ANTHOLOGIES - ESSAYS
This Impermanent Earth
Environmental Writing from The Georgia Review
Edited by Douglas Carlson and Soham Patel
(The Georgia Press, 2021)
Includes Watershed by Emily Hiestand
”Incredibly moving and inspiring”
“With this collection The Georgia Review establishes its history as a venue for prophetic and prescient voices.”
This Impermanent Earth charts the course of the American literary response to the twentieth century’s accumulation of environmental deprivations. Arranged chronologically from 1974 to the present, the essays range from twentieth-century examples of what was then called nature writing, through writing after 2000 that gradually redefines the environment in increasingly human terms, to a more inclusive expansion that considers all human surroundings as material for environmental inquiry.
Excerpt from “Watershed”
”Most often my companion on walks at Fresh Pond has been the surrounding land — filled with deciduous woodlands, a stand of white pines, and a small bog with weeping willows — and, of course, the pond itself, on which ice sheets rumble against the shore in winter and canvasbacks bob for their favorite food, wild celery, in fall. From time to time I exchange rambles at Fresh Pond for lap swimming, weight training, and a sauna. The health club in which these activities are accomplished has a skylight over the pool through which a backstroker can admire moons, clouds, pigeons, and falling snow. Handsome palms surround the aqua water. A nice person at the desk gives you a piece of fresh fruit. Driving away from these rituals, I have but a single thought (if you can call it a thought), namely, "Everything is fine." The effect is testimony to the health club's powers, and bringing any calm into this society is good, but the influence of Fresh Pond is even more salutary.
Circling Fresh Pond in all seasons has immersed me in a nuanced portrait of the year, and the pond's fable of constant change within continuity has voided several slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. You can never predict what you will find: a sprawl of tree limbs after a storm; white cattail seeds streaming on a breeze; a sodden creature darting from the pond into the woods; crows cawing over glare ice. A place like Fresh Pond schools the eye, teaches one to expect surprise, and to rely on minute things — a dark red leaf encased in ice — to unlock meaning for the metaphor-loving mind. The patterns of light and shadow, thickets and tangles into which we can see but partially, the unspoken-for patches, the water surface that skates toward the horizon — all these are forms and shapes that offer possibilities for mind, for ways of being.“
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Watershed is free to read on this site.
©1998, updated ©2024 Emily Hiestand