Woodlands of the Mind - by Kevin E O'Donnell & Scott Randolph Honeycutt (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Throughout the eastern United States, hundreds of colleges and universities own acres of forested lands. These holdings range from modest parcels like Virginia Tech's eleven-acre Stadium Woods to more substantial tracts like Rutgers University's five-hundred-acre William L. Hutcheson Memorial Forest in New Jersey.

This book features fifteen notable campus forests in eleven states in the eastern United States, stretching from North Georgia, on up through the Ohio Valley and the mid-Atlantic region, into coastal Maine. The schools range from small religious colleges to state land-grant schools and Ivy League universities. The forests represent diverse ecosystems and attitudes on management: Some are left wild, notable for their tracts of old growth, while others are more contained or controlled, intended more for recreation than conservation or research. Many of these woodlands face considerable challenges; while some are protected in perpetuity, others are threatened by money troubles and development. All face ecological threats. But each forest is managed differently, reflecting the various ways it serves its campus and local community: as a place for research, recreation, and preservation.

Woodlands of the Mind serves as a travel book for wanderers and armchair adventurers alike. These fifteen narratives, or "rambles," guide readers through forests that range from small, hidden parks to vast preserves. Like an engaging travel companion, the essays discuss each forest's ecology, landscape architecture, and history--especially the history of American universities and the relationship between higher education and land management and protection.

Review Quotes

The essays in Woodlands of the Mind wander, as if through a forest, often arriving at exciting and unexpected terrain. This book is part invitation and part evocation: readers are encouraged to explore and reconnect with the natural world. There's magic waiting for us to behold, if only we open ourselves up to the flora and fauna that surround us.--Zackary Vernon "author of Eating on a Mountain at the End of the World"

Travelers, tree lovers, and armchair trekkers all, Woodlands of the Mind is a must-have book for you. In it, you'll find campus woods to ramble that most readers, like me, never knew existed. And now you can explore them by field trip or by opening the cover of this beautiful book. So pack a lunch, grab this book, and take a hike with O'Donnell and Honeycutt, these curious, companionable, and expert guides.--Jim Minick "author of The Intimacy of Spoons and/or Without Warning: The Tornado of Udall, Kansas"

About the Author

Kevin E. O'Donnell (Author)
KEVIN E. O'DONNELL grew up in northeastern Ohio. He holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is professor of English at East Tennessee State University. He has published articles about nineteenth-century American magazine writing and nature writing and about environmental history in the Southeast, and he coedited, with Helen Hollingsworth, Seekers of Scenery: Travel Writing from Southern Appalachia, 1840-1900. He lives in Upper East Tennessee.

Scott Randolph Honeycutt (Author)
SCOTT RANDOLPH HONEYCUTT grew up in Virginia and Tennessee. He holds a PhD in American literature from Georgia State University and is professor of English at East Tennessee State University. He has published numerous poems, including two chapbooks, This Diet of Flesh and Twelve Miles North of the Kentucky River. He lives in Upper East Tennessee.