediment to resolving environmental problems by applying the perspectives and methodologies of the cultural sciences. Chapters in Part 1 demonstrate how the empirical methods of the cultural sciences can reveal the changing dynamics of human impact on the landscape. Applying zooarchaeological techniques to animal remains in Dust Cave in north Alabama, Renee Walker concludes that Holocene period hunters readily adapted their diet as a warming climate changed the mix of animals. Claire Jantz and Michael Gregory employ paleoethnobotany and historical archaeology respectively to demonstrate the environmental consequences resulting from longterm social and economic changes in Cades Cove, Tennessee, and Rockbridge County, Virginia. Part 2 examines people forming attachments to place by assigning cultural meaning to their surroundings and how competing claims to land use can threaten those attachments. Michael Ann Williams describes the hundreds of inhabitants who, removed from the Smokies to make way for a national park, nevertheless bequeathed their sense of place to succeeding generations through the ritual ofhomecoming. Mary Hufford argues that mountaintop removal of coal is destroying not only West Virginia's small farm corn-woodland-pastureland economy but also cultural memories of a landscape shaped by public access to a forest commons. Melinda Wagner's ethnographic interviews, conducted as part of the environmental impact statement for a proposed high voltage power line, substantiate how generations ofinteractionwith their natural surroundings shaped the identities ofAppalachian Virginians. Part 3 presents environmental activists who used cultural science research to control development. Doris Link, David Brady, and Nancy Givens report how ethnographic studies validating attachment to place helped block a high voltage power line from disrupting their southwest Virginia community. Gerald Schroedl describes...