Overview

New to the city, Tallmadge saw only its concrete, glass, smog, and debris. Soon his interest, stirred by the wonder of his children at their new surroundings, focused Tallmadge to the """"buzzing, flapping, scurrying, chewing, photosynthesizing life forms"""" around him. More deeply, Tallmadge began to learn from, and not just about, the city. Nature's persistence - within him and wherever he looked - wore away at old notions of wilderness that made no allowances for human culture. The """"arch"""" of the book's title is richly resonant: as the name of a geologic formation molding the urban landscape Tallmadge comes to love; as an archetypal building form; and, in its parabolic shape, as a metaphor for life's journey. Filled with luminous lessons of mindfulness, attentiveness, and other spiritual practices, this is a hopeful guide to finding nature and balance in unlikely places.

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9780820326900

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What wilderness lover, asks John Tallmadge, would ever dream of settling deep in the Rust Belt astride polluted rivers? The Cincinnati Arch holds the provocative answer to Tallmadge's question, which was prompted by his unplanned relocation from rural Minnesota to urban Ohio. Tallmadge tells of dismaying early encounters with the city's seeming barrenness, his growing awareness of its vitality and abundance, and finally his new vision of all nature, from the vacant lots of his neighborhood to our great New England forests and Western deserts.

What wilderness lover, asks John Tallmadge, would ever dream of settling deep in the Rust Belt astride polluted rivers? The Cincinnati Arch holds the provocative answer to Tallmadge's question, which was prompted by his unplanned relocation from rural Minnesota to urban Ohio. Tallmadge tells of dismaying early encounters with the city's seeming barrenness, his growing awareness of its vitality and abundance, and finally his new vision of all nature, from the vacant lots of his neighborhood to our great New England forests and Western deserts.

The author of Meeting the Tree of Life (1997) finds nature in urban Ohio and, in this educative voyage of discovery, suggests it is not such a miracle after all. I never wanted to live in Cincinnati, Tallmadge lets readers know from the start. He had just lost his teaching job in Minnesota, a place that had fed his desire for wilderness, and now he was heading for a Rust Belt dung hole of ratty rivers and industrial despair, as well as moving into university administration, a decided step south from his urge to teach. As downtown approached, the world seemed to fade into gray, he writes, dismayed by this urban time/space so uprooted, fragmented, and abstract, deaf to the music of the spheres. But Tallmadge is a thinking man (and not an inelegant writer); he knew there were experiences to be had and learning to get on with. Did Cincinnati truly condemn him to the pauperization of his soul, so attached to wild places? Or was he simply narrow-minded, blinkered to the possibilities? There is wilderness at hand even in his quarter-acre lot and its environs, he realizes: enshrining wilderness in distant places allows us to justify our abuse, neglect and exploitation of local nature. Wild edges and corridors, still rich, still pervasive of nature and landscape and home patch, can coexist with human use of the earth. Wishful thinking? Hardly. Taking cues from Gary Snyder, Aldo Leopold, and Henry Thoreau, Tallmadge hunkers down to get to know just where he is. How, then, does one become native to a place? It requires time and attention . . . on the ground beneath our feet, which is the only ground we know. As a character here says, It all depends on what you listen for. Provocative and surprisingly persuasive. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

John Tallmadge is Core Professor of Literature and Environmental Studies at the Graduate College of Union Institute and University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is the author of Meeting the Tree of Life, and his work has appeared in such publications as Audubon and Orion.

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