Learning, Natural Capital and Sustainable Development: Options for an Uncertain World Book

I SO wanted to love this book. I felt a great deal of kinship and share so much common ground with the author it's almost creepy. For example, I went to the University of Michigan and know the exact spot in Nichols Arboretum on the Huron River where Van Gelder sought solace, and it too gave me respite (albeit from the pain of a long-distance relationship rather than the death of a loved one). I recently lost my father, a larger-than-life person who was so vital in shaping my life that the world seems less solid without him. I understand how your life is separated into "before" and "after" in an instant. I am passionate about both the roots of place and the uprooting of travel. I grew up in a small town, where I lived for 18 years, only rarely leaving the state for vacations in Florida. I rebelled against that heritage by traveling ferociously around the world for many years before finally appreciating the gentle beauty and grace of my hometown that courses through my veins. I learned that "home" and "away" are not mutually exclusive, but blend together to create the fabric of a life. I even dated and loved a Greek Cypriot for goodness sakes! I've seen the Green line, Aphrodite's birth place, and understand first hand how bearing witness to your homeland being torn in two alters the entire course of your life in ways that could never be imagined by those of us who are fortunate enough to have escaped that experience. [return][return]No matter how much I cheered for the author and hoped the book would win me over completely, I didn't love it. I only liked it, and I suspect the only reason why I liked it is because I shared so much of her experience. I do not think it was because the book was well rendered. Which is not to say that her writing does not achieve greatness at certain moments.[return][return]In the end, this is a book that doesn't know what it wants to be. It is part academic - an anthropological study of place and its impact on human life, part memoir, part travelogue, and part exposition of the inherent spirituality in the wilderness. Each of these topics are valuable in their own right, but unfortunately the parts never come together in a cohesive whole, leaving at least this reader dissatisfied.[return][return] Nonetheless, the beauty of Van Gelder's writing in certain passages kept me going, and the book was worth reading for that alone. A few of my favorite lines:[return][return]When describing her father "...(H)is laughing eyes, warm hands, and broad mind had always been the place I had found home... At his funeral, the rabbi pinned black ribbons on us, which were then cut to symbolize the severing of the relationship. I did not need the symbolic gesture. I already knew what it felt like to have the material from which I was made suddenly ripped in half."[return][return]On homeland (and Cyprus in particular): "But to be displaced, like water suddenly splashed from a glass, or suddenly driven from a place does not permit the process of transformation, grief, or separation. Instead, there are perhaps only holes, and those holes are easily filled with grief, anger, and a holy nostalgia for which there are few cures."[return][return]"All stumble over language. All wish to be eloquent. All are still looking for a language for love. Reading them is to resonate with their struggle to articulate that which gives us solace, a sense of grace, beauty, shared grief, and access to the spiritual dimensions of our lives."[return][return]"... (H)unter-gatherers recognize a similar internal spirit in all beings. They do not see otherness in nonhumans; they see in them a sameness in spirit and a difference in form."[return][return]I would recommend this book to those who are passionate about the wilderness, about travel and understanding other cultures, and who can appreciate a diamond of a sentence in a rough of a book. For the rest, I recommend tackling your already burgeoning tbr pile with a selection that will be more fulfilling for you.