Edge Effects
"Edge Effects is a sweet, sane meditation on the state of our world in the American Far West. It should be mandatory reading for our warring timber merchants and environmentalists. Maybe they'd learn some sense. What a fine, hopeful statement. Chris Anderson is to be applauded."—William Kittredge
"…he [Anderson] thoughtfully catalogues what makes a landscape pleasing and discusses the importance of learning to observe and read the forest slowly and regularly. Yet his affection for his surroundings fosters ambivalence: he becomes weary of the responsibility of having to learn about and master the forest…Reflecting on his forest walks, he acknowledges feeling neither Thoreauvian intensity nor deep Benedictine contemplation; rather, the repetition 'has the effect of meditation or liturgy.'"—Publishers Weekly
"Anderson has provided a rich guidebook to his own country, and the walk he offers us is well worth taking."—Georgia Review
Buying his dream house several years ago on the forest's edge near Corvallis, Oregon, essayist Chris Anderson hoped to find the joys of rural living. Despite interminable Mr. Blandings experiences, he lived embowered by 12,000 acres of seemingly endless fir trees. But not for long. The McDonald-Dunn Forest was about to become the site of a disturbing research project. Little did Anderson know when he bought his house that, in addition to studying the ecological effects of clear-cutting, the researchers wanted to see how urban fringe dwellers might be affected too. The shock of that harvest compelled the essays in this vibrant, graceful record of the relationship between the forest and Anderson's life on its boundary.
Foreword
To the Reader
Forest of Voices
Life on the Edge
Excursions
Deeper in the Forest
Life and the Essay Compared to a Forest