Year of Award
2008
Document Type
Thesis - Campus Access Only
Degree Type
Master of Science (MS)
Degree Name
Environmental Studies
Department or School/College
Environmental Studies Program
Committee Chair
Phil Condon
Commitee Members
Amy Ratto-Parks, Craig Childs
Keywords
bison, Detachment, natural world, scars, wildness, wounds
Abstract
This thesis is a collection of narrative non-fiction essays – some of them more journalistic in nature and others more memoir-ish or ruminating. Readers are asked to travel through my recent years, as I ramble and certain key themes are explored. Those themes are as follows: First, detachment from the natural world and the alienation that stems from it, whether in terms of geography or industry; second, wildness as an energy that humans, sometimes inadvertently, seek to suppress or control, and wildness in the form of nature’s scars and wounds (the two being mirror images of one another). The avatars of wildness in these stories come in various incarnations, i.e. bugs and bison, clear-cuts and chemical spills, and brief but edifying periods of intense psychological turmoil. These things can be found in the border country, the no man’s land between nature and humanity. The places where we find wildness are the places of death and depravity and deterioration, where humans are winning their war against the natural world or nature is retaliating in turn.
Recommended Citation
Miller, Nathaniel Ian, "Black Leaves" (2008). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 155.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/155
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© Copyright 2008 Nathaniel Ian Miller