Ode to the Wharton-l

So many people on the Wharton-l have offered great responses and suggestions. It seems I am behind the times. No surprise there. Apparently others have also suggested Adams as the location for The Fruit of the Tree.  This is great news. Now I have a place to really center my eco-historical research. 

I contacted the Massachusetts historical society in hopes that they might know of people doing environmental history research on the Berkshires. My aunt has also sent me a number of good leads on information regarding Adams and North Adams. Things are taking shape, or at the very least direction.

I'm reading Hudson River Bracketed right now, and am about  half way into the novel. This novel will present some challenges I think. I am hoping that some more direct water references will be made, but if not I could use this book as an example of how nature is used as an aesthetic. Plenty of room for this reading in the title alone.

Topography and Thesis

I started reading another Wharton novel today, Hudson River Bracketed.  Published in 1929 it is claimed by some scholars that Wharton considered this work to be one of her best novels.  I am only about 90 pages into it, but there are already several points of interest concerning water issues.  I am not sure if this novel will end up in my thesis as a case study, but it is certainly evidence that water issues were important to Wharton since some of the same issues she was considering in 1913 appear many years later.

Aside from Wharton this day was mostly spent playing with the dogs and catching up on some Columbia Basin Ecology. This week the lessons revolve around industrial disturbances, depressing, but interesting. This class, although it is a great deal of work, and not particularly related to my thesis, has been quite inspiring. I've decided to work on developing a collection of geology/ecology-inspired poems. The tentative title is "Belated Odes to Harlan Bretz".