Title: Thoreau's country
Description: In 1977 David Foster took to the woods of New England to build a cabin with his own hands. Along with a few tools he brought a copy of the journals of Henry David Thoreau. Foster was struck by how different the forested landscape around him was from the one Thoreau described more than a century earlier. The sights and sounds that Thoreau experienced on his daily walks through nineteenth-century Concord were those of rolling farmland, small woodlands, and farmers endlessly working the land.

As Foster explored the New England landscape, he discovered ancient ruins of cellar holes, stone walls, and abandoned cartways - all remnants of this earlier land now largely covered by forest. How had Thoreau's open countryside, shaped by ax and plough, divided by fences and laneways, become a forested landscape? Part ecological and historical puzzle, this book brings a vanished countryside to life in all its dimensions, human and natural, offering a rich record of human imprint upon the land.
Subjects: American Authors, Biography, Description and travel, Homes and haunts, Intellectual life, Landscape changes, Natural history, Travel, Thoreau, henry david, 1817-1862, New england, description and travel, Natural history, north america, Diaries, Human ecology, Literary journeys, Rural Land use, History, Journeys
Places: New England
People: David R. Foster (1954-), Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Time periods: 19th century